The race to be the Labour candidate in the new Bristol North East constituency got underway today, with a second directly-elected mayor announcing he is standing for the role. Damien Egan, who is the Mayor of Lewisham in south London, grew up in Kingswood and Staple Hill.
He has put his name forward to be the Labour candidate standing to be the first MP of the new constituency at the next General Election. Bristol’s Mayor Marvin Rees has previously indicated he will seek the Labour Party nomination and yesterday formally announced his application to be the candidate. So far no other local politician or Labour activist has publicly thrown their hat into the ring to challenge him - until now.
Mr Egan is today (Friday) launching his bid to be Labour’s candidate, in what is widely-recognised will be a fairly safe Labour seat at the next election. Mr Egan, who has spoken about how he experienced homelessness as a child, said he was standing with a message to Labour members and voters that ‘there is a better way’ to do politics in the city.
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The 40-year-old told Bristol Live that, of all the people who have talked about standing, no one knows the newly-created Bristol North East constituency better than him, having grown up on both sides of the Bristol-South Gloucestershire border.
“Kingswood is a place I know very well, I know Bristol North East and the areas that make up this new constituency because I’ve lived all over it - Kingswood, Staple Hill, Fishponds and around St George and Downend too,” he said. “I know these areas, I know the streets.
"I understand not just what Kingswood is now, but also what it was, because when my family got a council flat here and we were in Kingswood, it was the place to go. People from all over the city would come here. Obviously we’ve seen 13 years of Tory Government, what has that meant for high streets like this? Everyone is saying yes, we need more investment,” he added.
Mr Egan was a parish councillor in Downend and Staple Hill when he was just 21, before moving to London. He has twice stood for parliament before - the first time was in the 2005 General Election in Weston-super-Mare - and was elected to be a local councillor in Lewisham in 2010. He was elected as the Mayor of Lewisham, holding a directly-elected role similar to that of Marvin Rees in Bristol, in 2018, and was re-elected with an increased majority in 2022.
The new Bristol North East
The new constituency of Bristol North East hasn’t come into existence just yet - it will be created officially when the recommendations of a Boundary Commission are implemented towards the end of the summer or into the autumn this year.
The new constituency is effectively a fifth constituency for Bristol. It stretches from Lockleaze and Eastville, through Fishponds to Hillfields, Downend and Staple Hill. It also includes Kingswood and New Cheltenham in South Gloucestershire.
The new constituency is an merger of parts of what is currently Bristol East, which is held by Labour’s Kerry McCarthy, and the northern half of the Kingswood constituency, held by Chris Skidmore for the Conservatives. Mr Skidmore has announced his intention to stand down at the next election.
Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees announced he would be applying to be chosen as the Labour candidate for the new Bristol North East seat last November. Last year, Bristol Live understands Mr Rees moved with his family out of the City of Bristol to a new home in the suburbs of South Gloucestershire - which some within the Labour Party noted meant moving closer to the new Bristol North East constituency.
Last night, Thursday, Mr Rees tweeted that he had now formally applied to be Labour's choice to fight the Bristol North East seat at the next General Election. He said: "Today I've applied to be Labour parliamentary candidate for Bristol North East. I was born in Bristol. It is where I've stayed and made a home with my family. I would be honoured to serve as your MP, delivering for my constituents and ensuring a Labour government at the next election."
In December, Bristol Live visited Kingswood and unscientifically found a mixed response from people in the High Street about the potential of Marvin Rees being the Labour candidate. Mr Rees reiterated his intention to stand last month, saying he felt he still had more of his journey in politics left to run.
The process of choosing who the Labour parliamentary candidate will be for Bristol North East is complicated slightly by it being a new seat that doesn’t technically exist yet. The South West regional party machine has taken on responsibility and the man put in charge of the process is Kelvin Blake, who was Marvin Rees’ campaign manager at the last two mayoral elections.
Nominations opened this week, and a ‘long-list’ will be drawn up first, with a committee appointed to whittle that down to a short-list of four candidates, probably by the end of the month.
Hustings will then be held internally with those four, and an election held where only members of the Labour Party who live in the new Bristol North East constituency are eligible to vote. Bristol Live understands that this is only around 800 or so members, the bulk of whom live in the Fishponds, Eastville and Staple Hill areas.
Mr Egan said his first task was to make it to the short-list, and then try to communicate directly with members of the Labour Party. “I think what the Bristol North East constituency will need is an MP who is really people-focussed, community-focussed, who is out there on the doorstep with the community groups, meeting people and listening to them.
“I hope we get a Labour Government, but I want to make sure that in these areas that I’m from, they see the benefits of it, that their children see the benefits. This used to be a hive of activity around apprenticeships and jobs, feeding into industry around the city. That world of work is changing, so there’s some big profound questions around how we make sure our kids are getting the best from that.
“What I’m hearing from people is that there must be a better way, I believe there is a better way, and it has to be people-focussed and community-focussed and we want to see Labour back in the grassroots again, talking to people with close relationships where everyone feels they are making a difference.
“I want to know people in the area and have a good relationship with people - that’s what I try to do in Lewisham and I want to be able to do it here. My family is here, my friends are here, I want to live here in the constituency. I know it can happen, I know we can do something really special, but obviously the selection is going to be really tough, so it’s just about being able to speak to people and hopefully I can earn their trust and earn their votes,” he added.
Mr Egan’s early childhood was in a council flat in New Cheltenham, near Kingswood. His parents split when he was 12 and his teenage years were troubled as his mum entered a new relationship which he said turned abusive. “We bounced around temporary accommodation, we lived in St George, Fishponds, there were times when we didn’t have anywhere to live and were basically homeless, staying with friends. It wasn’t until we moved to the Berkeley House flats in Staple Hill that we got ourselves sorted.
“I don’t share that as a sob story, but more to show that I have that lived experience of what it’s like. I’ve taken that into being the Mayor of Lewisham, and made sure that we do the bread and butter well. You can focus on the ‘sexy’ things of local politics, like getting tall, shiny buildings built, or you can focus on the bread and butter - things like adult social care, child welfare, special needs education, schools, affordable homes. We’ve made a real focus in Lewisham of narrowing the definition of affordable housing so that it really is affordable, and not just what developers want to call it. That’s something I’ll take to be the MP here, if I can,” he added.
Mr Egan has moved back to Fishponds from London for his bid to be the Labour candidate, having recently got married at Bristol Register Office, and says he has thrown himself into trying to win the contest to be the prospective parliamentary candidate in the area he grew up in.
“I’ve been talking to people I knew from when I was here - I used to be a parish councillor here so I know quite a lot of people in the area. We’ve got two constituencies and two different parts of the city coming together. Half South Gloucestershire, half Bristol. On the Bristol side, half of the councillors aren’t Labour, and we know that there is loss of support to the Green Party. So I’m talking to people about my experience in Lewisham, because we did have six Green Party councillors there, got them down to one, and in the last two elections in which I’ve stood, we haven’t had a Green councillor.
“We have to work really hard with community-led campaigns, think about how we campaign differently. When it happens and you lose seats, it’s about listening to people and saying ‘what should we be doing differently? Asking people ‘what style do you want from an elected mayor?’ The first thing I did as an elected mayor was devolve decision-making, because one person doesn’t know everything and I would never try and pretend that I do.
“How do you then take that to the community, because you’ve got so much experience and expertise, you’ve got to listen to those community voices. That’s the approach we try to take, but there’s always room for improvement in everything, but we’ve done well in Lewisham and it feels like there is a good relationship between the council, community groups and the voluntary sector, and we try to work together,” he added. "That's the kind of politics I'd love to bring back home to Bristol."
