Andy with his teacher wife Deborah and daughter Jessica. Picture: ASLEF


Train driver Andy Botham, 48, will be fighting the general election in May in a bid to become Labour MP for the Derbyshire Dales.

The sitting MP is Patrick McLoughlin, Transport Secretary in the current coalition government.

Andy was born in Matlock and has been a train driver for 25 years. In 2013, he became the first Labour councillor to represent Matlock on the county council for 85 years.

“Parliament needs more normal, working people,” he said. “There are far too many public school educated professional politicians who have no idea what real life is like. I am in touch with the everyday needs of the people in Derbyshire Dales.

Andy left school at 16 and worked on building sites for seven years before joining British Rail at Redhill, in 1990.

“I started reading The Observer instead of the News of the World and The Guardian instead of the Daily Star or The Sun,” he said.

He dropped out of the Labour party after the Iraq war in 2003 and the party’s refusal to let Ken Livingstone stand for Labour as Mayor of London.

He rejoined and rebuilt the party in Matlock after Tony Benn talked to him on a train and said: “There are still some Christians in the church, there are still some socialists in the Labour Party.”

On the county council, he said: “We have had to implement this Conservative government’s cuts but we have done it in such a way that it has not impacted on the poorest people in the Peak District. We have introduced the living wage at the council, and for our suppliers, and we have had nothing to do with workfare or zero hours contracts.”

At the 2010 general election, Mr McLoughlin had a majority (over the Liberal Democrats) of 14,000. Labour finished third, 1,500 votes behind the Lib Dems.

Meanwhile in South West Surrey, train driver Howard Kaye, 51, is standing for Labour where the sitting MP is Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who had a 16,000 majority in 2010. He said: “I will fight to bring back a truly integrated national railway, in public ownership.”

In Salisbury, train driver Tom Corbin, 38, is fighting the general election for the seat where Tory John Glen had a 6,000 majority over the Lib Dems in 2010.

Information from ASLEF Journal.