Shasha Khan: the Green candidate for Croydon North once again
An announcement is expected to confirm that Shasha Khan will be the Green party’s candidate in the Croydon North by-election.
Croydon resident Khan is the only 2012 candidate declared so far from the leading parties who was also up for election in the constituency at the 2010 General Election. With the LibDems then riding relatively high on the “I agree with Nick” wave of Cleggomania, the Greens were a long way back in fourth place two years ago, polling just over 1,000 votes.
On this occasion Khan will hope to make in-roads against the ConDem government’s junior partners, especially since the LibDem-run council in Sutton is seeking to build a massive waste incinerator on the north Croydon boundary.
The by-election, expected to be held on November 29, is being held following the death last month of Malcolm Wicks, the Labour MP who had a 16,000 vote majority in 2010.
Candidates have already been named by the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and UKIP. Labour is to name its candidate on November 3.
Khan, 40 this year, has lived in Croydon since he was a boy. He has also stood for election to the council and London Assembly in the past. Left-leaning, he eschewed the Labour party almost a decade ago over Britain’s part in the second Iraq War.
“I marched with 1.5 million other people against the war in Iraq. I still remember walking down with hundreds and thousands of other people and feeling that ‘you know what, I think we’ve made a difference here’,” he told East London Lines in an interview in 2010. “War was looming and we all knew that it was wrong, illegal, immoral, unjust and principally an energy war.
“And then when we went to war I felt sheer disbelief… The war in Iraq was hugely influential in my decision to get involved in politics.”
Khan has held a number of local jobs – including working at the Churchill insurance call centre – and he is often busy in local community and charity work, co-founding the Friends of the Park Group for Thornton Heath Recreation Ground, and having been the secretary of the Bensham Manor Community Association and sitting on the ward panel for the Safer Neighbourhood team.
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