LABOUR’S candidate for the new Earley and Woodley seat is Yuan Yang.
A journalist, she worked for the Financial Times, covering China, tech and the economy. She is also co-founder of a campaign called Rethinking Economics, and author of Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in New China. Released earlier this month, it looks at the lives of four women born in the Asian country in the 1980s and 1990s.
And she is an expert in economics too.
The global economic crash in 2007 was the catalyst for her journey to Labour candidate in the forthcoming general election.
“The first election I could vote in was 2010, it was the start of 14 years of austerity that we are now, hopefully, coming to the end of.
“It’s that experience of graduating into an economy that was in crisis, seeing the really brutal cuts to essential public service and, for the rest of my adult life, seen that get worse and worse.
“If you’re of that generation, it makes you realise it’s not going to get better unless you do something about it.”
The past 14 years, she adds, were different to her childhood when primary schools had smaller class sizes and an adequate number of teaching assistants.
“There was a real sense of optimism about education, and giving you opportunities. Nowadays, they have been stripped away. We need to have change.
“There is the sense (the Tories are) messing things up for no reason. The cuts have, in the long run, harmed the economy much more than they have helped. They haven’t made the savings the government told us all about.
“There is the feeling there has been no need to put ourselves in this situation, we could be doing much better than this if we made full use of our potential.”
This striving for fairness and social justice underpins Yuan’s philosophy. How much has her economic background helped?
“I had to join the Labour Party because I felt the Conservatives, from 2010 onwards, were telling us lies about the economy. What actually happened was they had a very ideological programme, culminating the Truss mini-budget. This wasn’t really about improving things for ordinary people, it was really about embarking on the ideological projects they had. My background in economics made it easier for me to see through that, and separate the rhetoric from the reality.
“Having spent many years writing about the economy and international economics, it makes me realise how much opportunity we have squandered unnecessarily.
“In turn, it gives me hope that with a complete change of government, with Labour, and a new leadership that understands how to bring stability to the economy, we could have something very different.”
With all these thoughts bubbling away and a very prestigious role at the Financial Times, why did she want to put her head above the parapet and stand as a candidate for Labour in the July 4 poll?
“We are very lucky to live in a democracy,” she says. “You can only change things if you get involved. You can’t say, ‘Well, I’m gonna have the comfortable life and leave it to somebody else’, it wouldn’t work.
“I’m lucky to have had stability, but it’s not enough.”
She cites issues that everyone faces such as problems getting GP and dental appointments as issues that affect everyone and need changing.
With this bubbling away, she attended a training session for Labour members – the party is keen to get more women standing for election – where she met shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, among others.
“The big moment came when I heard that where I live, here – Earley and Woodley, was to have a new seat, and it would be a really important one for Labour to win. I spoke with my friends in the local Labour party and they thought I would be the right candidate to lead us in that contest.
“I think it is meaningful when you know the area you are standing in, and I’m lucky enough to have friends and family and a community that can support me, all here.
“It’s important to recognise how much we rely on each other as a big family in order to do anything.
“I think you have to stand in a place you really care about, it would be much more difficult otherwise.”
She is full of praise for the canvassers and supporters working behind the scenes to help her campaign to be the first MP for Earley and Woodley.
“It’s just after the local elections, where we had a tremendous result. We did a lot of work going into that poll, and we has some brilliant victories there,” she says, referring to Labour winning all three wards in Loddon, and an additional councillor in Shinfield, as well as good victories in the Reading parts of the constituency.
“We’re now going straight into the general election campaign, and I’ve been really heartened by how much people have rallied around the campaign. It’s a snap election, we found out at 5pm on Wednesday (May 22), and at 6pm we had dozens of Labour activists in Woodley town centre at the campaign launch I called with, effectively, half an hour’s notice. That shows how willing and ready people are for change.”
The Labour team have been, Yuan says, knocking on doors and meeting people in the constituency “almost every day for months now”.
She continues: “My sense from the doorstep is there are people who straight up tell us they are voting Labour, and there are lots undecided. When we tell them this is a new constituency, and it’s going to be a very tight Labour-Tory contest, with the Lib Dems not expecting to win this, they say in that case I’m voting Labour to get the Tories out.
“There are also people who are fed up with politics, they’re disappointed and they don’t think politics has delivered anything concrete for them. I can understand that, because the government has really failed to give the people the sense there is something to show them. It’s gone on for such a long time there is a sense of disappointment in what has been happening.
“Everyone agrees that we need change. A lot of people who voted Conservative in 2019 are now changing their minds. It is this group of people we are really trying to speak to.”
Last Friday, Yuan joined fellow Labour parliamentary candidates Olivia Bailey (Reading West and Mid Berkshire) and Matt Rodda (Reading Central) in Pangbourne for a rally attended by Rachel Reeves.
“Labour is taking the three Reading seats very seriously. We very much hope, and we’re very much fighting, to return three Labour MPs. I think we have every chance of that happening if we manage to speak to people, listen to people, and they go out to vote,” Yuan explains.
“It’s a chance to build a strong Labour presence across the south east.”
The support of Ms Reeves is not something she takes for granted, saying they get on well, and has been incredibly supportive. Their association goes back to when Yuan shadowed her as part of Labour’s women’s leadership programme run in memory of the MP Jo Cox.
“She’s a very genuine person, who talks very straight. We need all those qualities in the chancellor,” Yuan said. “She will be brilliant at it. She is made for the job. The important part is she is a very straight-talking person who is honest with you about what we need to do, what can’t be done, and what shouldn’t be done.”
Among Yuan’s top priorities is building a new Royal Berkshire Hospital.
“We’ve been waiting on a decision for three or four years since it was first announced it will be a re-building. The deadline the Conservatives set has passed, and it’s frustrating as we see how much time and resources we waste by delaying that decision.
“Every day, the RBH staff have to make do with overcrowding, outdated facilities and electrical outages. That is a waste of money and their time. Frankly, we need to run the NHS in a much more efficient way to serve the people.”
She also adds problems people have with getting GP appointments, and education, especially for parents of children with special educational needs.
“The biggest issue that joins everything together, for me, is the economy and the cost of living crisis,” Yuan adds. “You can’t start to fix these problems without addressing the fact people are struggling, whether that’s pensioners, families, homeowners with huge mortgage hikes, renters… it affects people across the constituency.
“Getting us back on a stable economic footing is the wrapper for dealing with all these problems.”
For those who are undecided, Yuan says: “My first question is do you want to see change. If you do, vote Labour.
“We need a Labour government that will work to raise standards in public life and show the country what a serious, competent government looks like.
“If you want a local representative in Earley and Woodley, who cares about your concerns, who will go out of her way to speak to you, to listen to you, and is committed to building a local constituency presence that we’ve never had before, then vote Labour.”
This is one in a series of interviews with candidates standing across Wokingham and Reading – editor
