WALTER CRONXITE, our political editor, continues our series of ground-breaking virtual hustings, where you, the Inside Croydon readers, put your questions to the candidates
Among the candidates standing in the true-blue Croydon South constituency is mother and businesswoman Anna Jones, for the Liberal Democrats.
The 2017 General Election results, courtesy of the BBC
Jones is unusual among LibDems in Croydon – she has actually managed to get elected in the past. Not in Croydon, you understand, but to the council in Epsom. She now lives in East Surrey, though her children have attended schools in Croydon.
Jones also stood in Croydon South in the last General Election in 2017, when the LibDems got less than 6 per cent of the vote and the absentee Labour candidate still polled 18,000 more votes.
But that kind of electioneering experience can prove valuable on the campaign trail, and it shows in Jones’s interview, though not so much that she knows, or remembers, the voting record of her party leader, Jo Swinson, when she was an embedded and enabling part of the Tory austerity coalition.
Take a listen yourself…
The other candidates standing in Croydon South are…
We wanted to put our readers’ questions to another one of the candidates standing for election, the former Downing Street aide to Theresa May, digital “mastermind” for Gavin Barwell and egregiously ambitious Coulsdon councillor Mario Creatura.
But Creatura did not respond to our invitation.
Not even to apologise for not being making himself available as part of the democratic process to be scrutinised by questions from the only award-winning news outlet based in the borough.
So we recommend that as many of our readers as possible ask Creatura the questions that they want to ask – directly. Email him at: office@mariocreatura.org.uk.
We recommend that you include in your email a clear direction that neither Creatura nor anyone from his team is allowed to add your email address or personal details to any kind of mailing list, and that you should send your questions each as a separate email, including this: “What sort of sorry wet weekend of an MP would you make if you are too afraid to answer a few questions from a local news website?”
Listen to the rest of our Under The Flyover Election podcasts:
Olga FitzRoy
Chris Philp
Simon Sprague
Peter Underwood
- Inside Croydon: the only local news source based in the borough. Help to support our journalism, and get money-off offers, exclusive content and priority booking for special events. Click here to find out more
- Inside Croydon Events: click here for details of hundreds of events in and around Croydon
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and BBC London News
- Inside Croydon named Journalist of the Year at 2018 Anna Kennedy Online Autism Heroes Awards
- ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: For two consecutive years, 2017 and 2018, Inside Croydon has been the source for two award-winning nominations in Private Eye magazine’s annual celebration of civic cock-ups
- In 2018, Inside Croydon had 1.6million pages viewed by more than half a million unique visitors
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or what to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
