New Labour MP stands by Corbyn and praises his help
Olivia Blake is no stranger to politics. Geraldine Scott reports on how one of Labour’s few success stories of the election will move from a local to national role.
AS THE Labour leadership race kicks off, many across the country have been quick to blame Jeremy Corbyn for the downfall of the party’s voter base in the North.
But for new MP Olivia Blake, one of Labour’s rare success stories in the December General Election, she is adamant she would not have taken the Sheffield Hallam constituency without him.
Ms Blake, 29, was in an odd position during the six-week election campaign. She was technically campaigning for Labour to hold the seat they won from the Lib Dems in 2017 in Sheffield Hallam.
But since that election so much had changed under former MP Jared O’Mara, that her campaign felt more offensive than defensive as Laura Gordon, the Lib Dem candidate, looked a dead cert to win the constituency.
“We always said it will be on a knife edge,” Ms Blake said.
“I would not say the Lib Dems were going to beat us because the kind of campaign we ran was very much about listening to people, there was a lot of trust to rebuild. And actually the platform I stood on was about rebuilding our public services.
“It went down really well, people wanted to talk about policies in Sheffield Hallam, we were having in-depth conversations. It was such a good campaign.”
In July, Mr O’Mara announced he would step down after a series of problems which saw him suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party and then resign from the party.
But the Treasury, which administers MP resignations, later announced that he had postponed this decision. He did not stand for election in December. Ms Gordon had been largely picking up casework in that time and polls suggested she was set to win the poll. However it was not to be. Speaking about election night, after she had been told she had won, Ms Blake said: “I realised I had nearly given it away because it was so close.
“I was hoping I would get five minutes to write a speech, but I didn’t, so I grabbed a couple of bits of paper and I walked on stage with them.
“All the cameras were on Laura because they expected her to win
– I do feel bad about that – and I just hid the papers behind my back.
“And I looked so serious because I didn’t know what to do. I’m so proud of what we managed to achieve.”
But the former Prince Henry’s Grammar School pupil and University of Sheffield alumnus knew she was the anomaly, with colleagues elsewhere in the country and region either losing their seats altogether or suffering severely reduced majorities.
The former deputy leader of Sheffield Council, who is the daughter of Leeds Council’s leader, Judith Blake, said: “We had Penistone and Stocksbridge in our room (which went to the Tory’s Miriam Cates), so we knew it was bad elsewhere, but Paul Blomfield’s seat (Sheffield Central) was very, very successful.
“I came out the next morning seeing what had happened, it was very bittersweet.”
However, Ms Blake stopped short of decrying Mr Corbyn, while many had laid blame directly at his feet.
She said: “I would not have won without Jeremy, 134 years in Hallam and we’ve won twice, both with Jeremy as leader.
“The conversations we had with people were 15-minute conversations and Jeremy was not the first thing that came up on the doorstep, Jared was. But we wanted to talk about the issues. I wanted to be the change.”
At the first Parliamentary Labour Party meeting since the election Ms Blake said “tensions were running high”.
But she said: “I’ve been in worse meetings in my time as a trade unionist and in local government. It’s obviously really difficult to explain how I feel about it because the manifesto we stood on was very hopeful, people understood our Brexit stance in the campaign.”
She added: “I hope we have a clean leadership race, if we focus on issues and ideas. I would like to see who comes forward. I’ve got my three tests which are Brexit – I’m a strong remainer – the climate crisis, and rebuilding our public services. I know I’ll probably have to compromise a bit.”
Ms Blake claimed she would love to see a woman from the North as leader, and said: “It would be fantastic to see a woman, I would love to see that absolutely. But it’s about ideas, I think we have had an issue of personalisation from Northern cities and communities.”
She added: “I’m really proud to be here and to be able to get on with work.”
It’s obviously really difficult to explain how I feel about the General Election because the manifesto we stood on was very hopeful, people understood our Brexit stance in the campaign.
Olivia Blake, MP for Sheffield Hallam