Wellingborough by-election: Labour candidate Gen Kitchen says she’s battling to regain trust in politicians

Gen Kitchen is recalling what first drove her into front-line politics at the age of just 22. “I was really early on in my career, I was working all the hours I could and just not having any money at the end of the month,” she tells me. “I was actually going into credit card debt because of that, and thinking if not me then who?” 

We’re sitting in St Mark’s Church, in Wellingborough, when now, six years on, Kitchen is Labour’s candidate for the constituency’s by-election on 15 February. The 28-year-old though is remembering her experience joining Newham Council, east London: “I looked around on the council and there was no one that was renting, no one that was in insecure minimum wage employment, no one that had the student fees I did and no one that genuinely represented me in local politics.”

Now Kitchen wants to take that attitude to Westminster, hoping she can cause another by-election headache for Rishi Sunak. Voters are heading to the polls in the Northamptonshire town as former Tory MP Peter Bone was recalled after being suspended from the House of Commons for six weeks.

Parliament’s Independent Expert Panel (IEP) found that Bone “committed many varied acts of bullying and one act of sexual misconduct” against a member of his staff in 2012 and 2013, including exposing himself to the aide on an overseas trip. Bone denied the allegations saying the claims are "false and untrue" and “without foundation”, but more than 10% of Wellingborough voters signed a petition to recall the 71-year-old. His girlfriend, North Northamptonshire councillor Helen Harrison, is the Conservatives’ candidate.

As such, Wellingborough doesn’t currently have a sitting Member of Parliament, and Kitchen, who grew up in the nearby village of Potterspury, is trying to fill the void. I’m speaking to her after a roundtable she’s organised with community leaders and school pupils to discuss knife crime with Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. “There’s not a lot of trust in politicians,” she tells me, when I ask her about the by-election’s circumstances, “that comes up quite a lot.” 

“It’s something you really have to battle, I’m trying to earn people’s votes by doing the work now. I don’t see anybody else bringing everybody in the community together to discuss knife crime. We did something similar with Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary. I don’t see anybody else bringing patients’ lived experience to the forefront and showing that to national politicians that are responsible for holding the government to account.”

She refuses to comment on Bone’s situation, instead saying: “The sleaze is one thing, but it’s the sense that nothing works that’s pervasive. You can’t get a doctor’s appointment, you can’t get a dentists’ appointment, the roads aren’t fixed, the parks aren’t nice. When seemingly council tax and national insurance has been going up.”

Knife crime is one of the main issues Kitchen says she’s hearing on the doorsteps, alongside NHS issues. She tells me the area is a “complete health desert” with no walk-in or urgent care centre. “We’ll be focusing on primary care and social care, that will do wonders for the people of Wellingborough and the whole of the constituency,” she says.

Certainly on the streets of Wellingborough, the NHS seems to be one of the biggest issues. Michael Taylor, 78, told NationalWorld’s sister paper the Northamptonshire Telegraph: “I cannot get a doctor’s appointment. There isn’t a way of dealing with it. 

“You can keep phoning up, I don’t know who the people who are responsible for getting the job done properly. Simply, I want them (the new MP) to reinstate a decent GP service." While Peter Rayner, 83, said: “The NHS is in such a bad state at the moment. It’s every aspect – I worry for the future.”

It appears as if Labour is on the precipice of watering down its big £28 billion green energy plan. I ask Kitchen how voters can trust her, if her party is already rowing back on one of its key pledges. She tells me: “You have to look at what the economy’s going to be doing. 

“You can have the massively amazing headline of £28 billion, but if the economy’s not there to support it - we want to under promise and over deliver. You want to make sure you are realistic with your change and creating pragmatic solutions.”

Kitchen’s main rival for the seat is Cllr Helen Harrison, who is deal with her close association with Bone. She told the Telegraph that she believes the allegations against her partner are “untrue”. “Obviously it’s been a deeply unpleasant process,” she said.

“Peter has consistently made it clear that the allegations against him are false and unfounded and as his partner I’m one of the small number of people who has actually seen all of the evidence in this case and I believe the allegations to be untrue.”

She revealed that Bone has been campaigning with her: “I’m out on the doorstep every day with Peter and our activists and the issue around the circumstances of Peter no longer being the MP is virtually never raised.

"The issues that are raised are about stopping the small boats, improving our NHS locally – getting the hospital built, getting our urgent care centre in Wellingborough – making sure we get the Isham bypass delivered. It’s issues like that people are talking to me about.”

"I think that I, Helen Harrison, have proved myself both professionally and politically that I’m the right kind of person to stand and ask the people of Wellingborough and Rushden for their votes.”

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.