The Labour Party in Sutton has been quick to announce its candidate for the council vacancy created by the resignation of St Helier West councillor Sheila Berry.
Hospital pass: Margaret Thomas is Labour’s candidate for St Helier West
But it has done nothing to quash speculation that Berry’s resignation followed some kind of dispute within the three-member Labour group on Sutton Council.
A members’ selection meeting (Labour in Sutton is still allowed to stage such events) held last night chose Margaret Thomas to stand in the ward by-election that will be held on May 2.
Berry’s resignation had come close to the deadline for councils to be able to stage ward by-elections on the same date as the London elections – thus saving Council Tax-payers at least £10,000, while also allowing Labour to wrong-foot political rivals, who have been left scrambling around for candidates at short notice.
Thomas is “well-known to local residents having run the Middleton Circle library in the centre of the estate working at the heart of the community”, according to Labour officials.
Thomas has run job clubs, an over-60s lunch club, knitting group, local history, new mothers’ group and a Christmas Day lunch. A party colleague said that she is “a genuinely good community candidate, who has actually done loads of work helping people on the estate for many years”.
At the council elections in May 2022, Thomas stood as a Labour candidate in the LibDem-held ward of The Wrythe, where she finished eighth of the 10 candidates.
Following her selection – Carshalton and Wallington Labour Party did not offer any details of other candidates for selection, or how the voting had gone – Thomas said that through her long and varied community work, “I came to know many people who lived locally and worked with them to support and help some of the most vulnerable residents.
“I am passionate about reducing poverty and inequality and improving conditions for local people.”
A Sutton Labour spokesperson said: “Labour will fight this by-election on key local issues such as protecting St Helier Hospital’s A&E and investing in its future and the need for urgent action on local refuse collections and fly-tipping.
“We will also express local people’s anger over the cost of living and housing crises, both of which have a big impact on local families.”
And, as is so often the case with three-way political contests, one or other party has set out to squeeze the vote of the likely third-placed group, hoping that their voters will lend them their support. “This seat was held by Labour and Conservative councillors in 2022 and is going to be a battle between them with the Lib Dems in third place,” Labour said.
“The Tories are discredited and divided nationally and in disarray locally after their leading light Paul Scully announced he was standing down as an MP.”
Which sort of makes St Helier West Labour’s to lose, something that they have plenty of experience of doing in Sutton, having only won three council seats in 20 years – the three they picked up in 2022.
And this brings us back to Sheila Berry’s rsignation, and the lack of any reason given for quitting as a councillor after just two years.
The statement eventually issued on her behalf by Sutton Labour made no mention of any health issues, which sort of gives more credence to the suggestion that Berry had fallen out with the Labour group leader, Sheldon Vestey.
No one from Sutton Labour would comment further.
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