Local Conservatives bungle the announcement of their ‘token’ parliamentary candidate for a safe Labour seat.
By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor

Wrong place, wrong time: local Tories don’t even know the name of the new Croydon constituencies

Not for the first time, Croydon Tories and Mayor Jason Perry last night demonstrated that they really don’t know what they are talking about.

While Labour continues to be mired in a mess of its own making over the candidate selection fix for the new Croydon East constituency, the local Conservatives were staging a sparsely attended meeting in Thornton Heath last night to choose their “token” (their word, not ours) candidate to wear a big, blue rosette in Croydon West for a few weeks next year ahead of the General Election.

Except when the vote was held, the decision confirmed, the pre-prepared congratulatory social media posts from Croydon Tories and piss-poor Perry claimed that Simon Fox had been selected to stand in a constituency that doesn’t exist: “Croydon West and South Norwood“.

The Boundary Commission has come up with revised constituencies which will see Croydon have four MPs returned at the next General Election: Croydon South (much the same safe Conservative seat as currently occupied by Chris Philp), Croydon East, Streatham and Croydon North (basically Norbury and most of the current Lambeth constituency, where Steve Reed OBE has gravitated back to) and Croydon West.

Croydon West is made up of all or part of eight wards, five from the current Labour stronghold of Croydon North (Bensham Manor, Broad Green, Selhurst, South Norwood and West Thornton), bits of Woodside and Fairfield from the current Croydon Central seat, and from Croydon South, Waddon.

It is Waddon where Simon Fox is a councillor, the only Conservative councillor in the whole of the new Croydon West seat. Sarah Jones, the MP for Croydon Central since 2017, has opted to be the Labour candidate for Croydon West, which Electoral Calculus predicts will see her returned to Parliament with a 24,000 majority. Now that the Tories have picked Fox, that majority could get even bigger…

Take your pick: Labour’s Sarah Jones and Steve Reed OBE have picked themselves two very safe seats. Croydon’s voters won’t have as much choice

The Boundary Commission’s first draft of Croydon constituencies came up with a set of names for the new seats. Last year, When they submitted their final version, they amended some titles, and dropped “and South Norwood” from the Croydon West name.

Croydon’s Tories did not know this.

This part of the borough is clearly of such negligible interest to Croydon Conservatives that none of them had bothered to notice this small but significant change.

It was only after Inside Croydon pointed out the error in Perry and the Tories’ congratulation tweets that the messages were promptly deleted, to be replaced with new tweets with mention of the correct constituency name. Fingers on the pulse, guys!

Since being elected to Croydon Council in May 2022, Fox has landed himself a job as a parliamentary aide to Chris Philp, the Croydon South MP who had a hand in the crashing of the economy a year ago, which has seen interest rates soar and massive inflation over the past 12 months.

We’re here to help: Croydon Tories’ response after being advised that they had got the constituency name wrong

Philp, the Tory Minister who was called a liar 15 (or was it 16?) times on live television, was among the first to offer congratulations to his staffer: “Well done Simon!!” Philp gushed in a WhatsApp group,

“You will be a great candidate and give Sarah Jones real run for her money,” Philp said.

Which underlined how poor Philp and Croydon Tories’ judgement is.

One grizzled old political writer described the Tory selection in Croydon West as, “A totally unimportant selection.

“I’m more likely to win Nobel Prize for physics!”

The selection was almost a shoo-in for Fox (“We don’t have many councillors in those parts,” one of his senior council colleagues had confided in the days before the meeting, dropping a heavy hint at where they expected the members’ votes to go), although Inside Croydon understands that in the end, the Waddon councillor prevailed by just two votes.

Poor judgement: Croydon’s Tories can’t even be honest with themselves

We have not been able to confirm whether there were more than three members at the selection meeting.

For the record, the meeting, which took around two hours to complete, comprised Fox and two other, Conservative Central Office-approved candidates giving little speeches and answering a few questions: Maria Khan and Laura Blumenthal.

Conservative Party members have been underwhelmed by the lack of effort or imagination put into selecting a realistic candidate for Croydon West.

“Simon’s the token blue for Croydon West,” one confided.

“‘Token’ as in no way in hell we’re denting Sarah’s majority.”

Read more: Labour cancels Croydon selection after voting fraud claims
Read more: Croydon’s Tories opt to set up ‘Mr 15%’ Cummings for a fall
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection

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