Greens announce parliamentary candidates for three seats across Croydon and Sutton, as a Tory councillor helps out her party in its hour of need by taking on a hopeless task in east London
Ria Patel, the Greens’ councillor in Fairfield ward since 2022, was last night confirmed as the party’s parliamentary candidate in Croydon West for the July 4 General Election.
New target: Green councillor Ria Patel
Croydon West is among the borough’s re-jigged parliamentary constituencies, and is expected to be a “safe” Labour seat, with one poll earlier this week predicting that Labour would win with 68% of the vote, with the Greens relegating the Tories to third place. Sarah Jones, the MP for Croydon Central from 2017, is Labour’s candidate in the new constituency, while the Tories have selected another 2022-intake Croydon councillor, Simon Fox.
Patel is almost certain to place Labour’s abandonment of its £28billion Green Deal pledge at the front-and-centre in her campaigning with Jones, who is Keith Starmer’s shadow cabinet member for industry and decarbonisation.
Patel is Croydon’s youngest and its first non-binary councillor.
“I’m standing to be your MP because we need real change, and the other parties just aren’t offering that,” Patel said last night.
“We need significant change to make our tax system fairer and restore our public services, protecting our NHS and bringing water companies into public ownership. We need to end the failed privatisation experiment and return the focus to providing a public service, not making a private profit.
“We need politicians who will stand up for what’s right. And when we see other countries breaking international law we should be part of the prosecution, not making pathetic excuses to defend them.
“I am also standing to be your MP because I want to be a voice for local people. MPs from other parties are told what do and what to say by their party bosses. Greens aren’t like that and I will be free to speak up for you.
“The Greens have already overtaken the Conservatives in much of the area and we are the real rivals to Labour. I have shown as a local councillor that I will stand up for local people and I will do so as your MP.”
Ballot fodder: Holly Ramsey, the Tory candidate in West Ham
Another Croydon councillor, Holly Ramsey (who that? Ed) was yesterday named as the Conservative candidate for the firmly Labour seat of West Ham and Beckton.
Inside Croydon has been assured that the little-seen Tory councillor is neither the daughter of TV chef Gordon, nor a character from the Aussie soap Neighbours.
Ramsey was previously on Sutton Council, before being handed the safe Croydon Tory ward of Purley and Woodcote in 2022. She will presumably be touring around parts of east London over the next month, heard shouting, “Come on you ‘Ammers!”
The Tories, having called the election for July 4, found themselves in a bit of a panic this week, still with around 100 candidates to find for seats around the country, including some notionally safe Tory seats, and the declaration deadline on Friday looming fast.
Like Labour, Tory High Command has been taking some liberties, parachuting senior party figures into some of the more-winnable seats (safe to say Ramsey is not among those), but by last night, there were still some vacancies.
Michael Crick, via his excellent @TomorrowsMPs Twitter account, reported, “I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates’ list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere.”
Yet nothing has been heard or seen of the former gobby fac totum, Mario Creatura. How odd…
The Greens, meanwhile, have also announced their candidates for the two Sutton seats: Tracey Hague (previously a candidate in local and national elections in Croydon) will be standing in the General Election in Carshalton and Wallington, and Aasha Anam in Sutton and Cheam.
Read more: Only 1-in-5 burglaries solved on policing minister Philp’s patch
Read more: Philp fighting for survival as Tories face capital punishment
Read more: Scotland Yard’s cyber crime unit investigating Croydon Labour
Read more: Before you next vote, you must read this from The New Yorker
-
- All other candidates, for all constituencies, can be found by using our special election tool, provided by WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk:
WHY VOTE? For more information on where to vote on July 4 and for the full list of who is standing for election in your constituency, use our widget here:
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
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
Maybe Mario Creatura isn’t as stupid as he looks. He was very proud of his respectable second place in Croydon Central in 2019 (where he managed to increase Labour’s majority by 1.1 percent).
Standing for the Conservatives in 2024 is the political equivalent of going over the top at the Battle of the Somme. I expect a lot of the Tory cannon fodder will be humiliated by being placed third or worse. Losing badly is not a good look for a narcissistic self-publicist
Maybe. But maybe not…