Constituents are beginning to ask awkward questions of the Croydon Central MP, as she can find time to appear with Alastair Campbell and David Lammy, but has blanked a community group.
By our political editor, WALTER CRONXITE
Blanked: Labour’s Sarah Jones can’t find time to speak to constituents tomorrow night
Sarah Jones, the MP for Croydon Central, has been able to find time in her busy diary to spend an hour on stage on Thursday night in a secretive 30-quid-a-ticket Labour gig with war-monger Alastair Campbell, or have an evening set aside next week for a “launch” event with David Lammy, Labour’s front bench apologist for the Israeli Defence Force.
But MP Jones, likely to be a government minister after the General Election later this year, can’t be bothered to turn up for meetings with concerned constituents, whether organised by the local mosque or by a group representing the many asylum seekers living in Croydon.
Steve Reed OBE, the MP for Croydon North, has continued to ignore all invitations to attend mosque meetings called to discuss the humanitarian crisis inflicted on Gaza which followed the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7.
And apart from one fleeting meeting with a group of her Muslim constituents, Jones has followed Reed’s lead.
Half-baked hustings: the poster for tomorrow night’s event, with just two speakers attending
Now, she’s blanked a meeting called for tomorrow night, being staged near West Croydon Station, in the heart of what is to be her new constituency of Croydon West.
While Green Party and Tory candidates for Croydon West will be attending, Labour will be unrepresented.
It’s the second time that the Labour Party has blanked events organised by the Croydon Refugees and New Communities Forum.
In December, when CRNCF organised what they called a “hustings” for the new Croydon East constituency, they got a positive response saying that Joel “Bodger” Bodmer would be attending for Labour – even though Bodger has never held any publicly elected office.
Bodger, the former chair of Croydon Labour’s campaign forum who did such a bang-up job of losing the borough’s mayoral election in 2022, was among the shortlisted candidates for selection to be his party’s parliamentary candidate for Croydon East.
Some considered it odd that local party officials should pass the hustings invitation to just one, apparently favoured, shortlistee. But the invite came to nothing in the end, when London Labour officials pulled the plug on the selection process after allegations of vote rigging. It’s been all quiet on the Croydon East front ever since.
Labour pain: Joel ‘Bodger’ Bodmer is the only party member to accept a ‘hustings’ invite
New constituency boundaries, to be used for the first time at the next General Election have seen Jones, MP for Croydon Central since 2017, automatically taking up the Labour candidate role for the new Croydon West seat.
But public appearances have become a touchy issue for Labour since October 7. Labour’s pusillanimity over the atrocities in the Middle East have created huge difficulties for the party in Croydon, where Jones and Reed are colleagues of Lammy in Keir Starmer’s parliamentary team. Official Labour events have attracted a series of protests and demonstrations.
And senior Labour figures, such as Jones, might expect some tough questions, too, at an event organised by a group that claims to represent refugees.
It may seem a little premature to be holding hustings at this point – such public meetings, involving election candidates, usually take place once an election has actually been called.
The CRNCF event is due to be staged from 6pm in an upstairs room on North End (“look up for the Snooker Club sign” organisers say), which they claim will be “a captivating evening of civic engagement”.
This might be stretching credulity a bit given that one of the two candidates who are bothering to turn up is first-term Tory councillor Simon Fox, who when he is not doing his day job as a parliamentary assistant to Croydon South MP Chris Philp, busies himself at weekends appearing very lonely and without any supporters at various community events staged around the new constituency.
CRNCF are clearly a bit miffed to have been snubbed by Labour. They issued a 1,100-word statement to say as much.
“The lack of engagement by the Croydon Labour Party is disappointing, considering it is one of the two major political parties in Croydon that traditionally garners the most votes and tends to form majority administrations at Croydon Council and return MPs for the Croydon Parliamentary constituencies,” the Forum’s statement said.
Blowing his own trumpet: Alastair Campbell will be at the Fairfield Halls on Thursday – for 30 quid a ticket
They say that Jones’s excuse was a “diary clash”, despite “multiple attempts through emails, phone calls and texts” to contact the MP.
“Croydon Labour’s elected representatives and candidates are avoiding engaging with constituents,” the CRNCF said, describing it as “a casual carelessness”. Grassroots community groups “seem to be a low priority”.
They also contrast how Jones can’t find the time for their free event, but is able to appear at the £30-a-ticket event with Campbell, who they describe as “a controversial public figure from the New Labour era who bears joint responsibility for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to hundreds of thousands of innocent lives killed, thousands other innocent lives forced to flee the Middle East and Africa”.
As the refugee forum observes, Campbell’s “dodgy dossier” and the Iraq War is a “primary reasons why tens of thousands of people find themselves here as part of Croydon’s refugee and new communities”.
They say, “While we are relieved to have found a safe haven, we do not forget the wars and disasters that led us here. We are aware of the careless, influential politicians who contributed to [our] traumatic fates.”
“Our marginalised community, often used as political pawns, deserves representatives willing to engage with the diverse spectrum of concerns affecting our borough,” an official from the forum said.
Read more: Trades unionists accuse MP Jones of ignoring Gaza letters
Read more: Police pledge to arrest protestors gathered outside MPs’ homes
Read more: Labour MP Reed receives written appeal from mosque leaders
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This is totally disgraceful.
How can she make time to go on overseas trips as funded by “The Antisemitism Policy Trust” (source: Parliamentary Registered Interests) and yet refuses to meet local constituents on the issue of Palestine. Should the local constituent(s) solicit a visit by perhaps attaching a “payment/donation” to her invitation as an inducement? Perhaps then, she may come over for a brief “Palestinian educational trip” to say perhaps Cherry Orchard Road.
I have been stonewalled repeatedly in trying to seek an audience. The standard ‘blah blah’ response is not good enough. Stop hiding and engage Ms Jones. There is something terribly rotten here!
Foreign policy is hardly the biggest issue for IC readers
If you are suggesting that iC readers are disinterested in, don’t know about or don’t care about the situations in Ukraine, Sudan or Gaza and the West Bank, then you have seriously underestimated Inside Croydon’s readers.