Not-so-plausible deniability: outside the bubble of Croydon Labour, Val Shawcross’s appeal is beginning to wear thin

With a month until election day, hustings for the borough’s first-ever Mayoral contest are coming thick and fast. KEN TOWL went along to last night’s event held in Park Hill, so that you didn’t have to…

Val Shawcross really ought to be a shoo-in for Mayor of Croydon.

Labour’s candidate’s CV is impressive, and she oozes an attractive mixture of competence and compassion: she has the heart and the brains to do the job.

And all the time the demographics of Croydon are shifting relentlessly towards younger voters with degrees, usually good pickings for Labour.

But on the evidence of last night’s Mayoral hustings, things are not that simple.

Shawcross’s campaign was undermined in advance by the execrable record of the current Labour council. Bankrupt and mired in sleaze, it hangs like a weight around her neck.

The shadow cast by the council flats in Regina Road, and their Dickensian condition, loomed large, too. In such a context, competence and compassion constitute a hard sell.

But what of the alternatives?

DEMOC, the residents-led organisation that had campaigned so successfully for the switch to a directly-elected Mayor to run the council, organised last night’s hustings with the five candidates that they considered had a “fighting chance” on May 5. You could see their point. Had all eight candidates been invited, we would have been there till midnight.

Hardly a laugh a minute: from left Howard, Perry (speaking) and Underwood at last night’s Mayoral hustings

Thus, I did not get the chance to assess Farah “London”, the ex-Conservative, Gavin FL Palmer, the independent ex-Conservative, nor Winston McKenzie, the ex-Conservative, and ex pretty much any party that has existed in the last 20 years, with the exceptions of Labour and the BNP.

Denied a seat at the top table, Palmer did, however, have acolytes at the meeting handing out his card. I looked at his website. It proclaims that he will “bring Classical Liberalism to South London”. I will save these three for another day.

The invited candidates were seated where you might normally expect to find an altar at St Matthew’s Church. This made them look for all the world like a slightly truncated Last Supper. Which was Christ? Which was Judas?

At one end Andrew Pelling (ex-Conservative MP, ex-Assembly Member, ex-Labour councillor, and general man for all seasons) was chatting amiably with Shawcross. They looked like the grown-up politicians they both are. The body blows would come later.

At the other end of the table, Jason Perry, the “Local Conservatives” candidate, exchanged the odd word with veteran Green Peter Underwood, while relative newbie Richard (“call-me-Rick”) Howard sat quietly in the middle, as Liberal Democrats are wont to do.

How did they all get on? Below is my unscientific analysis, given spurious weight by the addition of arbitrary numbers:

‘Balanced budget’: Val Shawcross

Val Shawcross set out her stall early on. “The buck does stop with the previous Labour council.” They were to blame; she was not. This necessary defensive tactic took a lot of heat out of her oratory. She talked about a “re-set button”, how she had supported a Mayoral campaign (something of a career-ender within Croydon Labour ranks) and offered a leisure centre in the south of the borough, a breadcrumb, if not red meat for Croydon’s aspirational professionals.

There was some audible scoffing when she claimed the council was now working to a “balanced budget”, so she changed her tack and leaned into an attack on the council for its “breach of trust” and “a lack of respect” for Croydon, and even spoke to “a strong sense that the council has declared war on Croydon in terms of planning”. Accurate, but not terribly comradely.

It was painful to watch. She must be seething with contempt for the likes of Tony Newman, the past leader of Croydon Council.

Shawcross’s best applause came when she answered a question from the floor. The old chestnut, “What makes you stand out as a candidate?” inspired a few groans from the audience but gave Shawcross a chance to point out that she was the only woman on the ballot paper. Perhaps it got the best applause because it was the best point that she made.

It did not please the two Underwood groupies behind me. One of them muttered “It’s a plant! It’s a plant!” And I thought the Greens were all in favour of plants.

Verdict: In her favour, competence and compassion. Against, she will have a job to convince that she is the re-set button.

Score 6/10

Charisma-free zone: Jason Perry

For the Conservatives, Jason Perry made very little headway. I put his apparent lack of passion down to his desire to be as unlike Boris Johnson as possible. While Shawcross is hampered by association with local council sleaze, Perry is vulnerable by association with national government sleaze.

He started with self-effacing humour: “I am the last speaker, so you can relax a bit once I’ve finished speaking.” I feared that, in fact, the audience would relax a lot before he had finished speaking. He complained about Regina Road, but every candidate, including Val Shawcross, had already done that.

His one specific proposal was the return of the graffiti removal team. He offered vague support for the police and education without any measurable commitment. His only laugh – and it was a muted one – was when he said he was glad the hustings were not a beauty contest. Well, they do say that politics is showbusiness for ugly people.

