Richard Olzewski, centre, with Labour councillors at the party’s conference in Liverpool this week

WHEN a leadership election unfolds, particularly in the Labour Party, the labels begin to fly around.

Camden’s recently-installed new Number One has probably most often being described as a “centrist”, but Richard Olszewski told the New Journal that he wouldn’t be lured into placing one on his own head.

“The Tories said I was an old-fashioned socialist on one of their leaflets,” he said. “No, I’m not that.” Cllr Olszewski took the reins of both the local party and Camden Council in July after coming through a crowded internal contest as the winner. He has replaced Georgia Gould, who after a seven-year era in charge was elected as an MP in neighbouring Queen’s Park and Maida Vale.

In the traditional first interview with the New Journal since taking over the top job, the closest term he would give himself was a “Labour pragmatist”, adding: “It’s why I joined the Labour Party to vote for Denis Healey to be deputy leader instead of Tony Benn.”

He said: “I don’t say all this to avoid the question, I just say it to avoid being labelled. If you have a label, it’s almost like you have to be an identikit for that and then people will say if that’s what you are, you have to be this, this and this.

“I think others might place me as that, as a ‘centrist’ or whatever, and they wouldn’t be a million miles away, but I don’t trade on those labels, I leave it for others.”

He said everybody was different and brought different experience, but added: “I’m not shy about how I view politics, and my experience of my life.”

His Polish parents came “came to Britain with nothing as Second World War refugees,” he said. “I had a middle-class upbringing but they went through a terrible time just to get by with two young children. They were teenagers when the war broke out. But afterwards Dad bluffed his way through the building trade and they advanced.

“I had a middle-class upbringing in working-class schools and my brother was a miner, so you see it’s a mix and labels don’t really help.”

Apart from the one about pragmatism?

“I’ve always thought the key thing is that Labour has to win,” Cllr Olszewski said. “If it doesnt win, it doesn’t do anything and in order to win you have to avoid the conclusion that came from one of the left-wing MPs in the militant years – I can’t remember who it was – who said there can be no compromise with the electorate. You have to deal with the electorate, and that’s what makes me a pragmatist.”

His support for the Labour Party began in his home village of Cambusbarron near Stirling, Scotland, where he could be found delivering leaflets as a 17-year-old.

Richard Olzsewski has taken over from Georgia Gould, who is now an MP in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale

He later stood in local elections there and, although he convinced his own village to vote for him, he did not have the same sway in Tory-supporting spots in the same constituency.

Later, he got a job on the railways, first sweeping platforms and cleaning toilets before graduating to be a freight guard. From there he came to London to work for the National Union of Railwaymen – more or less what became the RMT – at its offices in Euston. Some time as a mature student at LSE studying economics and industrial relations was followed by political researcher jobs.

He was in the thick of it working for a Scottish Labour MP when the party’s big election hopes ended in defeat at the 1992 general election.

“I went out and bought a colour telly just so I could watch the map turn from blue to red,” he said. “It hurt, it’s painful, but you have to pick yourself up.” Cllr Olszewski talked of an “emotional” connection with Labour which meant he had stayed with the party, even when he disagreed with the leadership.

“I didn’t think it could get worse than Michael Foot until the period with Jeremy Corbyn,” he said. “It was a very tough time, but you know we got through it and we’ve emerged into the sunny uplands – and Rachel Reeves and Keir are leading it.”

Cllr Olszewski’s election to the council in 2014 was clinched with a squeaky 17-vote margin of victory over the Liberal Democrats in Fortune Green, but he has been voted back in at every election since and is now set to lead Labour into the next big boroughwide elections in May 2026.

He had been a Labour councillor before in the 1990s – then in the Regent’s Park ward.

“One of my earliest experiences was doing a Friday night surgery in the Dick Collins Hall and I’m sitting on my own in the back corner and there was suddenly this noise bursting through the door,” he said. “There were about two dozen really angry women to give me a roasting about contractor failures on the external decoration of the estate.”

He added: “I listened and did my best to get things moving but it was a good experience to have early on, so you don’t get a misty-eyed view of being a councillor.”

New councillors elected today get more training, although he name-checked the late Labour councillors Jim Turner and Dave Horan for “showing me the ropes”.

He became the vice chair of policy and resources, working with John Mills, the well-known shopping channel businessman who served as a Labour councillor too and was in charge of the Town Hall’s finances. “The key lesson that he taught me and I try to pass on was to get the finances sorted. Get them stabilised, under control. You have to get them sorted, and then you can do all the other things.”

He said he had learned from another big figure, Dr John Reid, who he worked as special adviser for across several departments during the early years of Tony Blair’s government.

“It was a whirlwind with John,” he said. “He’s a fabulous man who I think is often unfairly portrayed as a bruiser. He wasn’t. “You don’t get far by being nasty, you just have to be clear – that’s what I learned from him. Plus he’s a Celtic, like me.”

Fast forward to now, and what approach does Cllr Olszewski take to the debate over winter fuel payment?  Labour councillors no longer have a readymade answer to questions on cuts, which for many years has been to blame the Tory central government for slashing funding for local government.

His nomination for the leadership confirmed in the council chamber earlier this  year

“I can see it’s a very difficult thing for the government to do on winter fuel payments, and I can see it is causing a lot of upset for people,” he said. “I’ve tasked the council to do what we can to help people who are eligible for pension credit but don’t claim it, and make sure we keep the funding going for the council tax support scheme.”

But he added: “No one is pleased to have to do it but the key thing is the government has inherited a mess and that leads you to unavoidable decisions you have to make.”

The new leader hopes to embark on a programme of retrofitting all council homes but there is the big brown hole next to Euston to sort out too, where the HS2 works have stalled – and residents might be expecting a hotline to Sir Keir.

The obvious danger is for months and years to pass without action.

The railwaylands in nearby King’s Cross were stuck in stalemate for years before its regeneration.

“First of all, I don’t know what’s going to happen with HS2,” Cllr Olszewski said. “The government has to consider that. “I’m making the case that given all they have done to that area – the massive disruption that’s been given to residents and businesses and the community, they owe it to us to give us something back and I’m calling for Camden to have a lead role in shaping what we get there.”