Below are a few words that Colin Counter and Paul Smith feel give a brief description of their beliefs and thoughts, and hopefully will give you an idea of where they're coming from.

Colin Counter:

A Labour Government! Who would have thought 30 years ago that a 'we' would have been in power for three successive terms! When I say ‘we’ I mean the royal “we”. That is the people, of which I am one. I have not been a Labour supporter all my life, simply because they were a rag bag of people with ideas which quite frankly scared the living daylights out of all people. The Tories were even worse. we needed a ‘third way’. New Labour provided the balance. Which is why ‘we’ were elected. My politics are the 3rd way. That is, there will never be any room in British politics for extremes. The journey for the British people, has been long and very painful, both in emotion and financially. The Tories with ‘boom and bust’ and Labour with ‘tax and spend’. We are here!

The question now is were do ‘we’ go? Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair, he was not elected by the people. His dithering over a ‘snap’ election has cost ‘us’ dear. ‘We’ deposed the king. Let ‘us’ reflect for a moment. King Blair, brought ‘us’: Positives; a stable economy, full employment, new schools, new hospitals, free bus travel for the over 60’s. Negatives; Record personal dept, smoking/hunting bans. War in Iraq/Afghanistan and migration of workers from the EU. This is REAL life! In our personal lives there are pos/neg. It is getting the balance right that counts. Personal dept, is that the fault of government? Bans on smoking/hunting - free vote. War in Iraq, brought on by extreme groups. Migration, full employment requires people to work. If the Brits wont do it who will!

I could debate all these points for hours, but this is the election for PPC for Yeovil CLP. We are up against the LIBDEMs. A contempt able outfit, whose ‘policies’ defy all coherence, whose loyalties change from day to day. Who have turned ‘fence sitting’ into an art form! I should know, for I once was ‘one of them’. Convincing the electors in this area to support Labour is going to be a mammalian task. But not impossible! You asked for my politics, it is all contained in the words above. To summarise, for Labour to win in Yeovil/Chard/Crewcerne/Ilminster we require two things: 1. Oust David LAWS, 2. Get the 50% of people who don’t vote to VOTE! 3. Elect me as PPC.

Paul Smith:

This Labour government has certainly achieved many things, the minimum wage, peace in Northern Ireland, and a ban on fox hunting and so on. However many within the Labour Party, and those who have left the party in the last 10 years, almost half our membership, are disillusioned with the direction of the leadership. Not to mention the public as a whole, the broad spectrum of people who brought Labour to power in 1997 have, section by section been disappointed by the failure of this government to bring radical change, to reverse the damage of Thatcherism upon society.

Instead of re-nationalising the railways, the very idea is branded by the Labour leadership as "extremism", despite most of the public supporting it.

Instead of restoring rights to trade unions, the draconian Thatchite anti-union laws which has led to the biggest assault on living standards in living memory, remain standing, leaving us with some of the worst working conditions, and over-stressed workforce in Europe.

Instead of ending private businesses profiteering out of public services, they've allowed the private sector more and more influence, privatising twice as many jobs as the Tories carried out in their 18 years in power.

Instead of tackling corporations avoiding taxes, to the tune of an estimated £97-£150 billion every year, they turn a blind eye. Even using the low estimate that is somewhere in the order of £1600 per person, per year. How far that money would go to funding not only maintaining the public sector but also the expansion of the public sector.

Our democracy is, to be frank, at risk of going stale, trapped like the United States between two right-wing parties who represent business and business alone. Already people are utterly disillusioned with politics, "all political parties are the same, they don't represent us." is something I am sure we all hear too often. But I think they've got a point, we need a Labour Party worthy of the name, that's not what we have at the moment and I hope to push the Labour Party a little bit more to the left, which I believe is closer to where the British public are on the political spectrum.

"New" Labour simply cannot distinguish itself from the Liberals or the Tories in the Yeovil constituency, and I am convinced the only way to begin to build an effective challenge on the other parties is by differentiating ourselves from the run of the mill policies that get thrown around so much like "we support the NHS", while behind their grinning faces they're planning on privatising jobs, just so private companies can take a slice of our taxes. People can see through that, they're fed up with it, and they've got nowhere to turn apart from the likes of the far-right, who'll say anything and blame anyone and Respect, probably the biggest laughing stock the left has ever known. Too many working people are unrepresented in our democracy, we need to give them a voice and Labour is the mechanism by which to do so. Yeovil needs an MP who will vote in accordance to what the constituents want, not what their party leadership demands especially when it comes to further privatisation of public services and wars fought solely on the grounds of picking up a few lucrative business contracts.