Louisa Woodley has brought her slogan “In it to win” from her London Assembly campaign, when in the Sutton and Croydon constituency she saw Conservative Steve O’Connell’s majority come down from 42,665 to 9,418, and for the first time in history, she secured more votes for Labour in the borough-wide Croydon ballot than any other party.
Louisa Woodley
Woodley’s case to Labour members in Croydon Central is that they should maintain the momentum from that campaign for their challenge to Gavin Barwell in 2015.
Woodley emphasises that there would be “no no-go areas” for Labour in their search for votes in the parliamentary seat.
In her campaign material, Woodley emphasises the 262 campaign sessions in her London Assembly campaign, the six-fold increase in voter contact rate and the 50 per cent increase in Labour’s vote.
Woodley says that she “knows Croydon Central well both as a former Rylands ward councillor and as a former teacher of many local residents”, and she feels that she is “ready to make an immediate use of my Croydon network of contacts in the parliamentary campaign”.
One of four Croydon councillors seeking short-listing (she represents Thornton Heath ward), Woodley emphasises her real life experience outside politics, such as being determined to pay her way through university before student fees were introduced. Being from St Kitts, Woodley was deemed to be an overseas student liable to full fees. Woodley eventually got a job at Sylvan School where she became active in the NUT, becoming the president of the Croydon NUT.
Woodley asserts that she “would be an effective lobbyist for Croydon rather than being a climber up the greasy political pole”.
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