WALTER CRONXITE on some worrying numbers for Labour in Croydon
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Mario Creatura: £100,000pa joker
If a General Election was held this week, then this clown (right) would become Croydon Central’s Member of Parliament.
That’s according to the latest London-only opinion poll conducted by Queen Mary College at the University of London and YouGov.
As it has done in the past, the YouGov/QueenMary’s polling predicts trouble for Labour in Croydon and Sutton (their last poll was in December, as we reported at the time).
With the state of national politics is a state of flux, if not complete meltdown, capital-only polling is very useful, as metropolitan London these days has a mind of its own.
In the 2017 General Election, the Corbynmania tide in London was overwhelming, with a 6.3 per cent swing to Labour in the capital, compared to the national swing of just short of 3 per cent. Then, Labour secured a dominating 54.5 per cent of the London vote.
That domination saw Gavin Barwell lose the Croydon Central seat which had been a Tory hold since 2005, to be replaced by Labour’s Sarah Jones.
Jones, pictured below, has made a good impression since becoming Croydon’s first woman MP, both at Westminster and in her constituency.
But her tenure in Parliament is now under threat as London’s Europhile voters are becoming disenchanted with the Labour leadership’s positioning on Europe, with many seeking refuge in the avowedly Remain parties: the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and, to a very modest extent, the ChUKa party (or whatever it is calling itself this week).
Both at the 2017 General Election and in the Croydon local elections 12 months ago, the Conservatives and Labour took the lion’s share of the votes cast in what seemed to be a return two-party politics.
- In London in 2017, the two parties took 87.6 per cent of the vote.
- In the Croydon local elections in 2018, the political duopoly took 84.6 per cent.
But now Brexit uncertainty has scattered those voting blocs among half a dozen competing parties, with the EU-friendly LibDems transforming their vote share in London to 21 per cent, up from the 8.8 per cent in 2017, according to the YouGov/QueenMary’s polling.
Gerard Batten: UKIP’s vote has collapsed
The LibDems are now just two points behind the Tories in London, as the Conservatives witness their supporters drifting off to the Brexit Party of Nigel Farage (whose initials, conveniently, spell out the political skeleton in his cupboard), or to any of the Remain parties. The Greens on 7 per cent are also taking a vegan bite out of Tory and Labour votes, while ChUKa is on 2 per cent.
The Brexit Party is polling at 10 per cent in London, where the collapse of the vote for UKIP could see their party leader, the Islamophobic Gerard Batten, finally lose the lucrative seat at the European Parliament that he has held since 2004 when the Euro elections are held in a fortnight’s time.
Where all this threatens Sarah Jones’s parliamentary seat is that according to the polling, Labour’s vote share in London is down to 35 per cent, a fall of 19.5 per cent since 2017.
The Tory share, meanwhile, is down 11.1 per cent.
Locally, that means the Conservatives, and Mario Creatura, winning in Croydon Central by about 1,700 votes.
Creatura, for anyone who’s not been paying attention, is the former bag-carrier for Barwell who for has been working in Downing Street as Theresa Mayhem’s £80,000 per year Twitterer-in-Chief.
A councillor in Coulsdon Town ward , since being selected as the Tories’ prospective parliamentary candidate (and not, as he insists on describing himself, as the “prospective MP”), Creatura has dropped all pretence of trying to represent the people who pay his council allowances (another £18,344 on top of his Whitehall salary, since you ask).
Mario Creatura has abandoned Coulsdon, where he has a council seat, to pursue his personal political ambitions in central Croydon
As well as abandoning regular ward surgeries in Coulsdon, Brexit-backing Creatura has draped his personal Twitter account with images from Croydon Central, with nothing from the south of the borough, the area he is actually supposed to represent.
According to the YouGov/QueenMary polling, in Croydon South the Liberal Democrats would return to to second place in the seat for the first time since 2010. Chris Philp would hold the true-blue seat, though his vote would fall by more than 9,000.
In Croydon and Sutton as a whole, where there’s London Assembly elections coming up in 12 months’ time, Labour would fall into third place there, too, with the Tories 16,000 votes ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
Jamie Audsley: left waiting for Labour’s selection process
In one important respect, the Conservatives are already a country mile ahead of Labour in the London Assembly election campaign. They, at least, have managed to select a candidate, Sutton councillor Neil Garrett, who has been out campaigning in both boroughs, working at raising his profile in those parts of Croydon that don’t already know him as local politics’ very sweary answer to the foul-mouthed Father Jack.
Contrast that to Labour, where the likes of Croydon councillors Jamie Audsley and Patsy Cummings have been left waiting for a starting gun to be fired, as they stage their own quasi-campaigns. With the London elections coming in May 2020, Labour has not yet even advised its party members of how their selection process will work.
