The human dynamos who run the Liberal Democrat party today finally got round to naming their candidates for selection to be the fourth-placed finisher in next May’s London Mayoral election – a mere six weeks after their original choice announced she didn’t fancy the task any longer.
Luisa Porritt: Camden councillor
Yet it will be another four weeks before they make up their minds whether it will be Luisa Porritt or Geeta Sidhu-Robb’s name that goes on the ballot paper for elections where most believe Labour’s Sadiq Khan will be returned comfortably.
The LibDems have just taken nine months to choose Kingston MP “Sir” Ed Davey as their party leader – from a vast choice of 11 MPs.
It was July when Siobhan Benita withdrew as the LibDem candidate for London Mayor, saying that the extension of the campaign because of coronavirus was too much of a burden.
So now the Liberal Democrats have managed to come up with a couple of replacement contenders who even fewer Londoners will have heard of.
Porritt is the leader of the LibDems on Camden Council who spent the final six months of last year serving as a Member of the European Parliament.
Geeta Sidhu-Robb: award-winner
Sidhu-Robb won Business Women of the Year awards in 2010, 2011 and 2014, and is the founder of health and wellbeing company Nosh Detox, and former vice-chair of the People’s Vote Campaign.
Today, Sidhu-Robb said, “I’m ready to champion those core values of fighting poverty, standing up to discrimination and empowering local communities to build a fairer society.”
From the quotes attributed to the wannabe candidates by the London LibDems, it appears Porritt has little knowledge of sarf of the river, where her party colleagues control the incinerating and polluting borough of Sutton. “Sadiq Khan has let down Londoners who needed him to help them get on the housing ladder, detoxify our polluted air and make our young people feel safe,” Porritt said, apparently in all seriousness.
She also had a pop at blundering Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate who few of London’s Tories trust. “Londoners won’t waste votes on a Tory candidate fighting threats to oust him,” Porritt said.
The disarray around the LibDem candidate and feebleness of the Tory campaign has many observers predicting that Sian Berry, the Green Party candidate for Mayor, is likely to finish runner-up to Khan, if the covid-delayed elections still go ahead next May.
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Not one you could vote for, so it makes no difference to many of us
Latest polling shows 28% for Shaun Bailey and 9% for “likely runner up” Sian Berry.
That “polling” are figures from the Conservative Party, “leaked” to the Sunday Torygraph.
You may be that gullable. We’re not.
Perhaps you are unaware that those who pay for polls don’t have that kind of sway over methodology used by polling companies.
Also given, how a Torygraph poll is showing a massive Labour lead, why would it have a deliberate anti-green bias? The Tories don’t have the courtesy to even dismiss the Greens as irrelevant.
This “poll” is straight out of Tory Central Office. Just as the FibDems do so often, they want to characterise the Mayoral election as “just a two-horse race”, with bumbling Bailey v Khan. Given the weekend revelations about thee misfiring FibDem campaign, their role as likely fourth-placers seems assured.
The anti-lib dem sentiment in this article is frankly bizarre. Imagine postponing an leadership election due to a pandemic, is something to sneer at. I assume the also author believes that landfill and shipping rubbish to South Asia is a acceptable method of waste management but heaven for but heaven forbid Sutton use a method responsible for producing 13% of Denmark’s electricity for domestic usage
Hahahahaha