The national election campaign as it is being conducted in neighbouring Sutton has a very local feel to it, according to NICK MATTEY, Beddington’s independent councillor
Here in Sutton, the campaign leading up to polling day on July 4 in our two parliamentary constituencies is essentially a local council election. The Liberal Democrats have put forward two Sutton councillors as their parliamentary candidates and they are up against one Conservative councillor and a former councillor who has been the MP for Carshalton and Wallington since 2019.
Not a pretty sight: Sutton’s General Election campaign is a bit parochial
It is also a local election because neither the Liberal Democrats nor the Conservatives are likely to form or be part of any national government formed after July 5.
Labour, who most pundits agree will form the new government, are not expected to do well in Sutton’s two constituencies, Sutton and Cheam and Carshalton and Wallington. On Sutton council, they have just two councillors.
Labour did have three councillors but they failed to retain St Helier West in a council by-election in May after the resignation of Sheila Berry. The size of that defeat, when the party nationally has been riding high in opinion polls, and the fact that they lost the council seat to the Conservatives may have convinced Labour not to bother taking Sutton seriously in the General Election.
The glittering prize for Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in Sutton is to have their own MP, with an annual salary of £91,340 and up to £300,000 a year to pay staff and run an office. This would represent a combined cost to the taxpayer of £3million over the next five years, but would provide considerable support to the respective parties in the 2026 local government elections.
‘Winning here’: Labour have hardly bothered to campaign in Sutton’s LibDem stronghold
This massive public subsidy for the major political parties is one of the reasons why some experts are suggesting that the Conservatives will face an existential crisis if they lose on July 4 as badly as some of the pollsters are predicting: every parliamentary seat lost represents millions of pounds received by the party, indirectly, through the MP and their assistants and researchers.
There are eight candidates standing for election in Carshalton and Wallington and six in Sutton and Cheam. For all the talk of July 4 being “independents’ day”, it is unlikely that the independents and other minor party candidates standing here will come close to retaining their £500 deposit (a full list of candidates for all seats can be found by clicking here, or by using the clever little online widget towards the bottom of this web page).
In Sutton and Cheam, Labour’s candidate is a Croydon councillor, Chrishni Reshekaron, though she appears to be nothing more than the most tissue-thin of paper candidates.
In Carshalton and Wallington, familiar Liberal Democrat tactics have been in full swing for the past two years, bombarding residents with a constant stream of leaflets which seek to claim the credit for other people’s hard work and efforts, plus producing ludicrous bar charts, while writing off Labour as a lost cause not worth voting for.
One new element this year is sewage. Someone at LibDem HQ has advised candidates that alerting residents to sewage spills is a vote-winner. Only a LibDem government can tackle water pollution, we are being told. As there will not be a Liberal Democrat government, this is academic.
Their promises to plant 60million trees and turn our cities into forests (presumably to help soak up the CO2 generated by incinerators like the one they had built in Beddington) are also unlikely to be implemented.
The LibDems’ candidate in Carshalton and Wallington, Tom Brake’s old seat and one of their top targets, is Bobby Dean.
During this orgy of leafleting, Dean has used every opportunity to remind his victims that he has a dog called Chester and a wife called Gemma. Usually in that order. He got himself very over-excited when a photo of Chester graced the pages of Inside Sutton not so long ago.
Wipe out: Sutton’s two Tory MPs in 2019, Elliot Colburn, left, and Paul Scully, might both be ex-MPs come July 5
The LibDem leafleting cult has also informed us, repeatedly, that the three of them spend a large amount of their time walking the banks of the River Wandle. Presumably, Bobby, Chester and Gemma are on the lookout for sewage.
The Conservatives are on the back foot and are having to fight for every vote, since when Elliot Colburn won the seat five years ago, he did so by a mere 600 votes. They appear to be so short of support locally now that when it came to submitting the nomination papers, three of his 10 “subscribers” – resident proposers – three of them were also called Colburn.
Things are getting so grim for the Conservatives in London that Sutton’s Tories must be praying daily that Giorgia Meloni might persuade electoral liability Rishi Sunak to spend the next two weeks in Italy.
There is no incumbent in the other parliamentary seat, Sutton and Cheam, following Paul Scully standing down in a bit of a huff over his treatment by Sunak and Tory High Command. Tom Drummond, the leader of the Conservative group on Sutton Council, is being confronted by LibDem electoral tourist, Luke Taylor.
Sutton has always been a Mecca for failed LibDem candidates from elsewhere. Taylor got the candidacy after David Campanale was ousted. Campanale’s religious beliefs proved too much for some Sutton LibDems, with one of his detractors going as far as to call him “a Christian nutter”.
Scully had a majority of 8,000 votes in 2019. If Drummond is going to hold on to the seat for the Conservatives, he will have to convince voters that a LibDem council and a LibDem MP will lead to more crass decisions and even more appearances in the “Rotten Boroughs” page of Private Eye.
During the May 2022 local elections, it was reported by a female Conservative candidate that she had been followed by a man on a bicycle who yelled abuse at her. At the election count, the candidate recognised the abusive bike rider in conversation with Taylor.
It must be hoped by all concerned that this General Election campaign does not descend to similarly low standards.
Read more: Sordid spat leads to Sutton Tory councillor’s suspension
Read more: Younger people have had their futures sold down the river
Read more: Two weeks early and most candidates are conceding defeat
For the full list of all the candidates standing for election in your constituency in the General Election on July 4, use our widget here:
Nick Mattey, pictured right, has been a councillor for Beddington North ward in Sutton since 2014, initially as a Liberal Democrat, until he was expelled by that party because of his constant opposition to the Viridor incinerator and its toxic pollution
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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
