In the second part of our General Election Special, WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, casts his expert eye further afield, to Sutton and Bromley, and even into the Surrey stockbroker belt

All alone: PM Rishi Sunak announcing the General Election date

Compared with Croydon, it’s an entirely different political landscape in Sutton, where the Liberal Democrats look certain to take at least one of the two seats off the Conservatives.

Labour are only also-rans here, and they showed their half-heartedness about the contests by only getting around to announcing their candidates in the last couple of days, but they might take enough votes to stall the FibDems’ progress.

The seat boundaries are very little changed in Sutton, where the contests for Carshalton and Wallington (held since 2019 by Conservative Elliot Colburn) and Sutton and Cheam (where Tory MP Paul Scully is standing down after nine years at Westminster) are potentially more interesting than some of the foregone conclusions in Croydon.

Carshalton and Wallington

Bobby Dean’s dog: probably more electable than many of the candidates

The collapse of the Labour vote in the recent by-election in St Helier West, for a council seat that they won in 2022, to just 18% is a bleak prospect for the party. The Conservatives won that ward seat, but by just six votes from the LibDems.

Electoral Calculus sees a 60% chance of The Wrythe’s Liberal Democrat councillor Bobby Dean regaining the Carshalton and Wallington seat that was previously held for the LibDems by Tom Brake.

Colburn is seen as having a 26% chance of holding on for the Tories. Colburn will take encouragement from the by-election win, reflecting how Conservatives are doing well on former council estates. But Carshalton and Wallington is a good deal more than the St Helier Estate and Dean’s team has been saturating the constituency with leaflets, dodgy bar charts and pictures of his dog, Chester, for over a year. Dean has also campaigned on sewage in the River Wandle.

Labour’s regional office has just chosen someone called Hersh Thaker, from Northwood in Uxbridge, who the local party says they “look forward to welcoming” to Carshalton. It does not look like Labour are going to do much here, and more likely will go to help their party’s campaign in Croydon South. It is almost as if, in their choice of such a tissue-thin paper candidate, Labour are signalling their voters to vote tactically LibDem.

There will likely be a George Galloway Workers Party candidate here, too.

Sutton and Cheam

There could be real fireworks in this constituency, not just between LibDems and Tories, but continuing “orange on orange” internal conflict over a long-running disputed selection.

Imposed candidate: how London Labour announced the Sutton and Cheam candidate yesterday

Yesterday’s announcement by Labour of Chrishni Reshekaron as their Sutton and Cheam candidate was the latest demonstration of the party’s tendency to control freakery, in imposing a candidate without local members getting any say in the shortlisting and selection, while also complaining about abysmal internal communications around the announcement.

For Croydon Labour, the imposition of the West Thornton councillor is at least a sign of the gradual easing of the shutdown on their activities and ambitions by Labour HQ officials, following the party’s bankrupting of Croydon Council.

Reshekaron was the second Croydon councillor to be installed as a parliamentary candidate in less than a week, following Jess(ica) Rich/Hammersley-Rich’s imposition on the good people of Surrey Heath. Neither Reshekaron nor Rich/Hammersley-Rich were councillors in Croydon before 2022.

Two further Croydon Labour figures have emerged as parliamentary candidates today, as the National Executive Committee scurries around to clear up vacancies that it has had months to prepare for. Councillor Eunice O’Dame was parachuted in as an NEC-approved candidate in LibDem-held Kingston and Surbiton, while Stuart Brady, the rugby player-barrister from South Croydon has been handed the tough task of taking stockbroker belt Reigate from the Tories.

At least Brady can console himself that he was selected for Reigate, one of several seats that Croydon Tory councillor Mario Creatura lusted after, unsuccessfully… Still, there’s a few days left before the declaration deadline, and Gavin Barwell’s former gobby fac totem might yet find his name on the ballot paper for some lost cause somewhere.

Sutton has a significant Tamil vote. Reshekaron’s selection may mean more Tamil votes go Labour’s way in Sutton and Cheam, although it is hard to consider the thirtysomething as anything other than a paper candidate, being given a reward for delivering thousands of leaflets and smiling sweetly in hundreds of campaign selfies.

