With campaigning for the General Election under way in the South West Wiltshire constituency we meet the Labour candidate

GEORGE Aylett, Labour candidate for South West Wiltshire, does not believe that voters see his age as a barrier and hopes that his campaign will encourage more youngsters to get involved in politics.

The 19-year-old, who lives in Bathampton, said he had no interest in politics until he got involved with the Youth Parliament, where he was elected a deputy member representing Bath and North East Somerset.

He then joined the Labour Party at just 17 and stood for Labour in the Bathavon North by-election at just 18, before being selected as the Labour candidate for the South West Wiltshire constituency at the general election in May.

“I didn’t care about politics three years ago,” said Mr Aylett.

“But then I joined the Labour party when I was 17 and I saw what was going on, there was big inequality in the country. There are 13 million people who can’t afford the essentials in Britain and I thought that was unfair.

“That was one of the first things that drew me into politics, the scale of inequality in Britain. While the top five per cent of earners have seen their wealth increase on average by £128,000, those at the bottom have been suffering from cuts and austerity.

“I’m not a big fan of that and I wanted to challenge that directly. The only way I could do that was to get involved directly. I also wanted to get involved because there is a lack of young people in politics.

“We saw the biggest betrayal from the Liberal Democrats when they promised not to abolish tuition fees and rule out any rise, but they trebled them and I thought that was a big betrayal of young people.”

Mr Aylett, who is a former student at Ralph Allen School, understands if people do not vote for him because of his age, but added that he wants government to be more representative of the people.

“I get questioned about my age all the time and that’s fair enough,” Mr Aylett said. “If you are not going to vote for me because of my age rather than my values then so be it, but I believe parliament should be representative of the people.

“People from all backgrounds should be represented in parliament; we need to see more black and ethnic minorities, we need to see more women, more LGBT people, but also young people.

“Young people have absolutely no representation whatsoever in Westminster and the needs of the youth are being ignored, so therefore young people aren’t voting. If we had more young people in politics then I think more young people would vote.”

Mr Aylett, who has managed to get 226,000 followers on Twitter, said he is proud to be from the West Country and was honoured to be selected to stand for the South West Wiltshire constituency.

He said: “I think the three biggest issues for the county are inequality, housing and education, as there are many people in Trowbridge, Warminster and Westbury who are going off to university and are going to end up on average with £44,000 worth of debt.”

Mr Aylett is currently on a gap year himself and has an offer to study politics and philosophy at the University of Hull, but said he will only take that up if he is not elected come May 8.

Age: 19

Address: Bathampton

Occupation: Former pupil at Ralph Allen School, Bath, works part-time at local pub

Marital status: Single

Children: None

Standing in South West Wiltshire are: George Aylett (Labour); Matthew Brown (UKIP); Trevor Carbin (Lib Dem); Andrew Murrison (Conservative); Phil Randle (Green).