ELECTIONS 2024: The former MP is hoping to stage a comeback in the new parliamentary seat by joining his third political party.
EXCLUSIVE by our political editor, WALTER CRONXITE
Three strikes and out: Andrew Pelling the ex-Tory, former Labour, now FibDem politician
Andrew Pelling, a former Conservative MP and Labour councillor in Croydon, now wants to try his luck as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Croydon East when the General Election is staged later this year.
From 2005 to 2010, Pelling was MP for Croydon Central, which after boundary changes makes up the bulk of the new constituency. But this year Pelling will be contesting the seat under his third different affiliation.
Pelling’s often torrid lifetime in politics began straight after university as a Tory councillor at Croydon Town Hall at the peak of Thatcherism in 1982.
Now 64, Pelling is expected to be named as the LibDem candidate for Croydon East once the London election campaign finishes in May.
“With all these party changes, Pelling risks out-doing Winston McKenzie,” one less-than-impressed colleague told Inside Croydon, referring to Croydon’s joke political figure who has never got elected to public office, despite having represented more parties than football manager Tommy Docherty ever had clubs.
Another said, “Pelling’s got kicked out of the Conservatives and the Labour Party. How long before the austerity enablers in the FibDems wise up to him and kick him out, too?”
Someone else said: “So now he’s flipped, what comes next? The flop?”
Pelling is thought to have been “selected” by Croydon’s LibDems some weeks ago, after a meeting of local party members was staged in a packed phone box on Woodside Green. The period from 2022 to today represents probably the longest time in 40 years that Pelling has not been either a serving elected representative or actively campaigning to become one.
Quick move: Pelling’s old mate, Gavin Barwell
His decision to join the Liberal Democrats comes despite firm advice against it from friends, while Pelling is known to have withheld the news of his decision from others.
But Pelling was seen canvassing for the LibDems in Lewisham at the recent borough mayoral election there, and the possibility of his becoming a candidate in what is in effect his former constituency was being discussed at Labour’s Croydon East selection meeting on Saturday.
It is difficult to assess whether Pelling’s latest chameleon-like change will attract more scorn from the Tories or from Labour.
While Pelling’s campaigning in Waddon for Labour in 2014 helped to win that ward from the Conservatives and thus win control of the Town Hall for his then party, it was his candidature as an independent in 2022 for Croydon Mayor and in Waddon ward that probably handed election victory to the Tories.
‘Chump from the Dump’: Winston McKenzie, in his UKIP days. Pelling’s party-hopping is catching up the serial election loser
It was during the hustings for the 2022 Croydon Mayoral election that there developed something of a local politics “bro-mance” between Pelling and the FibDem candidate, Major Richard Howard, with both frequently agreeing with the other’s rhetorical point.
Not that it counted for much in the end: while Tory Jason Perry managed to become Mayor with a borough-wide majority of fewer than 600 votes, Howard was third and Pelling fourth. The FibDem and independent votes combined came to barely half the tally of Labour runner-up Val Shawcross.
Pelling has been a frequent contributor to this website, with (according to a note passed to me by the boss) “insightful and considered articles” on better ways to manage the borough.
Pelling maintains that it was his mistreatment by the David Evans-administered Labour Party – as a whistleblower over Tony Newman and his cabal’s disastrous handling of the council’s affairs – that gave him no alternative by to seek office as an independent.
Pelling had run an independent campaign before, in 2010. That was at the General Election, and came when he was similarly ill-served by the Conservatives, who withdrew the whip from him at Westminster after a domestic incident over which he was never subject to any police charge. Before the whip was restored, Gavin Barwell – a close colleague and friend of Pelling’s on Croydon Council – had been installed with indecent haste as the Tory candidate for Croydon Central.
People will be entitled to question Pelling’s loss of judgement over this latest political flip-flopping – especially since the FibDems in Sutton, with their support for the incinerator at Beddington, have been indirectly responsible for dangerously toxic air pollution across the Croydon area for the past seven years.
Independent’s day [sic]: many believe that it was Pelling’s campaign that saw Labour lose the 2022 local elections
And it would also be reasonable to question Pelling’s motivation, and ask whether he has sought the FibDem nomination more out of a sense of revenge than any real conviction that the policies of his latest party are actually an answer for Croydon’s, and the country’s, ills.
Today, Pelling said: “The association of the Croydon Labour party with the 2021 hacking of Inside Croydon has long left me resolved to see Croydon Labour replaced as the progressive choice in the borough.”
Labour last weekend named Natasha Irons as their Croydon East candidate, after a selection process which is under police investigation for voter fraud, while the Tories have picked Barwell’s former aide, Jason Cummings, and the Greens have chosen Peter Underwood to contest the seat.
“It certainly makes it interesting,” one Croydon political insider told Inside Croydon on hearing the news that Pelling was standing. “You’ve now got four candidates who could all manage to keep their deposits.”
Which, to return to the Tommy Docherty analogy, perhaps makes Pelling the political equivalent of a football manager starting the Premier League season just hoping to avoid relegation.
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: Scotland Yard’s cyber crime unit investigating Croydon Labour
Read more: Before you next vote, you must read this from The New Yorker
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I believe I predicted this some time ago. Pellng has had more political parties than golf clubs in a golf bag.
Actually, Del, he hasn’t (unless you’re playing pitch ‘n putt with a 7-iron and putter). Besides, we’ve already cracked the Tommy Docherty club gag…
He hasn’t finished yet has he. Surely there can be no limit to the idioms that can be deployed here.
But that’s not what you wrote.
With 5 days to go, IC better have got something really good planned for Monday!
Have no idea to what you are referring, Chris.
We’re looking forward to a lovely bank holiday, possibly with a quiet, relaxing pint.
But Croydon Council is almost believable all year. Or is that unbelievable?
Are we seeing the beginning of post politics politics? My impression is that Pelling is a clever, industrious bloke who has given a lot to Croydon and has a lot more to give. His record is up there for all to see and I might vote for him, believing in the man, rather than all the party guff. BTW, I still think he’d have been a great Executive Mayor
Are you having a giraffe Radius Man. He has always only been a one party man all along. The Andrew Pelling Party and this one seems to have been left off the list of parties which he has run on. The ease of the switching between the major parties demonstrates all along my assertion that there is no real oppositional nature in local Croydon politics and if you remove the illusion of labels they all essentially are fellow travellers. The problem for Pelling is despite the constructed inoffensive charm there is a iron seam of hubris underlying it all that has to come out eventually. Please Greens do not take him on when the next time for a move happens and show you are different from the others and realise Pelling has always been part of the problem in Croydon politics. Not a solution to it.