Skip to main content
Advertise Buy the paper Contact us Shop Subscribe Support us
Maddison Wheeldon’s historic bid for Parliament
ELIZABETH SHORT meets the single mum championing progressive left policies and community solidarity in Warrington North who knows first-hand what it's like to struggle against poverty

THE Commons has never had a woman actively experiencing poverty sit as an MP. So if Maddison Wheeldon gets elected, it will be a historic first.

The single mother of two is standing as an independent for Warrington North. Driven by a determination to hold power to account, Wheeldon was studying law at the University of Manchester during Covid.

But unable to afford her rent, she was forced to drop out. “I was facing a situation where I was having to go to the housing office with my kids in tears because I thought I was going to have to live in my car,” she says.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Features / 19 December 2024
19 December 2024
Speaking to ELIZABETH SHORT, local campaigners explain why the murky plans for profit-driven ‘reform’ and the convoluted relocation of services at Europe’s largest women’s hospital need to be resisted
Britain / 29 August 2024
29 August 2024
Features / 10 October 2023
10 October 2023
Elizabeth Short speaks to film-maker KEN LOACH and trade unionist IAN HODSON about the For the Many Network, a new initiative that connects grassroots activists who share a common commitment to socialist principles from Labour’s Corbyn era
Similar stories
Features / 10 September 2024
10 September 2024
TONY COLLINS looks at the evidence he has uncovered in his research on our early labour movement of deep and hostile police infiltration that ruined lives in the last century
Features / 2 July 2024
2 July 2024
Andrew Murray catches up with Green peer and former party leader NATALIE BENNETT in the Greens’ target seat in Bristol, where they discuss the party’s aim of winning four MPs, Farage, Labour’s lack of policy – and the all-important issue of Gaza
Features / 15 April 2024
15 April 2024
Andrew Murray catches up with Leicester East MP CLAUDIA WEBBE, who will be standing as an independent in a city stricken by rapacious fashion-brand employers, sectarian frictions and urban decay – a city where principled socialism is more valuable than ever