Ken Purchase kindly assisted Labour in Estelle Morris’s campaign in the Birmingham Yardley constituency in 1997. His usual approach of “I’m Ken Purchase, Wolverhampton MP, I hope you’ll be voting for us” did not sit well with the Get Out the Vote research script that we had been given. Full of trepidation, I pointed out that we really needed a more accurate impression of voting intentions, and fully expected to told exactly what I could do with the script. However, to my surprise, Ken asked for a quick rundown of what was required, and delivered. He may not have been a team player in Tony Blair’s terms, but I thought his readiness to bat for our side exemplary.