Although Electoral Calculus gives the Liberal Democrats a 47% chance of regaining the Sutton and Cheam seat, this may be too much of an ask, especially after two years of self-inflicted damage.

The Liberal Democrats only held their candidate selection last week.

Relegation material: Luke Taylor, not universally popular even within the LibDems

Favouite Luke Taylor’s dogged pursuit of a parliamentary seat has seen him on a “political journey”, standing first in Battersea, then in Mitcham and Morden, to finally roll up in Sutton, where he became a councillor in Sutton West and East Cheam only in 2022.

That there was a candidacy vacancy at all was, some Sutton insiders suggest, due to more than a bit of gentle lobbying by Taylor himself to see David Campanale, chosen in November 2022, dumped.

Taylor if selected must hope he improves on his record in previous elections, having lost his deposit in Battersea, winning only 8% of the vote when candidate in Mitcham and Morden, and failing to win a seat on Wandsworth Council in 2010 and at Merton in 2018.

“Let’s face it,” one of his Sutton council colleagues confided as the members’ selection votes were being tallied yesterday, “he’s no Pep Guardiola. More a Matt Gray,” they said, referring to the erstwhile manager of Sutton United who left in December, with the club doomed to relegation back to non-league football.

Taylor told members at his selection meeting to ignore what is written about him by Inside Croydon. Taylor will probably need all the publicity he can get with so little time left to make an impression on Sutton and Cheam voters, and with party activists preferring to deliver leaflets in Carshalton and Wallington.

The Conservatives have tried their best to help the LibDems here by pissing off their incumbent MP Paul Scully, who continues to sulk over his not being shortlisted for the Tories’ London mayoralty candidacy.

Dodgy LibDem bar charts: the implication here is clear as Bobby Dean seeks to ‘squeeze’ the Labour vote in Carshalton and Wallington

Tom Drummond, the leader of the Conservative group on Sutton Council, could well hold on here.

Unlike Colburn, who is defending a wafer-thin 629 majority, Drummond inherits an 8,351 buffer from his pal Scully.

The LibDem leadership was telling anyone who would listen last night that there are 80 seats across the country where they expect the public to “lend” them their vote to oust the Tories – yes, the same Tories who had the door to No10 held open for them by Ed Davey and his mates in 2010, with all the resulting damage to the country as a consequence.

The Liberal Democrats do not have the same momentum of public opinion behind them as Labour – they are hovering at around 10% in national polls – and Sutton and Cheam, their target seat No23, is likely to prove a tougher challenge for them. Only a Tory national implosion will deliver this seat to the LibDems.

Bromley

In Bromley, the two Bob Conservative MPs, Bob Neill and Bob Stewart, are both gone.

Poor fortune: Bob Neill, MP for Bromley, wants to hand over to Peter Fortune (right)

The seats are greatly redrawn.

Gareth Bacon is carrying on and defending in Oprington but Electoral Calculus see Labour as twice as likely as the Tories to win there.

Bacon is a former London Assembly Member, like Peter Fortune who managed to squeeze in his selection for the Conservatives in Bromley and Biggin Hill just before he had to decide whether to run again in the recent London election. Fortune is concentrating on the parliamentary seat now. He was a Bromley councillor just across the Croydon border in Hayes and Coney Hall and was deputy leader of Bromley Council. But Electoral Calculus only gives Fortune an unlucky-for-some 13% chance of taking the new seat.

New boundaries: Clive Efford expects to be re-elected in a revised constituency

Boundary changes have made Beckenham and Penge a Labour banker this time for Liam Conlan. Conlan’s mother is Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

Clive Efford, MP for Eltham since 1997, is expected to romp home in the revamped Greenwich and Bromley cross-boundaries Eltham and Chislehurst seat.

All pulled together with the likely results in Croydon, where at least three of the four seats are likely to vote Labour, a Tory wipeout may not be absolute. But if the Conservatives’  national campaign implodes amid in-fighting by their MPs, by the morning of July 5, there may be very little blue on the election maps of this part of south London.

• Read our overview of the Croydon parliamentary contests by clicking here

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