Tomorrow (Thursday July 20) 13,740 Labour Party members in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire will receive their on-line ballot papers to vote for their choice as the party’s candidate for East Midlands Regional Mayor.
They will have two weeks to reach a decision on which of the three short-listed candidates (John Hess, Padding Tipping & Claire Ward) will face the wider electorate next May as the official Labour Party candidate.
In a message to Labour members, John Hess outlined his priorities:
“Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire are great places to live and work. We need to make our East Midlands the place to thrive and prosper. That’s my ambition as Regional Mayor.
Looking forward, the new powers and budgets being devolved to us by Whitehall offer new opportunities. I want to encourage good quality jobs, whether they’re in advanced engineering, the creative industries, science, hospitality or care sectors. A key to unlocking those opportunities will be widening the skills training available at our seven large FE colleges.
Too many of our homes are expensive to heat. We need to accelerate the building of homes that match the challenge of climate change. We need to upgrade and insulate existing homes. As a region, we should be a centre of excellence in green technology knowhow, and point the way to generating clean and safe electricity. That applies to the new batteries that’ll power our electric cars.
The new Jaguar Land Rover giga watt factory, to be built in Somerset, will create more than 4,000 new jobs…imagine the benefits for us to secure a similar development here.
As your Regional Mayor, I will work in partnership with industry, business, trade unions and communities to champion the East Midlands as THE place to invest.
We need a Labour Regional Mayor and a Labour victory next May to deliver these changes.
You need a candidate who will make the right political calls on the issues that matter.
As the BBC’s Political Editor for the East Midlands for nearly 20 years, I interviewed Prime Ministers, Chancellors of the Exchequer and cabinet ministers – both Labour, Conservative and Coalition Lib Dems. That gives me a unique insight.
I reported, scrutinised and explained to the people of the East Midlands how political decisions taken at Westminster affected us closer to home…especially on the two of the most significant and disastrous parliamentary votes ever.
I was in the press gallery of the House of Commons when Labour MPs, with few exceptions, voted to invade Iraq, and when – during the Cameron/Osborne years — Ben Bradley and his Tory chums voted for the bedroom tax and austerity.
I am not your conventional candidate. I offer the Labour Party a fresh approach and a new appeal to voters, especially those voters in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire who’ve yet to be persuaded to come back to Labour.
I can win for Labour. I will win for the East Midlands.”
Back my campaign: john@johnhess.co.uk
