It is not just Croydon Labour who are in ‘special measures’ with their national party officials, as alarm bells are ringing at Conservative HQ over the election prospects of ‘Congo’ Chris Philp.
By WALTER CRONXITE, political editor
Only trouble with that is that, with every public utterance that the MP for Croydon South makes, he opens himself to evermore public ridicule.
Philp, an MP since 2015 and the policing minister in Rishi Sunak’s woeful government, was doing the media rounds this morning and found himself subjected to condescension and derision, not from his political opponents but by news presenters at Sky News and the BBC.
Sky News’s Wilfred Frost mocked Croydon’s only Tory MP when Philp tried to big up a piffling £4million fund to tackle knife crime – when all involved know it is only part of a £250million crime equipment package.
“With the greatest of respect, £4million – is that a joke? It’s not very much,” Frost opened his questioning, demonstrating he had very little respect at all.
Philp managed to confirm the presenter’s point: “This is part of a quarter-of-a-billion-pound programme for new police technology.”
Frost said: “So fair to say that today’s announcement… is a minor increase then?”
The Barnett formula: Chris Philp was ‘skewered’ by the Today programme’s presenter, Emma Barnett
Philp, confronted with such irrefutable facts, caved.
He then clarified that the £4million was included in the overall amount and would be spent on new technology allowing police to scan people for knives at a distance.
Philp did not fare much better when he turned up for BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, where broadcaster Emma Barnett was making her debut as a presenter.
Barnett certainly made her mark.
“You went viral a few weeks ago with my colleagues on Question Time,” Barnett said, veering off the carefully scripted message that Philp must have thought he was on air to deliver.
“Why should we have confidence in you as a Home Office minister and the government that you are part of to keep us safe?
“Just to remind those who perhaps didn’t watch you on Question Time. The audience gasped in horror when you seemed to be unsure if Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo were different countries.
“Why should we trust you?”
Philp simpered. He came out with his post-Question Time excuse about somehow making “a clearly rhetorical question”.
“I was having trouble hearing what the questioner was saying,” Philp said, more than a little self-pityingly.
But Barnett’s core question – “Why should we trust you?” – seems certain to be repeated to Philp time and time again between now and the General Election.
Philp was at the cold, dead heart of “Thick Lizzy” Truss’s government
As the pollsters continue to predict a near-wipe-out of Conservative MPs at the General Election, Conservative Central Office must be becoming increasingly aware that Philp is becoming more of an electoral liability than an asset.
Got it mapped: how The Guardian charts the Tory seats in danger, including Croydon South
“The number of Tory constituencies marked as vulnerable and given extra support has risen from 80 to about 200 in recent months, according to a senior party source,” the newspaper reported.
“It means the party is extending its defensive strategy to seats with hefty majorities of 15,000 or more.” That includes Croydon South.
A win for Labour in Croydon South could be among the key gains that would turn Labour from being simply the biggest party in the Commons into having a parliamentary majority.
But will Philp really lose Croydon South and return to his Serbia property development business?
National opinion polls suggest that Philp is doomed. Are things really that bad?
His gaffe over central African geography is far from an isolated incident for someone that the Grauniad’s sketchwriter described as “a nose in search of a bum”.
Philp was at the cold, dead heart of “Thick Lizzy” Truss’s disastrous spell in office, out of his depth as KamiKwasi Kwarteng’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury for 38 days before serving as Paymaster General for 11 days. Philp’s reputation for his part in adding hundreds of pounds to people’s mortgages and prompting out-of-control inflation will lose him votes in Croydon South.
But where will the voters of the re-jigged Croydon South constituency go?
The Liberal Democrats and Greens don’t appear to have done much in and around Croydon South, as the Greens campaign elsewhere in Croydon and the FibDems try to win back Carshalton and Wallington.
Ben Taylor has been Labour’s candidate for the seat for 18 months, and seems to be trying desperately hard to make himself known for anything other than being the worst loser for his party in Croydon council election history.
Back in Labour’s good books: Ben Taylor (right) at a rally with party leader Keith Starmer
Taylor, it is worth reminding loyal readers, was part of a clutch of wannabe politicians pulled together by Labour councillor Jamie Audsley, who was then ostracised and ousted for daring to suggest that having an elected mayor might be better than having Tony Newman as the council’s “strong leader”.
Taylor and other “Audsley apostles”, such as Woodside councillor Amy Foster, appear to be back in their party’s good books again, if only on a form of parole. Labour clearly think enough of Taylor to spend a bit of cash on an awning to cover the front of a Coulsdon shop which previously traded as… oh, yeah: Guitar Nuts.
But Labour, too, are in trouble in Croydon, their reputation still in tatters from their bankrupting of the council and the scandal over the Croydon East candidate selection which remains a matter of police investigation.
The dismissiveness of MP Steve Reed towards the concerns of Croydon’s Muslims and those opposed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is another cause of support leaching from Labour in the borough.
This month’s London Assembly elections provided some hard stats, rather than polling speculation. The Conservatives won well in the Croydon South seat, with Labour representatives at the count at Excel speaking only of winning in South Croydon ward and coming close in Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown.
Waddon saw a strong Labour win, but support in this ward gets transferred out of Croydon South’s parliamentary constituency in the boundary changes ahead of the General Election.
Despite Labour being 30% better off in some national opinion polls compared to the Conservatives three years ago, in Croydon Labour has made very little or no progress since 2021.
Blue rim: how London Communications summarised the 2024 London election results. It’s bad news for Labour in Croydon
The equivalent GLA election day and local council by-elections in 2021 and 2024 in Park Hill and Whitgift ward (which moves into Croydon South constituency for the General Election) and Woodside tell a stark story for Labour. In Park Hill and Whitgift, the Conservative vote may be down 9.5% but the Labour vote was down too, by 0.6%. That’s not the kind of performance that will make Ben Taylor an MP.
In staunch Labour area Woodside, the party’s vote was up only 1% and the Conservatives down 5.1%.
The type of equivalent swing to Labour in line with national opinion poll changes since 2021 which Croydon Labour should be getting was seen south of the London boundary, in Redhill West and Wray Common, where Labour gained a seat with a 21.9% increase in vote while the Tories fell 11.4%.
That’s a huge 16.7% national equivalent swing that Labour should be recording in Croydon. But they are not.
London Communications’ graphic on the London Mayoral votes by GLA constituency also emphasises how in Croydon and Sutton, Labour are trailing shifts to the party seen elsewhere in the capital, with only a paltry 0.45% swing to Sadiq Khan.
Labour’s vote share in Croydon and Sutton fell below 30% in that London Assembly constituency for the first time since 2008.
Conservative higher polling on former council estates like New Addington and in St Helier West (which the Conservatives gained from Labour in a Sutton council by-election where Labour’s vote collapsed by 13.8% to 18.3%) bodes well for Philp in places like Hamsey Green and the Tollers Estate.
Looking over the southern border in areas similar in demographic make-up to parts of his constituency, Philp can take solace in overwhelmingly strong Tory wins in Chaldon, Warlingham West and Chipstead, Kingswood and Woodmansterne.
But every silver lining has a cloud. Tory Party chiefs will have also noted overwhelming wins for independents in Woldingham and Tatsfield and Titsey, and LibDem strength in nearby Caterham wards as the Conservatives lost five council seats in Reigate and Banstead, which becomes even more “no overall control” and where Tandridge saw the Residents’ Alliance add two seats in that NOC, but where residents run council.
This month’s results of voting in Croydon suggest that Philp could just hang on. Provided, perhaps, he starts to avoid giving those car-crash TV and radio interviews. As Mark Twain once said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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