First time voter blog: local votes for local people

Apr 29 2010 By Lucy Roue

AFTER my lively day on the Clegg trail last Friday, I have become slightly disenchanted by the national front-runners over the weekend, as David Cameron announced more cuts to the North East if he became PM.

It seems that the North East is a write-off for politicians at times, being the furthest away from their heartland of London. And his suggestions quite irritated me during the Paxman interview, as I have continually tried to defend Cameron as 'the best of a bad bunch.'

As such, I think it’s time to have a look at how things stand in my local constituency of Newcastle East, as this is gong to determine whom my local MP is - regardless of the heavyweight battles playing out on TV.

This is more a battle of the 'doormat', as buried under much other post I manage to fish out three leaflets for each local candidate, trying to vie for that all-important vote on May 6th.

First off Labour's Nick Brown, who was first elected to Parliament in 1983. He has held the seat since then and is a close ally to Gordon Brown (or so they tell me). The leaflet is probably the strongest in terms of party branding, the red on pink ensemble is most definitely Labour communication at its best.

Not sure about the man himself though, I had to pretty much google 'who is my MP' to find out what impact he has had in the local area and he seems to be an uncanny mixture of G. Brown and John Prescott to look at. However, I have been well-informed that he is a 'genuinely good guy, who has canvassed for employment in the North-East' by my peers.

Nevertheless, if it wasn't for my current state of floating-voter, I would not even open the Tory handout - as I cannot get past the smug-looking individual plastered on the front.

Unfortunately for Dominic Llewellyn, he has the look of, shall we say, a stereotypical Tory and that would be enough to stop me voting. However, having read on, it turns out that Dominic has a lot more going for him and as a local governor and a director of a youth charity in his mid-twenties, perhaps he will attract young voters in the area (if he changes all promotional photos - immediately).

Finally, Dr Wendy Taylor is the Lib Dem candidate stepping in at short-notice for Greg Stone, who had to step-down after offensive remarks were made on a political blog site. A bad start for the Liberal campaign. Her contract with the voters of Newcastle East seems favourable, fighting for a fair deal on student funding and for a cleaner greener future. But the actual message is totally lost with the claim 'it's the Lib Dems or Labour here'. 

So after browsing through the literature - and ignoring the torn BNP leaflet wedged in the doorframe, I think my decision has just been made a lot harder! I was leaning towards Lib Dem on the national vote but having been told my current local MP is such a good influence in the region, it has somewhat laboured my decision (excuse the pun).