Sarah Jones was this afternoon selected by local Labour party members as their candidate to run at the 2015 parliamentary election in Croydon Central against sitting Tory MP, Gavin Barwell.
Sarah Jones at the hustings for Croydon Central this afternoon
Jones, a mother of four who lives in the constituency, won in the third round of voting, beating Croydon councillor Alison Butler by 72 votes to 67 – suggesting that Inside Croydon’s online “open primary” was a fair barometer of how close the election would be.
The hustings lasted less than three hours at the Croydon Conference Centre on Surrey Street. The well-attended meeting had 143 members (some using postal votes) taking part in the selection – almost half of Labour’s Croydon Central membership.
Labour held Croydon Central until 2005, and it is among its target seats if it is to form the next government.
Jones was one of four on the all-women short-list. In the first round of votes, Louisa Woodley was eliminated after polling just six. Jones polled 66, Butler 63 and the fourth contender, Catriona Ogilvy, eight.
It has been a bad political week for Woodley, a councillor in Thornton Heath who was de-selected as a candidate for the 2014 Town Hall elections at a ward meeting, a bitter blow after she had done so well as Labour’s candidate for Croydon and Sutton for the London Assembly last year.
The second-round vote eliminated Ogilvy, who again scored eight, as the majority of Woodley’s support looks to have transferred to the other Croydon councillor, Butler: Jones polled 68 to Butler’s 67. But Butler did not attract any of the discarded Ogilvy votes, and so Jones managed to get a decisive majority in the final ballot.
Given the number of established Croydon councillors, like Woodley, who have not been endorsed to stand again by their ward memberships, the choice of Jones over Butler – who had her local party leader, Tony Newman, write to constituency members on her behalf less than 48 hours before the hustings – might appear to be a snub.
“It’s a sign of active democracy and not a criticism of the group,” was the view taken by one senior Croydon Labour figure at the meeting.
Jones, a professional campaigner but with no past experience of holding elected public office at local level, did receive the endorsement on the morning of the vote from Geraint Davies, now MP in Swansea, who she worked for at Westminster when he was the Labour MP for Croydon Central.
Jones told Inside Croydon: “I am absolutely delighted to have won, It is a huge honour. I am particularly delighted to have won given the strength of the all candidates, which entirely vindicated having an all-women shortlist.”
In her acceptance speech to local activists, Jones pledged to campaign full-time come the election. “I’m a working mother with four children, and what I want to do through this campaign is show that it is possible for women to get more involved in politics.”
Read our profile of Sarah Jones here:
And for our archive of coverage of the selection process:
- Radical democracy: giving party members a vote
- Labour candidate makes virtue of lack of union support
- Butler and Jones emerge as front-runners in Central race
- Ten women declare for Labour’s Central shortlist
- Butler quick to declare candidacy for Labour nomination
- Inside Croydon: Croydon’s only independent news source that is actually based in the heart of the borough – 267,670 page views Nov 2012-Apr 2013
- Post your comments on this article below. If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, a residents’ or business association or local event, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
Was it the unions wot lost it for Alison Butler?
Inside Croydon quotes her as saying: “I am proud to be backed by both Unite and the GMB.”
Did worldly wise members of Croydon Central Labour party realise what a liability that statement might prove to be come a General Election?
David Cameron has been beavering away for months, trying to regain the support of his fractious Europhobe right-wingers from UKIP.
But to no avail, until he holds out the prospect of a Labour government led by a man who Cameron says is in the pocket of the unions. Mr Cameron may be talking political eyewash, but the argument has already proved compelling enough to coax many of his Daily Mail reading sheep back into the Tory fold, putting his party neck and neck with Labour on 36 per cent of the popular vote.
The Labour Party has a lot of work to do between now and 2015 if it is to win Croydon Central and the rest of the seats it needs to form a majority government.
But its choice of candidate in Croydon Central may prove to be a good start, providing not too many constituents are put off by an endorsement from Geraint Davies.
Private educated, sent her son to a private school, went to a top university and what more do you want to be a socialist? The councillors who have worked so hard for labour in the last so many years have lost.What a surprise?
Not a fan of democracy then, Patrick?
Picking up on Patrick’s point: the woman selected as a Labour candidate in West Thornton ward – one Ms Benn – is the granddaughter of a former peer, Viscount Stansgate.
Does it matter? Not at all: as long as the people concerned are loyal to the party that chose them
Democracy?
Female only list is more democrazy than democracy to me.
This is just my obeservation and nothing against Tony.
Tony endorsed Val Shawcross and she lost
Tony supported Allison Butler and she lost
Perhaps the next labour candidate in Croydon should not get Tony’s support.
So one gets selected because male candidates are overlooked in favour of women for a party which has never elected a female leader.
Gavin Barwell “I’m not going to engage in personal attacks…”, but he might delegate the personal attacks to other local Conservatives.
Patrick: you are factually wrong Ms H Harman was “acting” party leader till the election of Ed. A position she was voted to by the party as a whole
Mrs T was voted for by MPs under a weird system whereby the incumbent gets a 15 per cent disadvantage with the ludicrous result that she got a greater percentage vote in the election to depose her than it had taken to elect her. This was how the Tories got through a leader every couple of years in the 1990s.
Geraint Davies and Jones – his endorsement did put me off a bit but if your ex-boss doesn’t endorse you, that’d be odd and she can’t ask Mo Molam for a reference, can she?
Daviesgate: I feel Davies was wrong with his expenses we were all collectively responsible for not holding him to account by asking simple questions like “you sure all these stamps are free?” He does seem to have cleaned up his act in Wales.