Jonathan Todd

It has been a privilege to get to know Westmorland and Lonsdale better as the Labour candidate. Below I can be seen visiting the wonderful Primary School in Beetham. I’ve seen lots of evidence for 13 years of Labour government having improved this constituency: the transformation of Kendal College; SureStart Children’s Centres in Ambleside, Kendal, Milnthorpe and Windermere; a rising minimum wage; and much more besides.

These are changes that I see and changes that I believe in. If you value these changes, vote for them, vote for the party that brought them about and vote for the party that is best able to deliver more such change in future. The key to further positive change is to get our economy right. Gordon Brown has made the right decisions on the economy when it has really mattered. That’s why unemployment fell by 4.7 percent in Westmorland and Lonsdale over the past year.

We need our economic recovery to continue under Labour. Labour has made this country fairer and better. Only Labour government can continue this improvement. The Liberal Democrats would scrap the services to children (the Child Trust Fund) and cut the benefits to pensioners (the Winter Fuel Payments) that Labour has introduced. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has praised Margaret Thatcher and 17 English councils are led by Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalitions. The possibility that you will vote for Tim Farron and his leader, Nick Clegg, would go into a coalition to give us Prime Minister David Cameron is very real.

Given this, I encourage you to vote for what you believe in and cast a vote for Labour that will help us have the strongest possible Labour party in Westmorland and Lonsdale and the best possible outcome nationally in terms of the popular vote, which will impact what happens in the event of a hung parliament. Voting for what you believe in is never a wasted vote!