Labour name new candidate for bid to reclaim seat
LABOUR have selected their first new candidate for the Stockport parliamentary constituency for 27 years.
Trade union steward Navendu Mishra worked in retail in both Stockport and Greater Manchester before serving as a trade union organiser in Stockport within the social care sector. He is a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee.
His selection follows the defection of longstanding MP Ann Coffey to The Independent Group for Change in February as one of a group of MPs protesting against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership.
Mr Mishra, from Stockport, has welcomed a “raft of radical policies” agreed at the recent Labour Party Conference.
He said: “The people of Stockport deserve more. We need real change to give us the public services, quality jobs, schools, pensions, housing, pay and free time we need.
“When we are elected at the next General Election, a Labour Government will abolish zero-hour contracts, end in-work poverty and reduce the working week so the people of Stockport have more free time and more money to spend with their family and loved ones.
“We will properly fund the NHS so Stepping Hill’s A&E no longer struggles under the weight of demand and a lack of resources. We will put public health before private profit and ensure that life-changing drugs are available at affordable prices to our health service and ultimately all the patients.
“We will properly fund our schools and earlyyears provision to ensure there is quality, free preschool education. No longer will schools suffer the scandal of underfunding which forces them to close early.”
Ms Coffey has been Stockport’s MP since 1992.
Upon leaving Labour, she said: “I thought I would be in the Labour Party for the rest of my life but political parties are not an end in themselves in a parliamentary democracy. The Labour Party has lost sight of this. It is no longer a broad church. Any criticism of the leadership is responded to with abuse and accusations of treachery.”