Unusually for a candidate in a general election, Esther Rantzen has yet to decide who she will be voting for. It certainly won’t be for herself. Rantzen is standing in Luton South. She lives and votes in Hampstead. “I am genuinely undecided about who to vote for”, she tells me in her tiny campaign office, nestled at the back of an indoor market adjacent to Luton’s Arndale shopping centre.
When we meet earlier in the day, Esther is busily examining her accounts. Elections are a costly business and she is determined to stay within her budget of £10,000. Although her office has been donated by the market owners, cash donations to her campaign are scarce and she is less than halfway through the campaign.
But given that Rantzen’s whole raison d’etre for standing as an independent in the first place was to defeat unpopular, even loathed, Labour MP Margaret Moran, who was forced to repay many thousands of pounds after flipping her home three times in four years, why bother with a campaign at all? Moran’s candidacy was vetoed by angry Labour Party bosses last year and she has not been seen in the constituency since.
“I have loved Luton since I first came to visit. People asked me to stand and I said yes.” This sounds slightly disingenuous. No one ever really asks anyone to stand as an independent. However, Rantzen does seem to genuinely have “fallen in love with the place” and there are many politicians from all parties who represent constituencies they would never have chosen to live in themselves – although it’s difficult to take Rantzen entirely seriously when she states without irony “that Luton has a lot in common with Hampstead. All that’s missing is the affluence’.
Perhaps fittingly for a celebrity candidate, Rantzen believes that all Luton suffers from is an image problem. The perception is that Luton is not a fun place to live. I intend to change that, to re-brand Luton, use my contacts and campaigning experience to create new projects, to turn Luton into a destination town.”
Rantzen certainly has a lot of contacts and has called on many to take part in a quiz-night fundraising event later in the day. Meanwhile, her unpaid staff, all “self-selected”, bring her coffee and plan her day – as much as a campaign team with not one iota of political campaigning experience can.
“Where we go generally depends on the weather”, Esther tells me, “We have no party machine behind us, no voting data and have produced just one leaflet.” I comment on how small her office is and she looks genuinely surprised. “Is it? I’ve never been in a real one before.” Later, before I go, she sits me down and asks for advice on how a political office should be run. It is all very quaint, the stuff of Ealing comedies, but is it politics?
Meanwhile, across town, Labour candidate Gavin Shuker, who has only been a member of the party “for three or four years” is trying not to let the “Moran factor” damage his campaign. “Margaret had to go. What she did was indefensible.” Shuker has no idea where Moran is now – “I’ve not seen her for 15 months” – and doesn’t seem to care. What he does care about is residual anger at her behaviour which may yet result in a Lib Dem surge. “People are very angry”, he says, before correcting his tenses. “I mean were. On the doorsteps, some can’t wait to have a rant and I broadly agree with them.” Without taking anything for granted, Shuker believes he can win. “For every four Labour voters, there are three Tories and just two Liberals. It would take more than a surge for the Liberal Democrats to win. Yes, people want change, but the not the change peddled by the Conservatives’ As for Rantzen, whom Shuker describes as “fabulous” – he even invited to his home for Shepherd’s Pie – he believes there is a place for independents and welcomes her contribution to democracy believing the votes she picks up “will be from people who probably wouldn’t have voted otherwise”.
Shuker sees jobs as the key to Luton’s future and looks forward to 2013, when Vauxhall expects to build a new line of van locally. With more active party members than either of his main opponents, Shuker is confident he can turn Labour’s fortunes around locally.
Meanwhile Rantzen is doing what she does best: meeting the people – and they are delighted to see her. Dressed in the black and white of Luton Town FC, she nips into Waterstones to buy two copies of Never mind the Expense, a book about the expenses scandal, and the young man who serves her winks as he tells her to “keep the receipt”. One young skater appeals for help after getting into trouble at a local nightspot. In fact, many of the people Rantzen encounters on a walk through the main shopping street treat her as though she is already their MP, which is odd because no one seems quite prepared to vote her – not even the lady who demands a cuddle, a first for this campaign. Clearly Rantzen, who should she win, intends to stand for a second term, (she will 79 in 2020) has much to offer, but it will surely not be as the MP for Luton South. Nonetheless, Gavin Shuker is already looking forward to inviting her to Westminster to see how he can best utilise her newfound commitment to his hometown.
