Labour's Tom Gray wants to make Brighton 'shining pin' again

Labour candidate Tom Gray says he hopes to make people’s lives “definitively” better if he is elected MP and make the city “shine like a pin” once again.

He said it will take two Labour governments for Brighton to no longer “feel like a place of unrealised potential”.

“It has really felt like a mad spiral of neglect the last 14 years at least,” he said.

“There are all these fantastic opportunities with a city like ours.

“I want it to be a shining beacon and a creative, cultural capital where small businesses are thriving, more of the national creative sector are here.

“It's too easy to be cynical and just look at the negative of it and ‘go look what we had’.

“ ‘Look what we've lost’.

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“This is the reason I'm standing because there is every reason to be hopeful. There is every reason to think we can turn this around. It's a brilliant place, full of brilliant people.”

Mr Gray, formerly guitarist and vocalist of the band Gomez and now chairman of the Ivors academy, behind the Ivor Novello music awards, first came to Brighton in 1997 at the age of 20 to play a gig with his band and has stayed ever since.

The 47-year-old, who is originally from Southport, said he cannot stand injustice and first joined Labour when he was 15 after taking part in a mock election at school in which he won.

He started volunteering for Labour in his late teens and studied politics and parliamentary studies at university.

He almost worked for a US senator when he was 20 but was offered a record contract at the same time and he followed a different path.

Tom Gray wants to become Brighton Pavilion's next MP (Image: Labour)

“My life went through a completely different sliding door and politics got left behind,” he said.

“I became a recording artist overnight and within a year of that I played my first gig in Brighton at the Pavilion Theatre.

“I decided I was going to live here for the rest of my life.”

Millions of album sales later, tours and awards followed.

But when his son was born 16 years ago, he decided he did not want to be on the road any more and pursued other musical endeavours in film and television composition.

It was here that he began his activism within the creative industries.

“It didn't take me long to realise that all was not well in the British creative industries and the people who had some political nous probably needed to engage with trying to help with that, so I started engaging with varying advocacy groups, unions, associations to try and help,” he said.

He decided to take the next step when Caroline Lucas announced she was to step down as Brighton Pavilion’s MP and friends encouraged him to consider standing.

“I had a long dark night of soul searching,” he said.

“What really did determine it for me was thinking about how the world looked through the eyes of my 16-year-old son and seeing how hopeless so many aspects of the world seem to him, whether it be dealing with the climate catastrophe or his work prospects, or his ability to be able to rent somewhere here or even what the point of going to university might be.

“It felt like the right time to stand.

“I think at this moment in history, people need to put the hands of good, decent people on the levers of power.

“We need to actually get real change now.”

Dave Rowntree, Feargal Sharkey and Tom Gray in Brighton (Image: Tom Gray/Labour)

Mr Gray wants to see better support for young people’s mental health and better provision of housing.

“We need our young people to be held,” he said.

“I reduce it down to building happier, healthier lives but baked into that is mental health services, parity of esteem for mental health, taking our NHS out of crisis so that people can see a doctor.

“But also building homes and giving young people the opportunity to participate, to be able to own their own home.”

He said the quality of existing housing stock needs to be raised “significantly” and landlords “properly regulated”.

“The amount of people whose doors I knock on say they’ve got damp and mould and they’ve got a landlord who doesn’t care about it is wild,” he said.

“It’s horrific.

“That causes secondary health problems, mental health problems, puts more stress on the system.

“These things are all connected.

“We’ve allowed the Tories to pull so many pieces away from the structure of how people are respected and their ability to lead dignified lives.

“That’s the project.

“Pull all this stuff out of crisis and emergency.

“If you’re paying to rent your home you deserve to be protected, you deserve to have a high standard there and you should not be able to be thrown out of that home.

“Everything feels insecure and unstable.

“Our poor council having to slash their spending. We can’t go on like that.”

Mr Gray also wants to use his musical background to boost Brighton’s creative industries.

“We’ve got an extraordinarily large creative industry in this city,” he said.

“We should be hugely proud of it.”

And if he’s elected MP? What impact does he want to have on the constituency?

“I genuinely think politicians should not be judged by what they say, but what they do,” he said.

“I would like the quality of our housing to be better. I would like our cultural sector to feel vibrant and protected. I want new industry to start here.

“There’s huge opportunity with rural land around the city to do incredibly forward thinking things in agriculture and environmental development.

“I would like the city to feel happier and cleaner.”