Interview with Tom Morton, Labour candidate for Hayes & Coney Hill, Bromley

 Interview with Tom Morton, Labour candidate for Hayes & Coney Hill, Bromley

• Why a Labour candidate in Hayes and Coney Hill?

I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for 8 years, I joined as soon as I could when I turned 16. My family has a rich history of being members of the Labour Party, my dad was a Labour councillor twice before I was born. I’ve always been Labour, it’s part of my life. I decided to run as a candidate mainly because of the age of the average councillor in the UK, only the 10% of councillors are under the age of 40, and that means that young adults and students aren’t represented in most councils and I think that needs to change. I think we as a party, specially in Bromley, we’re definitely trying to do that with a 10% of our candidates in this local election being under the age of 25, and several more being under the age of 30. The other reason is that, for all my life, the Bromley council has always been Conservative and my local representation has always been Tory as well. How can we have a healthy democracy without accountability? It’s always been like this, the Tories haven’t had any accountability in our local council and I think that should change. 

• What are the main issues you want to prioritise in your campaign?

In my opinion it’s quite plain and simple, everyone’s priority right now should be the climate emergency. My experience on this subject comes from my final degree project in my Physics undergraduate at the University of York, I’m currently researching whether fusion can help to solve the climate emergency, and that means that a lot of my research is based around the climate crisis and all of its components on a political and public policy level. It’s not looking good at all, so that’s my number one priority and it should be yours and everyone’s undoubtedly.

Other priority that I’m quite passionate about is social housing, I think that currently it’s a big problem in the UK and I don’t believe there’s any chance that any Conservative leadership will ever try to tackle this, Labour’s the only party that has good coherent policy on this issue.

• Why is Labour the best alternative to the other parties in Bromley?

I believe that Labour at a local and a national level is by far the best alternative in my borough of Bromley. The Conservatives are taking us as a joke, they don’t care and we need to start showing people and get them to understand that they don’t care about them. With COVID and the current cost of living crisis the Tories refuse to spend money on the people they represent. As Labour, we would invest in the people that we represent and try to help them in the current crisis that’s come out of Brexit and the pandemic.