BELLE MONT, our Sutton political editor, on a selection race that might make the TV news
Former BBC Panorama and Newsnight reporter John Sweeney – known, unaffectionately, as “Foghorn” by the wags at Private Eye – is among the applicants hoping to make the shortlist for selection by the Liberal Democrats as their party’s parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam.
The seat is a firm target for the LibDems, their having held it until 2015, but they are late in picking their candidate, after the Tories announced in midweek that Tom Drummond would be their name on the ballot paper, hopeful of replacing Paul Scully as the area’s MP.
The LibDems are in fact having to stage a re-selection, after they opted to dump their original pick, David Campanale, another former BBC journalist, as they claim he had failed to declare that he was the founder of the controversial Christian Peoples Alliance Party.
Dumped: David Campanale appears to think he is still the LibDem candidate for Sutton and Cheam
The party does seem to have a bit of a problem over its vetting of some of its candidates.
In the case of Campanale, there has been 18 months of recriminations, appeals (the LibDems love a good and lengthy internal process) and threats of legal challenges, with Campanale claiming that he faced a “a lynch mob that were determined to root me out when they discovered that I go to church”.
Campanale says he was marched into a room at the House of Lords with 30 LibDems. “One person said ‘You’re a liar’, because I didn’t disclose my Christian beliefs and background in in my election literature.”
Campanale’s social media profile still states “Aspiring MP for Sutton and Cheam” and describes himself as a LibDem.
Foghorn: broadcaster John Sweeney
In the past, the Christian Peoples Alliance Party might have been the subject of a John Sweeney TV investigation.
Sweeney’s work at the BBC included hiding in a car boot to get around while reporting from Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe had banned the BBC, as well as important Panorama reports on cot deaths and the cult of Scientology. He ceased working for the BBC in 2019, shortly after he had been secretly filmed meeting with a source who turned out to be an ally of Tommy Robinson.
Sweeney, 65, has taken to wearing an orange woolly hat while reporting from Ukraine over the past couple of years. Now we know why (the colour of the hat, that is…).
Also hoping to make the LibDem short-list for Sutton and Cheam are Luisa Porritt, a former north London councillor and the barely-remembered LibDem candidate for London Mayor in 2021 (she was fourth), and Luke Taylor, a councillor for Sutton West.
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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
I thought he was wearing that hat to moonlight as a garden gnome.