A York disability campaigner looks set to become Scarborough and Whitby’s first Labour MP in nearly 20 years.
Award-winning children’s writer Alison Hume is campaigning to replace Sir Robert Goodwill in the constituency, who is standing down and won the seat from Labour in 2005.
Alison grew up in Essex but her dad, an accountant, came from a family of York teachers.
Her parents retired back to Yorkshire, leading Alison to live in Poppleton, until she recently moved to Whitby.
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In York, Alison brought up her three children and as well as her screen writing became involved in campaigning.
The campaigning stemmed from her second son being born with a rare chromosome disorder, leading her to fight with other parents to get the services and support such parents need.
Alison said: “What started as a campaign for free nappies in 1998 ended up 25 years later with a campaign to re-open York to Blue Badge Holders.”
The Labour activist co-founded York Accessibility Action, she stood for Police and Crime Commission in North Yorkshire in 2021 and also for the European Parliament for Yorkshire and Humberside in 2019.
Her campaigning extended to breaking new ground by representing children with disabilities in shows like Summerhill and The Sparticle Mystery.
Alison told the Press: “I have experienced and seen things which make me uniquely placed to fight for families with SEND and mental health needs. I know first-hand how our children and young people are being failed after fourteen years of Tory cuts.”
The ‘proud graduate’ of the Jo Cox Leadership training programme is standing for Labour in Scarborough and Whitby believing she has the “lifeskills and tenacity” to represent an area “taken for granted by the Conservatives.”
Current polling predicts a Labour victory, with Electoral calculus estimating she will overturn Sir Robert’s 10,276 Tory majority, winning by a similar margin on 48.6%, with the Tories on 26.6% and Reform third on 15.9%.
However, Alison believes polls amount to little and instead says she has been talking to residents on the doorstep and also surveying their views.
“They know the Government crashed the economy and that Rishi Sunak is completely out of touch with they have been going through. Ordinary families are paying the price every day.”
She also laments the neglect of the NHS, saying it has never been in a worse state, adding the constituency is a dental desert with people having to travel outside it for healthcare as services are stripped from its hospitals.
Partygate has degraded politics in the eyes of the public, she added but Labour is now a party of public service and “voters here in Scarborough and Whitby who greatly value issues such as national defence and who lent their vote to Boris in 2019 are returning to Labour.”
The other candidates include David Bowes (Reform), Annette Hudspeth (Green), Asa Jones (Social Justice Party) and Roberto Weeden-Sanchez (Conservative).
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