Shhh! Don’t tell anyone, but there is a Conservative candidate for the council by-election, as WALTER CRONXITE reports

Croydon Conservatives have chosen their candidate to stand in the South Norwood council by-election on September 7.

Tory B-Lister: Rebecca Natrajan

It is to be Rebecca Natrajan, a local resident who, as far as we can check, has never sought public office before.

Croydon Tories have not actually announced publicly that Natrajan is to be their candidate. They probably think that because South Norwood is only on their local party’s “B List”, of “Marginal and Non-target seats”, it’s not really that important and they need not bother.

Natrajan will be among the dozens of Croydon members of the Conservatives who have, effectively, been told by the local party that they are second-raters, not deemed capable or worthy of standing in those wards where the Tories believe that there is a chance of electoral success. Which might be a difficult message to “sell” to voters, both at next month’s by-election and at the local elections across the borough next May.

“I can’t believe how clumsy and insulting this policy is towards so many local party members,” was the view from one disgruntled senior Tory figure of a policy which has been enthusiastically supported by the local “leadership” “team” of Tim “Dull” Pollard, Sara Bashford and Jason Cummings.

Mind you, Natrajan is hardly busy engaging with the public so far. She operates a “protected” Twitter account, which has the grand total of three followers.

The by-election in the safe Labour ward has been called because councillor Kathy Bee, having been sacked from her council cabinet position, must have decided that instead of playing at politics, she should go out and get herself a proper job, and has landed a politically restricted position in the Civil Service.

Labour selected Patsy Cummings, a former aide to party leader Jeremy Corbyn, at a meeting at the weekend.

Green candidate: Peter Underwood

And the Green Party has named Peter Underwood as its candidate. Underwood, a conservation specialist, is a senior official in the Croydon and Sutton Greens and was their General Election candidate for Croydon North in June.

The Liberal Democrats, it has been suggested, will name a candidate just as soon as they can find a member prepared to stand up for implementing tuition fees, building waste incinerators and applying Tory austerity policies for five years.

They are understood to be thinking about the possibility of maybe holding a local party meeting in a phone box near Norwood Junction some time in the next three weeks.

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