Even political editor WALTER CRONXITE’s ghast was flabbered when he heard how some of those at the heart of the council regime that bankrupted the borough are now shamelessly chasing after selection for a new parliamentary seat

Numpties: Maddie Henson campaigning last year backed by her husband, Mark, and no less than Labour GS David Evans

Last week’s announcement that Labour MP Sarah Jones would be “seeking selection” (meaning: is a shoo-in) in the new parliamentary seat of Croydon West and South Norwood has prompted a stampede of wannabe parliamentarians looking to become the party’s candidate for Croydon East.

Among those making frantic phone calls to win over the party’s activists and rank and file members are two of the numptiest of Newman’s Numpties – Labour councillors who remained fiercely loyal to the ex-leader who did so much to cause the council’s spectacular financial collapse in 2020.

Alisa Flemming, straight off a year of being paraded around the borough as the ceremonial mayor, has made her ambition to become the new MP for Croydon East plain. This is despite Flemming playing a key part in the regime of now discredited Tony Newman which brought the borough to its knees.

Also among the borough’s bankrupters who still think they are worthy of the electorate’s trust is Maddie Henson. The Addiscombe East councillor is a partner in a tech firm that supplies the Labour Party with its controversial Anonyvoter online voting system – having been given that gig by General Secretary David Evans without there ever being any tendering process.

Jones has been MP for the marginal Croydon Central since 2017, and her decision to jump to the much safer Croydon West seat has divided opinion and attracted criticism from party activists left behind in Croydon Central, which forms the bulk of the new Croydon East seat.

On the move: MP Sarah Jones is abandoning her home seat of Croydon East for a safer constituency

The new constituencies, which will see Croydon having four MPs in Parliament after the next General Election, are the result of a Boundary Commission review intended to even up the number of voters in parliamentary seats. The Commission is expected to confirm its findings in July.

Some within the Croydon Central Labour party suggest that Jones’s decision to pursue her parliamentary career by representing a different part of the borough leaves Croydon East vulnerable to loss to the Conservatives. Especially so if whoever gets selected as the Labour candidate is associated with the disastrous omnishambles of a council.

Which is why many local members have been gob-smacked by the apparent intention to join the selection race of the likes of Flemming and Henson.

It was Norbury Park councillor Flemming, when the cabinet member for schools and children, who many see as having precipitated the council’s financial collapse, with an Ofsted inspection failure on her watch which proved hugely costly for the borough, reputationally as well as financially.

In 2017, Oftsed issued a damning report on Croydon Council’s children’s services, finding vulnerable children at risk of “significant harm”, and with children left in “neglectful circumstances” for too long. Extraordinarily, the council leader, Newman, took no action to sack the cabinet member responsible, Flemming.

Numpty: Alisa Flemming was never sacked from her cabinet role by Newman, despite the damning Ofsted report

Instead, he and his cabinet member for finance, Simon Hall, threw around £30million at the children’s services department over the course of the next two years, hiring in expensive agency staff and recruiting new social workers to try to address the issues Ofsted identified.

It took three years of “special measures” and was not until early 2020 that Ofsted gave Croydon’s children’s services the all clear – but the unexpected, huge extra expense incurred was one of the black holes in the council budget that led to its crash, and the eventual abrupt exits of Newman, Hall and council CEO Jo “Negreedy” Negrini.

Of Henson, few in her constituency party or who have worked with her at the Town Hall have been overly impressed, suggesting she lacks political nous and judgement. “She’s very good at organising a branch raffle,” said one source. “But that’s about it.”

Henson’s term in the ermine and scarlet robes as the borough’s ceremonial mayor came during the worst of the covid pandemic, which saw her attending public events without the then mandatory mask.

CLP sources suggest that there are at least four others who are already canvassing for a selection process that probably won’t take place until October.

Campaign trail: MP Sarah Jones (second left) joined by Henson and Flemming on a canvass session in the south of the new Croydon East seat yesterday evening

Olga Fitzroy, a new councillor in Lambeth who was Labour’s losing parliamentary candidate in Croydon South at the last General Election, appears ready to seek selection in Croydon once again, having passed on repeating the pleasure of attending hustings with Chris Philp.

Croydon Central’s CLP secretary, Julie Setchfield, was contacting members today asking for their permission to pass their contact details to Fitzroy. Which is nice of her, and avoids any unnecessary nastinesses over GDPR breaches…

Natasha Irons, another councillor from another borough (Merton), is also back in Croydon after having lost that recent Labour candidate selection for Croydon South (where Ben Taylor, a council election candidate with some of the worst results in the borough’s history, was preferred).

Also reported to be preparing a run is Chrishni Reshekaron, a councillor for West Thornton but less tainted by the Newman years, since she was only elected for the first time 12 months ago. A charity worker, Reshekaron has been fast-streamed in to current Labour leader Stuart King’s shadow cabinet.

The very well-connected Sangeeta Gobidaas, a former parliamentary intern for Jones and David Lammy, is also getting busy with her social media and local profile. As a member of the Croydon Central executive committee, she may find it easier to contact local members than any outsider candidates.

• View the boundaries and wards for the new Croydon East constituency by clicking here

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