Harry Potter and the Labor Party endorsement
JK Rowling has turned her pen from the magical world of Hogwarts to the forthcoming British election. She writes in The Times of London about why she will be voting Labor

Electioneering is under way in the U.K., as politicians and voters prepare for a general election early next month. This week, the leaders of the three main parties joined in a televised debate for the first time. But the Labor Party, whose leader Gordon Brown is the incumbent prime minister, has received support from a powerful voice: Harry Potter author JK Rowling. Of course, seasoned Rowling fans will know she is a long-time Labor supporter. She gave 1 million pounds to the Labor Party in September 2008 and, according to the Guardian, is "known to be a personal friend of Brown and his wife Sarah." Nevertheless, the Scottish author's moving piece in the Times of London about her gloomy experience as a single mother during the mid-1990s Conservative government will be a welcome boost for Labor, which is behind in the polls:
"Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy—even immoral—did not help ...
... I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that [Conservative leader David] Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under [the Conservative] government, was there to break the fall."
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