Exeter Labour hopeful: "I know the area"

Steve Race lives in London

The Labour Party’s candidate hoping to take over from Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw at the next general election insists he knows the area and people well, despite being a councillor in a London borough.

Communications executive Steve Race was selected last month to run as Labour’s replacement for Ben Bradshaw when the veteran Exeter MP steps down. 

Mr Race claims he has plenty of experience in the area, having played a role in Exeter’s Labour team for 15 years. 

Speaking after welcoming Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to the city on Monday he believes local people will accept him. 

“I’ve worked for Ben [Bradshaw] and the people of Exeter between 2007 and 2011,” he explained.

“Often I represented him when he was a minister. Obviously, he had a day job being a minister, so I was sometimes called upon to represent him. I was then actually the Labour candidate in East Devon in 2015 and part of that seat involves parts of the city of Exeter as well. 

“There’s very rarely a street that I’ve been down that I haven’t campaigned in over the last 15 years.

“I’ve a great relationship with Exeter City Council’s [Labour] Leader Phil [Bialyk] as well. 

“So, I think people are much more interested about issues, about what are you going to do for them, how you can help them, how you going to support them than questions about geography.”

Mr Race outlined the topics he felt should be prioritised in Exeter, listing climate change as the biggest issues.  

“I’m a cyclist,” he said. “I don’t drive at all as I don’t have a driving licence. So, I’m a big environmentalist and I think we need to do much more around climate change.”

Outline other key priorities he also praised Exeter’s Labour run council and said: “Housing is a real issue in Exeter, as it is in many parts of the country. 

“We really need to put more investment into social housing in the future. That’s how we’ll really start to unlock the housing crisis in the UK.

“And Exeter City Council does loads on social housing where it can and that social housing is Passivhaus standard, which is really amazing. Exeter is really leading the way in that.”

Passivhaus is an energy-efficiency standard. Exeter’s new £42 million leisure centre St Sidwell’s Point is the first of its type in the UK to be constructed to such standards and is expected to save more than half of usual energy costs.

Mr Race continued: “On a really hyperlocal kind of issue is the bus system. I think people are really, really frustrated by the buses and by Stagecoach’s performance in Exeter. 

“People are sitting, waiting for hours on end for a bus when it just doesn’t turn up.”

Mr Race claims the NHS has been let down by the Tories since 2010 but when asked about the current debt burden of around £50 billion because of controversial private finance initiative contracts (PFIs), many introduced by the last Labour government, he insisted the NHS was safer under Labour. 

PFIs were a way of funding infrastructure projects such as hospitals by using private funding to pay for the upfront costs.  The cost is then paid back over many years to the companies who financed the project – often at high interest rates.

Mr Race said: “When you look at funding you see that under Labour governments, the NHS is much better. In the last 12 years the NHS has not done very well in terms of funding.

“So this is 12 years in the making. The Tories have been in government for 12 years. The Tories cannot keep saying it’s Labour’s fault. Labour has not been in government for 12 years. The Tories have been in government for 12 years. 

“They’ve had ample opportunity to fix this and, as with other issues … they’re absent without leave.”

Although Mr Race is Labour’s candidate for Exeter, the party has yet to decide who will fight the next election in the new Exmouth, Honiton, and Tiverton & Minehead constituencies.  

The East Devon constituency, in which Mr Race came fourth out of five in 2015 and lost his deposit, is being abolished. The new Exmouth constituency will cover a larger part of Exeter than East Devon current does.

Mr Race rejects suggestions the party will not be properly prepared to fight a snap election, if one is called. 

He said: “Well, we’ve had snap elections in 2017 and 2019. We’ve had plenty of elections over the last few years when the Tory Party has had one of its biannual collapses and chooses another prime minister. 

“We’ve got some great policies; as this morning with the energy cap … we would scrap it, scrap the increases. And I think that we’ve got loads of members, loads of people who would be absolutely brilliant to step up, be great campaigners and be great MPs for the Labour Party too in a Labour government.”