I am disappointed to announce that my campaign to be your next NEC Youth Representative will be indefinitely suspended, officially taking effect on Wednesday 3rd August
I haven’t come to this decision lightly, and would like to thank all the people around me who have supported and helped me – especially those within my CLP who agreed to sift through my ideas, and were crucial in building my vision for Labour. I would like to go into the reasons why I have decided to suspend this campaign.
Firstly, the campaign is very much a two-horse race. At the time of writing, Kira Lewis and Lara McNeil have 197 and 209 nominations respectively, while the other candidates have far fewer. Additionally, it is likely that the crucial nominations from trade unions will be hoovered up by Lara and Kira also. This means that it is unlikely that the high level effort that is needed to campaign for this position will go unrewarded for other candidates.
Secondly, it is now the case that I want to step back from party politics for a while. It is ten days until A Level results, and only a few weeks until I begin my first year of university. This is going to be both time consuming and personal – I want to spend the next few weeks making sure everything is lined up and ensure I get to say a proper goodbye to all my friends and colleagues who live around here.
I do still believe in the vision I had for Labour, and would love to see some of my ideas carried forwards by other candidates. In particular, I am really proud of my Youth Training Scheme, and would be delighted to work with the eventual elected representative to see this happen in some form.
For now, I would urge everyone reading this to nominate Gurpreet Singh – I really think that he has the articulacy and political nous to be a fine Youth Representative. His membership number is L1788900, and his Twitter is @GurpreetS_Sidhu. I would encourage you all to follow and nominate him.
Thank you for everything,
Oliver Tucker.