Transcript
SHARON THOMPSON
My name is Sharon Thompson. And I am a councillor in Birmingham, and I am the Deputy Leader for Birmingham City Council, and also Birmingham Labour group.
When planning and executing an election campaign, it’s really important that you connect with the local people that you want to represent. There’s different phases of this. And the first one is ultimately getting yourself selected, if you come from a party. So you need to make sure that you’re winning the votes of the people that are going to be in the room, but essentially, also making sure that they turn up to vote for you as well. So that’s really key in the first stages of any form of election.
If you are successful, and once you become selected as the candidate, those principles carry you throughout the whole of the campaign. It’s about bringing out the vote. It’s about speaking to people, connecting winning hearts and minds. And there’s a number of methods that you can utilise in order to do that.
We break our campaigns up into different types of area. And the first one is essentially, what we would call the long campaign. This is where you get more time to connect with people, for them to understand who you are as a candidate, and you can understand the local community, meet people, build your networks, and really help them to influence some of the things that are going into your material, sharing your key messages across the whole of that geographical area.
The next part of the campaign is the short campaign. And that’s the really intense bit. This is where you’re really focused on the numbers and getting out the vote. And some of that means that you have to focus on specific areas based on some of the data and information that you’ve collected over those few months or so leading into the short campaign.
The advice that I would give to an aspiring Black leader considering coming into politics starts with being your authentic self. So please make sure you stick to who you are, and be really clear on your brand, and who you want to be remembered as, because reputation is key, and it really does matter. I would also say that it’s really important that you understand the drivers in the places that make you passionate.
I was passionate about housing, and I made sure that I turned my passion into something practical. I went and understood what the legislation meant, I understood that who the key people were in the housing market, where the places were to get information, and who it was I wanted to network with.
In addition to that, one of the key things is to build up your network. I made sure that I went on a number of courses across the country. Some of those with Operation Black Vote, some of them were cross-party, some of them were the LGA, and a number of other places. Because it’s really important that you build your networks across the country, not just in your geographical area. So I would say, ultimately, build your brand, get your good reputation, and also build that network to help you to thrive within the political space. Because if you do get elected, we need Black leaders who are going to be competent, strong, and be able to influence people when it comes to the political system.