If national opinion polls are to be believed, then Heidi Alexander is a shoo-in to turn Swindon South from blue to red at the General Election.
Labour are holding a 20-point lead over the Conservatives in most national polls and the website Electoral Calculus gives the party a 97 per cent chance of winning Swindon South from sitting MP Sir Robert Buckland.
But as she knocks on doors in Goddard Avenue in Old Town Ms Alexander is having none of it.
Chatting to potential voters on the doorstep she repeats that the election in the constituency will be very close and between doors she says: “Robert Buckland has a 6,000-vote majority, and turning over a majority of that size is really difficult.
“We need to work for every vote, and I will not believe any polls until the returning officer tells my agent the actual voting figures at the count.
“We have to get out our voters and persuade those who are maybes that they should vote for us.”
One of the notable things about the party’s ground operation ion the constituency is its organisation.
There are a dozen supporters waiting for Ms Alexander - though five are borough councillors, so they’re sort of obliged to come out and help. Local party organiser Theo Rushton-Marsh is the sergeant-major of the troop. She issues everyone with a sticker and leaflets and a clipboard.
In the clipboard is a script of questions, paper to make notes, postal vote forms to hand out, posters to give to those who’ll take them, and forms to get permission to feature people on social media.
As her supporters move quickly between houses, signing people up to take a poster or help out, marking those who say they'll vote Labour and those who won't, Ms Alexander is happy to have longer conversations.
At the first house she stops at the male householder is clearly keen on change but says: “There are structural problems after the last 14 years of chaos. There’s not enough equality and fairness in this country, and I’m not sure you’re talking enough about that.”
Ms Alexander is keen to engage and discusses Labour’s main policy programme, but also her background as a working class Swindonian , the first in her family to go to university. While six or seven minutes is not long, a political discussion that long covers quite a lot of ground
En route to the next house Ms Alexander says: “I’m out here trying to persuade voters who might have voted Tory last time, or those who might be tempted to vote Lib Dem or Green this time.
“And talking to people, and hearing what they are concerned about is valuable to me too.”
Further down the street Ms Alexander meets a former teacher of hers at New collage, who has a garden sign supporting her up, and his neighbour, and they discuss helping out deliver leaflets.
And there’s a surprise visit from Anji Hunter one of the key backroom advisors to Tony Blair in the 1990s and early 2000s.
She says: “I came to support Heidi, because I think she’s great.”
At the next house Ms Alexander has to give news she might have preferred not to. The woman who opens the door is concerned about the tuition fees her teenage children will have to pay to go to university.
Ms Alexander is unable to promise here that they will come down, or will be scrapped, but is careful to explain: “The state of the public finances, especially after the chaos of Liz Truss being Prime Minister, won’t allow it.”
She says afterwards: “You have to be honest with people and what we are able to do.”
Other candidates in Swindon South in the election to be held on July 4 are the Conservative MP Sir Robert Buckland, Rod Hebden for the Green Party, the independent Martin Costello and Matt McCabe for the Liberal Democrats.
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