Advocating for Politics That Happens for People, Not To Them

While the political jostling and party politics dominate the headlines, it’s easy to forget that there are MPs on the ground, focused on their constituencies, with a genuine interest in making life better for the people who put them into office.

Lee Barron, Labour MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire isn’t a career politician. He stood for election for the first time in July last year, aged 55, and overturned a Conservative majority of more than 10,000 to take the seat with a 6,331 majority of his own.

That path to Westminster, however, is rooted in local pride, real-world experience, and a fundamental belief in representing people through a hands-on, grounded approach that puts his constituency and the people in it front and centre.

“I think there is a deep frustration with how it appears that politics is something that happens to people, not for them,” said Lee. “That’s how it felt to me, and I decided that I couldn’t keep saying people deserved to be represented properly if I wasn’t prepared to step up. I couldn’t ask other people to do things that way and not do it myself.

“And I believe we hit the ground running. I think there were around 4,000 emails waiting for us to deal with when we took office. We’ve worked hard to put things in place that we wanted to, and to try to show the people of Corby that politics matters to them.

“I make a point, every time I speak in the House of Commons, of bringing the constituency into it, relating it back to the people I represent and how the issues we’re working on affect them.”

It was important to Lee that his first Parliamentary seat should be in his home county. He grew up in Far Cotton, Northampton, and his father worked at a shoe factory in Raunds. He became an apprentice postal worker with Royal Mail at 16, later becoming Regional Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, and then Midlands Regional Secretary of the TUC.

As an MP, he is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group, Modernising Employment. Among his early campaigns as the area’s MP, he’s been very vocal on special educational needs provision in schools and led the calls for the return of a dedicated police station in Corby. And, representing an old steel town as he does, he was proud to be recalled to the House of Commons in April for a debate on what Government could do to protect the industry.

“It was a privilege to be recalled for the weekend debate to discuss the steel crisis,” he said. “It was the first time since 1992 that Parliament had been recalled, and it was an important moment. And this community knows what it’s like, we lost 14,000 jobs when Corby closed and still have people working it the steel industry in the town, so there is naturally a lot of solidarity for the steelworkers.”

Lee Barron is driven by a belief that work should be a path out of poverty – a conviction shaped by a lifetime spent in and around the Labour movement. “I’ve always believed in the value of work,” he said. “But for too long, we’ve had a trickle-down economy where working people are left feeding off crumbs while the money stays at the top.

“Priorities can be all wrong at times. Look at what we pay people who look after our money compared the relative pittance we pay to those who look after people. That’s got to change.

“And it’s not just about better wages, it’s about security and dignity and ensuring those who genuinely can’t work are protected.