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Drummond heads three-strong Tory list for Sutton and Cheam

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EXCLUSIVE: Our investigations editor CARL SHILTON on the race in the Tory Party to replace Paul Scully as MP

Councillor Tom Drummond, the leader of the Conservatives on Sutton Council, heads a three-person selection shortlist for the constituency where his party colleague, Paul Scully, has been the MP for nine years.

The vacancy in the Sutton and Cheam seat was created when Scully announced he was quitting as an MP, bitterly disillusioned with the way the Tory Government is being run and the way his party dropped him from consideration as their candidate to run for London Mayor.

Front runner: Tom Drummond, leader of the Tory group on Sutton Council

Also on the Conservative shortlist with Drummond are former Twickenham MP Dr Tania Mathias and Jed Dwight, a councillor on Reigate and Banstead council.

After winning the seat from LibDem Paul Burstow in 2015, Scully retained it in 2017 and 2019 with more than 50% of the vote – which makes it one of the rare constituencies where the Conservatives have a chance of not being wiped out at the General Election, when it is held sometime this year.

Dr Mathias, 59, an ophthalmologist, was a councillor in Richmond from 2010 to 2015, stepping down when she was elected as MP for Twickenham by defeating LibDem Vince Cable, who regained the seat in 2017. Mathias’s lack of any links to Sutton may work against her at the local party selection meeting.

Ex-MP: Tania Mathias unseated LibDem Vince Cable in 2015

Dwight, 32, from Chipstead, works in parliament for the National Trust, and previously worked for MPs Mims Davies and Maria Caulfield.

He has also been a councillor in the Isle of Wight and Haywards Heath, and has already fought five parliamentary selection processes, including Reigate.

Dwight was a councillor for Sutton’s Stonecot ward from 2018 to 2022.

In the May 2022 local elections, he opted to move from his relatively safe Tory seat to take on LibDem prospective parliamentary candidate Bobby Dean in The Wrythe. He duly lost. This was widely regarded as poor political judgement. Dwight then stepped down as local party chair and in 2023 moved to Redhill, becoming a councillor in Chipstead, Kingswood and Woodmansterne.

In his personal life, Dwight is now back with his partner, the Conservative MP for Carshalton and Wallington, Elliot Colburn.

Returning: Jed Dwight has been a councillor in Sutton

Drummond, 50, has been a councillor since 2018 and Tory group leader since October 2020. Although trained as a solicitor, he has made his career in radio advertising. Married with two teenaged children he lives in Sutton and is a councillor for Worcester Park North.

Under Drummond, Sutton’s Tories bucked the national trend at the 2022 local elections by increasing their number of seats from 18 to 20 on the council. He has a strong following of parents of SEND children in the borough, having played a key political role in supporting their campaign for better services in Sutton.

Sutton Conservatives are to hold their selection meeting on April 10, Inside Sutton understands.

Sutton’s LibDems, meanwhile, are advertising for a new prospective parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam, after a lengthy dispute with their original pick, David Campanale.

Campanale still describes himself on Twitter as “Aspiring MP for Sutton and Cheam”, but LibDem sources say that their party has now officially dropped him as a parliamentary candidate. Campanale founded the Christian Peoples Alliance party, and local LibDems claim they didn’t know his views when they selected him, even though he’d also applied for the candidacy in Carshalton and Wallington, when he came third.

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