24 March 2024

Dear Fiona,

We haven't met, though I believe we may have been at the same table during the recent ward committee meeting. I’m the Secretary of the Ouseburn Branch Labour Party, and I’m also Alistair’s agent – but in this case, I’m writing in my personal capacity as his husband.

I'm confident that, like most who stand for public office, you're a caring, compassionate person – and you’re obviously smart and accomplished – and so the only reason I can come up with for the attacks you’ve made on Alistair in recent newsletters and leaflets is that you might not be fully aware of Alistair’s recent history.

Alistair was hospitalised in October 2021 with infective endocarditis, a life-threatening heart valve disease which had caused multiple organ failure and strokes. He spent months in intensive care, largely unconscious and isolated due to COVID-19 restrictions, facing a grim prognosis – in December 2021, I had to sit our two children down and tell them that their dad was likely to die. Finally, after high-risk open-heart surgery in January 2022, Alistair began to recover, and he was able to leave hospital in March 2022, still alive but now severely sight impaired.

Due to the severity of his illness and the challenges of rehabilitation, Alistair was signed off from his job until November 2022. However, he didn’t wait until then to get back to work as a counsellor – in fact, he attended his first Council meeting in July and began taking on casework again soon after that.

From November 2022, Alistair was back serving the ward fully – with disability support from the DWP’s Access to Work programme and adult social care. Since then, he has worked on Council business at least two days a week – visiting residents, emailing and phoning Council officers and YHN staff about individual casework and wider-scale problems, and generally getting on with doing the job. He has taken on scores of cases for local people, and worked towards the resolution of many of the same issues for which Gareth and Mike claim sole credit in Focus newsletters. He is, despite – and in some ways because of - his disability, an active, hardworking and effective local Councillor.

Given this context, it's been really distressing for both of us to read statements in your newsletters implying that Alistair does nothing for Ouseburn’s residents. Specifically, your recent remarks in Newsletter 110 claim “it’s almost impossible to see what they (Alistair) have done for you” in the last “two years” – the period of Alistair’s severe health challenges and recovery, when he’s been the only Labour councillor in the ward. “It’s very clear”, you go on to say, “that Mike and Gareth both do more for this area every year than all those Labour Councillors have ever done”. In your recent small-format election leaflet, you claim that “Only your local Lib Dem team work hard and keep in touch all year round”.

I understand that this is the kind of thing that people say at elections. I don’t expect Alistair to get a free ride just because he’s disabled. But your accusations play into common tropes and misconceptions about disability that I don’t think have any place in the UK in 2024. I’m sure it’s not intentional, but the hidden message is that disabled people can’t really do a proper job, especially not something important like being a local Councillor.

I accept that you may not know about how much work Alistair actually does for the local community. His disability does mean that he needs support to be out and about in the ward, and that a lot of his work is done from home – by email and phone call – but I can assure you that he does work very, very hard for the local community.

I am not writing to demand an apology or any particular action. But I do want you to know that the things you’re saying about Alistair are untrue, and I want to appeal to your sense of decency and fairness.

I think the campaign would be better if it respected the challenges and contributions of all candidates, regardless of their circumstances. I don’t believe you’re doing that at present.

Warm wishes

Geof Ellingham