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Your support makes all the difference.Jeremy Corbyn is the only Labour leadership candidate who would provide an effective opposition the Conservatives, one of the runners to be the party’s next candidate for Mayor of London has said.
Christian Wolmar said he had voted for Mr Corbyn partly to escape “five years of Yvette or Andy Burnham basically trying to appease the Tories”.
“I don’t think we’ll get anywhere by that. I think we’ll get genuine opposition [with Corbyn],” he said, citing the recent parliamentary vote on welfare cuts.
Mr Wolmar is a transport economist and commentator running as an outsider for the party’s Mayoral nomination. He is the only one of the party’s prospective candidates who hasn’t worked as an MP at Westminster.
“I’ve voted for Jeremy. I’m anti-austerity – I’m an economist and I understand that the worst thing you can do in a time of recession is to have austerity,” he told the Independent.
“The second thing is the other candidates were so feeble – Jeremy is the only one expressing something that’s interesting.
“I don’t agree with everything that he’s proposing but I wouldn’t agree with everything everybody’s proposing.
“I think the alternative of having a sort of centrist opposition where they don’t even vote against a whole series of welfare cuts – that’s not going to win us the election either.”
Mr Wolmar has run a social media-heavy campaign for his party’s nomination which has seen a number of his policies adopted by the other candidates.
He was the first candidate in the race to propose pedestrianising Oxford Street, an idea now praised by Tessa Jowell, Sadiq Khan, and David Lammy.
An idea for a one-hour bus ticket to help people who need to travel on multiple routes has also been met with co-option.
Members and supporters can now vote in Labour’s Mayor of London candidate selection, with polls closing on 10 September.
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