He missed a trick, though, when he cited Croydon’s planning department as “the 18th worst in the country!” The crowd was shocked. Who knew that there were as many as 17 councils with worse planning departments than Croydon?

Verdict: In favour, “Croydon born and bred”, supports Crystal Palace Football Club. That’s about it. Against, a charisma-free zone.

Score 4/10

Major medals: Richard Howard

Rick Howard, the Quiet One, the George Harrison to Andrew Pelling’s Paul McCartney and Peter Underwood’s John Lennon, let slip that he was a retired army major. He also let slip, as if it was the most mundane thing in the world, that he had worked in bomb disposal.

That he worked in finance was impressive enough – he would be the man to look after our money – but a guy who dismantles IEDs on the road to Basra is going to be particularly thoughtful before he makes any big decisions.

Howard did the usual LibDem playbook thing of being meticulously fair about criticising both the current Labour administration and the previous Conservative one. He relied on cliché just a little too much. When he said he would “hold people’s feet to the fire”, Major Howard looked like he meant it all too literally. Then again, when he claimed that his motto is “What gets measured gets done”, it started to sound like things-one-ought-to-say-in-a-hustings. Or at Sandhurst.

Rick Howard is one to watch. He will go places, but not here in Croydon and not in 2022; he is still learning his trade.

Verdict: In favour: A bona fide hero. He defused bombs in Iraq.  Against: this looks very much like a practice run.

Score 7/10

Three-point plan: Peter Underwood

Peter Underwood has a three-point plan: power to the people, transparency and happiness.

The Green Party candidate’s central theme was one of delegating decision-making to the people affected by the decisions. This was admirable but potentially flawed – what if Croydon’s residents wanted more car parks and an end to bicycle lanes?

He differed markedly with Jason Perry on the potential Westfield shopping centre. While Perry claimed, apparently seriously, that we should court Westfield, Underwood asserted that “the old shopping centre is dead”, and proposed a piazza-style town centre, leaving the shopping to outlying neighbourhoods.

As for the Fairfield Halls, Underwood spoke with palpable concern for the arts to justify his popularly received cry of “Get rid of BHLive!” His call for the sacking of the Halls’ Bournemouth-based management company, which has reduced it to a barely-functioning shadow of its former glory, was echoed by all the other candidates, apart from Val Shawcross, whose criticism was apparent but more muted.

Taking his cue from Underwood, Howard was able to commandeer a round of applause by asking “Does the Fairfield Halls look like it has had £70million spent on it? No? Know why? Because it hasn’t!”

Verdict: For, Underwood has both the will and the skill to break the two-party mould. Against, he is scrabbling for none-of-the-above votes in a crowded field.

Score: 6/10

Independent: Andrew Pelling

Andrew Pelling, the only candidate at St Matthew’s without a party machine behind him, he had his work cut out. He set out his credentials – he had championed the establishment of the BRIT School, a gem of a place that provides dramatic arts education to state pupils and allowed rare access to careers normally reserved for pupils in private education or with private means. Croydon Labour had been against it.

Pelling described himself as a whistleblower who had paid the price with expulsion from the Labour Party. He cited his role as an investment banker and the performance of the council pension fund that he oversaw– possibly the one thing in the past four years that has gone right in Croydon Council – thus highlighting his financial acumen.

He was proud, he said, to be an independent. Countering Shawcross’ attempts to put Labour’s past behind her, Pelling said, “Labour’s culture remains unchanged. Their main activity is expelling each other.” Harsh, but not far off the mark.

Pelling spoke, eschewing the microphone, with a passion that spoke to a real desire for good local government. He was generous, praising a pair of Labour council candidates as well as a Conservative for their ability and honesty as individuals, thus displaying his ability to work across the political aisle. He was brutal, too, attacking Shawcross for overseeing large Council Tax rises during her tenure as council leader in the 1990s.

Cleverly, Pelling finished with the point that this election, like the London Mayoral one uses SV: you get a first and second preference votes. So you can vote for who you like best first and then the least-worst party second.

Obviously, we were supposed to infer that the former would be Mr Andrew Pelling, but there was no doubt that both Howard and Underwood would be competing for this kind of tactical voting, too.

Verdict: For, if anything overqualified for the job, financially a proven safe pair of hands, unhampered by party affiliation. Against, perhaps his principled stand will look like a vanity project.

Score: 8/10

Any of these candidates, any of them, would be better for Croydon than the current “strong leader”, or the previous one.

We have DEMOC to be grateful to, for forcing on the council the very democratic consultation that candidates like Pelling and Underwood championed in their speeches.

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