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Doesn’t bear thinking about but a few of our local Councillors don’t exactly help the cause of Labour.
We could well end up with an ennobled Lord Gav of Whitgift grinding “Super” Mario’s organ while doing the rounds of the Glee Club coffee mornings.
What a win double that would be.
Speculation is interesting, but the General Election could be 3 years away. So it’s rather hard to predict the result, especially in the current febrile atmosphere caused by the Brexit crisis.
However the two big parties need to bear in mind the fact that tribal loyalties are largely a thing of the past. Their messages need to strike a chord with voters in the here and now.
The way the Tories are ripping apart their own government, David, an election could be three weeks away.
Thought Corbyn wanted a General Election?
This is a result of the poll.
London voting intention for the European Parliament:
LAB: 24% (-13)
BREX: 20% (+20)
LDEM: 17% (+10)
GRN: 14% (+5)
CON: 10% (-13)
CHUK: 7% (+7)
UKIP: 1% (-16)
via @YouGov, 07 – 10 May
Chgs. w/ 2014.
As with most things YouGov it has to be taking with a bucketful of salt, but it is a real leap of faith to suggest this puts SuperMario in the driving seat to win Croydon Central.
Of course it doesn’t. Because these are the results of a different poll, taken by different pollsters, about voting intentions in a different election. Mario is not a European election candidate.
OK where is the data of the poll you are quoting? There doesn’t appear anything released by YouGov that appears to relate to it.
pdf is now inserted into the article. Thought it would be far too dull even for you, Derek…
So let this old dullard iterate the actual poll results then. On a London-wide poll (which bits of London we never know) Labour 35%, Tories 23%, LibDems 21%, Brexit 10%, Greens 7%, CHUK 2%, UKIP 0%.
Hardly puts Mario in any position to win unless you believe the Brexits are proxy Tories willing to return to a fold that we are unclear they were ever part of in the first place.
But it does.
You need to understand that for Labour to win an outer London marginal such as Croydon Central, it needs to be polling more strongly than 35 per cent across London, as it did in 2017. The suggestion now is that Labour is leaking Remainer votes to the LibDems and the Greens, and in a Genral Election in Croydon Central, that might be enough to allow the Tories back in, even with such an arsewipe for a candidate.
Although, the Creatura factor may way work to further diminish the Conservative vote. Those who meet him are less likely to vote for him.
‘You need to understand that for Labour to win an outer London marginal such as Croydon Central, it needs to be polling more strongly than 35 per cent across London, as it did in 2017’ – this in a nutshell, Derek.
On the face of it, Mario looks like the total opposite verses the privately educated (Whitgift Foundation), career mandarin, Durham history graduate and the constituency’s incumbent MP, Sarah Jones. Mario worked in the private sector (albeit briefly), was educated at Croydon state schools before moving into politics full time. His own website describes his upbringing as follows
“He was born in Mayday Hospital and went to nursery at Tollgate in Shirley; attended St Thomas Becket Primary in South Norwood; checked his first books out of Ashburton Library and learnt to ride his bike in Bingham Park
“Mario has been entirely comprehensively educated in Croydon schools and, with a strong work ethic, is proud to have become the first member of his family to go to university.”
What he chooses to omit is that he was educated at John Fisher which, while technically a comprehensive during his time there, was selecting pupils and parents in all kinds of ways which were made illegal only in 2009. It would often employ the now outlawed selection methods of interviewing pupils with their parents and asking for financial donations.
His primary school the high-performing Thomas Becket school acted as a feeder into John Fisher and Coloma Convent.
To suggest he went to local bog-standard comprehensive schools is disingenuous.
If this is all the case don’t the Conservative Party have to be polling a good sight better than they are at the moment (even accepting the conceit of the current context). Mario may not be Lord Snooty, but everyone who seems to have to dealings with him just know he is an empty vessel who is on the make and will shift his political views in anyway that he will think to gain an advantage.
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As a West African mother with grown up children (Each attended truly comprehensive schools in a neighbouring borough), it is a big disappointment to see none of the main parties in Croydon (3 UK parliament seats) put forward a comprehensive-educated candidate, let alone one from BAME or white working-class backgrounds…
All the schools mentioned are or have been ‘selective’ with hurdles that are virtually impossible for BAME and white working-class children to overcome (Fees/Interviews/Testing/Parent’s Occupations). Is it any wonder these schools only seem to play each other in the sports calendar?…
If John Fisher was technically a comprehensive during his schooldays then fine. But I know that it used to recruit boys from Southwark/Dulwich and even further away, so how can this be true?…
For a young man he seems to have risen quickly to the top… let’s hope he doesn’t fall back down to earth with a bang…