Keith Wakefield, Leeds Labour Leader – on poverty, the wicked Bedroom tax, and power to the North.

Unless you are an avid reader of the Online Guardian, you probably missed this interview with Keith Wakefield – Labour Leader of Leeds City Council – which appeared in its Professional section this week.

If so, that’s a shame, and you should make sure to read it in full.

The autobiographical bits are revealing. Keith Wakefield has come up the hard way – in care in Birmingham as a boy, he’s a man who has experienced poverty first hand. He knows what it’s like to sleep rough, or be jobless.

Perhaps it’s experiences like this which have made him such a committed fighter against this Coalition’s welfare reforms. Leeds has been at the forefront of the struggle against the Bedroom Tax.
His understanding of what the Coalition Government’s policies are doing to the poor comes across strongly.
He’s ready to speak out for the sort of people our right-wing…