Eleanor Smith: City Labour group failed to back me - I only won because of Union and Momentum

First-time candidate Eleanor Smith won Wolverhampton South West with a majority of 2,185 last June, despite being considered an outside chance for the seat.

The Labour MP, a former nurse and president of Unison, says she has her trade union and hard-left campaign group Momentum to thank for her victory.

In a frank speech delivered at a sparsely attended union seminar, the 60-year-old revealed how she was 'foisted' upon members of the Wolverhampton South West constituency Labour party, who made her feel like 'cannon fodder'.

Momentum

The Corbynite MP criticised her local Labour group for refusing to believe she could win, paying 'lip service' to her, and underfunding her campaign.

Ms Smith told an audience of around a dozen people: "I was in my car literally saying 'what the hell...I'm not getting the support from the people that I should be getting support from."

Watch a video of the speech here:

According to Ms Smith her fortunes turned once she had enlisted the support of campaigners from Momentum – which she praises 'to the hilt' – and Unison general secretary Dave Prentis.

The campaign has previously been the subject of allegations that a Labour agent was harassed and bullied before quitting her role.

Ms Smith was speaking in October 2017 at a seminar entitled 'Supporting equality, celebrating diversity'.

She said: "When the election was called and I was chosen by the NEC to go into Wolverhampton, they didn't choose me. I was, as they say, foisted on them.

"I had a challenge...if you remember the polls, when the election was called Labour was going to be wiped out.

"So you go there and you have the challenge where I was the outsider coming in. There were other people from inside that wanted it, but then again they thought, 'well we ain't going to win anyway'.

"So for a while they were paying lip service to me, and I could sense it, and I can remember the very moment I was in my car literally saying 'what the hell...I'm not getting the support from the people that I should be getting support from."

'I was on my own'

Ms Smith said she contacted Mr Prentis and told him: "This is not right."

"At the end of the day...we weren't actually given the money as well, and they weren't allowing us to do what I want, because as far as they are concerned, I felt I was just cannon fodder.

"They were just pretending, claiming, 'oh we'll go out on one Saturday and do this', and 'we won't go out the next'.

"It's a short campaign and I wanted to be out there every single day knocking on the doors, getting out there, and they were going, 'well, I don't know'."

Ms Smith says she brought in 'somebody from outside of that constituency to come in and help me', because she felt she was 'running this campaign on my own'.

"From then on it changed," she said, adding that the Labour manifesto also helped to boost her chances.

She said people continued to insist that she would lose the election. "In my heart, I was saying 'no we're not', I knew we were going to win," she added.

Shouldn't have won

On Unison she said: "They gave me the resources. All I needed was not so much money, I wanted people. And I got that.

"I got people from Momentum, which I will praise to the hilt, because they were coming out and knocking on those doors and we had campaigns.

"All sorts of political things was going on in the Labour Party at the time, but we won't go there because it is all lovely now.

"We all love each other and everything is fine.

"I thought I had challenges in the hospital, but this was the biggest one. And I got over it.

"And when we won, some of them are still shocked, because we shouldn't have won. You gather the ones that are going to be with you, and you leave out the ones that don't want to be with you.

"And you didn't bother with them, and they got vex....because that's the word I use. And saying I was doing this, that and the other. I said look I ain't listening to you. I know what I want and this is what I am going to do.

"And that's what I have done."

Ms Smith succeeded Labour MP Rob Marris, who won the seat from the Tories in 2015 with a majority of 801.

The Youtube video of the seminar had 252 views at the time of writing.