The Tories have picked Anthony Boutall, an assistant head at an Orpington grammar school, as their General Election candidate in the re-jigged constituency of Streatham and Croydon North.
Election fodder: teacher Anthony Boutall is the Tories’ choice to try to unseat Steve Reed
In his 20s, Boutall served as a councillor but in Bedford, not in south London. A self-professed reader of Inside Croydon, he has lived in Croydon and Crystal Palace for the past five years.
Selected at a poorly-attended meeting of Tory members on Friday night, the local Conservative Federation released no information about its process, although one source suggests that several people did apply for the pretty hopeless-looking task.
Photos from the selection meeting on Friday night show just 17 attendees (including the successful candidate and the selfie-taker). One of those in the post-selection picture is recognisable as William Perry, the toothsome son of the elected Mayor of Croydon, anti-ULEZ vigilante and chair of London South Conservatives. Might Perry’s little Willy have been among the unsuccessful applicants?
Although Streatham was a safe Conservative seat until the 1990s (Duncan Sandys, Churchill’s son-in-law, was the MP for 24 years), the merger of the Lambeth wards of St Leonard’s, Streatham Hill, Streatham South, and Streatham Wells with the Croydon election areas of Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Norbury and Pollards Hill, Norbury Park and Thornton Heath offers little prospect of Tory success in 2024.
In 2019, Labour’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy took 54.8% of the vote to hold a 17,690-vote majority over the LibDems, with the Tories a badly beaten third.
Across the constituency boundary in Croydon North (known as “Lambeth South” by this website since 2012), Steve Reed OBE held his seat with a stonking 24,673-vote majority.
Tory dynamism: exuberant scenes at the Streatham and Croydon North Conservative selection meeting last Friday. Jason Perry’s little Willy is fourth from the right. And far right
Third in that election was the Liberal Democrat Claire Bonham, now a councillor in Croydon and her party’s candidate for Streatham and Croydon North when the General Election takes place.
Reed, one of Keir Starmer’s most devoted supporters, has shunted Ribeiro-Addy northwards in the constituency reorganisation and looks nailed on to hold the new seat for Labour.
So Tory Boutall will be making up the numbers, perhaps with a view of gaining some campaign experience ahead of more winnable elections in the future.
The head of the politics, philosophy, and economics faculty at Newstead Wood girls’ school, Boutall told Inside Croydon, “I used to work in The City, where I was involved for a period of time with increasing female representation on FTSE 100 and 250 boards.”
He says he began his teaching career in a “requires improvement” state comprehensive, “which was brilliantly rewarding and an excellent training ground”. More recently, he had two years leading the philosophy and theology Oxbridge applicants at fee-paying Whitgift School in South Croydon.
Of his time as a councillor for Bedford’s Kempston Central and East ward between 2015 and 2019, Boutall says he overturned a relatively significant Labour majority.
“During that period, I secured my ward’s fair share of road funding after years of neglect, stood up against councillors’ pay increases and helped tackle antisocial behaviour.”
He was also busy writing columns for Conservative Home (a sure sign of someone harbouring ambitions for higher political office), in which he tried to blame everything, from Tory cuts to local councils to dog shit on our streets, on Britain’s membership of the European Union. Oh well…
Now a prospective parliamentary candidate, Boutall says, “We have many brilliantly generous, hard-working, community-spirited people in this part of the world. I am keen to do well by them.
“I’m passionate about issues facing people in Streatham and Croydon North, including housing, crime, and recent local traffic policies, which often cause most harm to those who are most vulnerable.”
Looks like Steve Reed will be dealing with ULEZ and LTNs as an election issue once again…
Reed more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Hope someone else is paying for the deposit, but with his financial engineering skills no doubt it can be described as a tax loss somewhere down the line.
“Might Perry’s little Willy have been among the unsuccessful applicants?”
Who knows were Mayor Perry’s willy goes? But should someone measure it before calling it little?
It was Thatcher who once said, “Everyone needs a Willie.”
“I’m passionate about issues facing people in Streatham and Croydon North, including housing, crime, and recent local traffic policies, which often cause most harm to those who are most vulnerable.” – sic
Interesting at last a conservative candidate acknowledging that the inpacts of Conservatives constraints and proctices and funding over the last decade on transport south London has caused untold detriment to those most vulnerable in our community. Perhaps he will return the subsidy Johnson gave away so that transport can be improved?