After three years of dither and delay, it really is time now to Get Brexit Done. In the constituency I’m hoping to represent, Bishop Auckland (Labour majority: 502) Brexit regularly comes up on the doorstep. Local residents feel they have been cheated out of their democratic right – even Remain voters, most of whom are true democrats and believe we need to get behind the referendum result. Many local residents are frustrated – and some are in disbelief – that their Labour candidate, Helen Goodman, has sought to thwart Brexit at every opportunity in Parliament. There’s a reason why Brexit is dominating this election in a way that it didn’t in 2017. Back then, Theresa May had a majority in Parliament, and MPs had just voted overwhelmingly to trigger Article 50, paving the way for negotiations to be carried out with our EU partners. Brexit was in progress and it felt like there was no threat to it, so the campaign drifted quickly onto other national issues. Much has changed since then. MPs like Helen Goodman, on both sides of the House, have seemingly made it their mission to stop Brexit at any cost. Look at how politicians like David Gauke have ditched their tepid support for a so-called ‘orderly Brexit’ and backed the hardline revoke position advocated by the Lib Dems. Around the country, there is justifiable anger from voters on both sides of the debate, anger which is shaking faith in our entire political system. There’s a very good reason why our slogan for the election is to Get Brexit Done – we’re all sick of the way Remainer MPs have behaved in stalling and trying to cancel Brexit altogether. Every day someone will tell me that Bishop Auckland is one of the must-win seats in order for Boris Johnson to get his majority on 12th December. And, in equal measure, I’m often asked how the Brexit Party candidate will affect my chances. Perhaps it’s because of the media’s obsession with covering every movement of Nigel Farage, but, as I’ve found from extensive door knocking over the past few months, there isn’t much support for his party here. People recognise that Bishop and the neighbouring towns need far more than just a protest vote politician. It might have been nice if Nick Brown, the Brexit Party candidate, had withdrawn his nomination papers like the party’s candidate Rupert Lowe did in Dudley North. However, here in Bishop, local residents recognise that this seat really is a two-horse race between myself, a committed Brexiteer, and Helen Goodman, who despite her rhetoric and leaflet lies is a Remainer. As such, despite the endless media coverage of the Brexit Party, they lag at single figures in the national polls and, in Bishop, are barely cutting through. But it’s not just Brexit that Bishop Auckland needs to kickstart its regeneration. The incumbent Labour MP, Helen Goodman, is rarely mentioned without dismay and anger. In fact, she seems to be more unpopular than Jeremy Corbyn himself – quite a feat when he’s got an approval rating of minus 60! It’s not hard to wonder why when you look at the decline that has occurred in the constituency under Labour’s local management. The local hospital in Bishop had its first services stripped away under the last Labour Government, just a few short years after being built from the taxpayer’s pound under an extortionate PFI deal. To public anger, the A&E closed in 2009 under Labour and under Helen Goodman’s watch. Residents across the constituency now have to travel to not-so-nearby Darlington or Durham for much of the healthcare they need. Rather than tackling the Trust and taking practical steps to improve local healthcare, Labour bleat about “Tory cuts”, failing to see the irony that it was under their own watch that the most controversial closure, the A&E, occurred. Sensing the public cry for improved healthcare, and seemingly to compete with my bold and popular campaign to bring back our A&E, my Labour opponent is claiming in her literature she saved a ward from closure. This is not only factually incorrect – the closure consultation is still underway – it is also a kick in the teeth to the local community group who came together to campaign against the closure. Many residents have told me they feel that local issues have seemed an afterthought to a Labour Party that has drifted away from the party of workers to the party of the London metropolitan elite. There was much consternation when, earlier in the election campaign, my opponent spent an evening hosting a public meeting to discuss the ‘Colombian Peace Process’ – strangely an issue that had not been mentioned to me on the doorsteps as a key local concern! One thing is clear. There is a huge disconnect between voters in the North East and the current Labour Party many of them have backed for decades. On Brexit, the NHS and education, Labour are more interested in intellectual ‘socialist’ issues and arguments that are irrelevant to Bishop Auckland residents. That’s why, with Boris’s exciting and energising leadership and a Conservative majority government, we can give the NHS the money and attention it needs. Talking to teachers at schools across the constituency, we can give pupils the support and extra funding they desperately need to have a fantastic education that helps them prosper in life. We don’t need to be held back by a Labour Party that cares more about South America than it does about Spennymoor. As Boris says, the Government has an oven-ready Brexit deal that is a ‘real Brexit’- as even Nigel Farage has been forced to admit. It’s time we passed the deal and moved from this parliamentary deadlock to the issues that really matter. Just yesterday, I spoke to a bloke in his drive whilst he cleared out his trailer. His words sum it up best: “I’ve had enough of all this bloody faffing – we need to Get Brexit Done.”