Paul Blomfield interview: 'Trust in politics is something you need to value and work at'

At an age when most boys are obsessed with girls, football and TV shows, Paul Blomfield was embarking on his first feat of political activism. Having had his eyes opened to the injustices of apartheid in South Africa as a result of the cricket and rugby boycotts of the 1960s, a 15-year-old Blomfield approached his RE teacher to ask what could be done about it.

Little could that young teenager have imagined that over the coming decades he would go on to play a key role in the national anti-apartheid movement, celebrate the end of a segregated South African state and meet a political hero. At the time he was more concerned about overcoming his shyness in order to raise awareness of the issue among his peers.

“I was actually quite a shy kid – the kind of kid that like to sit at the back of the class and hope the teacher wouldn't ask me a question even if I knew the answer,” Blomfield states.

“But I remember asking my school RE teacher about it, and saying this is terrible, we've got to do something about it.

“He said ok, you can organise school assemblies for a week on it.

“That meant me speaking in front of several hundred fellow students and I was terrified.”

He went on to deliver those assemblies, which marked the beginning of more than 20 years of campaigning. During that time he attended meetings that were broken up by members of the National Front, met with South African campaigners in the wake of the Soweto uprising, and became involved in the leadership of the UK anti-apartheid movement, setting up the Sheffield branch which grew to become the biggest in the country.

For Blomfield, the “high point” was watching Nelson Mandela walk free after 27 years in prison. He subsequently meeting him during a trip to London, and says he was always struck by the activist's ability to maintain the “clarity of his thinking” despite his years in isolation, and his complete lack of bitterness. However, he also took away from his time in South Africa a sense of “the extraordinary courage of people in the face of adversity” and the momentous change that this can bring about.

The MP says it was his involvement with the anti-apartheid movement that “opened my eyes to inequality within our own country”. This led to his participation in a number of other social justice campaigns, and eventually to joining the Labour Party.

He views himself as a late-comer to party politics, stating: “I didn't get into politics through [Labour], I got into Labour through politics.” However, he quickly became an established figure in the local party, chairing the Sheffield CLP for 15 years.

He says that it had never been his ambition to run as an MP because he had always believed politics “is about much more than that”. But when the opportunity arose to stand in his home town in 2010, the encouragement of friends and colleagues combined with a desire to find “new ways of connecting politics with people” convinced him it was “worth the challenge”.

“It was the height of the expenses scandal and confidence in politics had reached a new low,” he explains. “While scepticism is a good thing, scepticism can turn into cynicism, that can turn into contempt, and you end up with Donald Trump.

“Democracy is more fragile than we recognise when we've lived with it for a long period of time... Trust in politics is something you need to value and work at.

“So one of the reasons I stood was to find ways of connecting people with politics more effectively. “Some things I've tried to do have fallen flat on their face,” he admits. “But other things worked well.

“For example, I have this big annual consultation called The Big Conversation, involving all sorts of organisations, 1,500 people come along and its about them informing me and shaping my priorities.

“The issues they raise are the ones I take to Parliament.”

It was a hard fought campaign and in the end Blomfield held the seat for Labour by just 165 votes.

But only a year later he was faced with another potentially life-changing event when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

He had gone to hospital one August morning for what he thought was a “routine check” only to learn he had a serious brain tumour which had probably been growing for about 15 years. “Being told we need to remove it within the next 24 hours, and not knowing what the consequences of that operation will be, it kind of focusses your thoughts,” he says.

He adds that the experience also served to draw his attention “to what an extraordinary National Health Service we have”. “A surgeon, who is now a friend, spent 14 hours cutting [the tumour] out in what must have been one of the most difficult operations, and then six days later I was out of hospital and six weeks after that I was back in work,” he says.

“It's those personal experiences which we all share that underline the importance of the NHS.”

In 2015 Blomfield was re-elected with a 17,309 majority. This increased to 27,748 in June of this year – the biggest Labour majority in Yorkshire.

Last year, the 63 year-old was appointed as Labour's Shadow Brexit minister. He denies any suggestion that Labour's position on Brexit is unclear, saying simply that “one or two comments made on occasion has suggested there's more confusion than there is”. “If you contrast our position with the Tories they are ripping themselves apart on the fundamental issues,” he states.

“The problem that the Tories have got – and this is where there are enormous risks for the country – they have put ideological red lines as the starting point.

“What should be driving the Brexit process is an unambiguous focus on the outcome.”