CROYDON ELECTION QUESTIONS
For this General Election, Inside Croydon offered a platform to candidates from across the political spectrum, from across the borough’s four constituencies. Much the same questions, their answers to be published at length.
But some of the candidates – people who want your votes in tomorrow’s General Election – refused to answer your questions.
Which poses a question to you, the voters of Croydon: can you trust these people with your vote?
Back in the 1990s, when a senior political figure failed to turn up as agreed for a recording of the satirical topical news quiz, Have I Got News For You, the producers “empty chaired” the culprit, sticking a tub of lard on the desk in the politico’s place, to symbolise the politician’s uselessness.
But this reluctance to answer questions has extended to wannabe politicians, even experienced parliamentarians, who tomorrow expect you to cast your vote for them. No questions asked…
Inside Croydon has reported earlier in the campaign at the manner in which some candidates have ducked and dived any public scrutiny, taking the voters’ votes for granted. You can read their political messaging on their leaflets, but woe betide you if you want to ask a question about policy.
Those (mostly Labour candidates) contesting seats with anticipated large majorities have dodged public hustings. There’s been loads of selfies with grinning sycophants and supporters – often mainly their own party’s councillors, with notably fewer activists than at previous elections – but little evidence of real engagement with the public, with the voters.
It could just be that, in the 21st Century, in an age of Twitter and TikTok and 24-hour news channels, we have seen the last of the election hustings as we know them. It has been a notable trait across the country that politicians from Labour and the Conservatives, usually the two leading contenders for any seat, have ducked out of hustings, rendering the event pretty pointless.
At the start of the campaign, Inside Croydon put a set of questions, some suggested by our readers, to a range of candidates from across Croydon.
Chris Philp, the Conservative MP for Croydon South since 2015, told us he would take a look and get back to us. He never did. Which is a pity.
Sarah Jones, Labour’s candidate in the new seat of Croydon West, who had previously been MP for Croydon Central since 2017, did not reply to any of our emails or messages, she never answered our phone calls.
Out of his depth: the best campaigning Ben Taylor has been able to come up with is the grass uncut by the council that his Labour colleagues bankrupted
And when we gave up on Jones, we approached her party colleague, Ben Taylor, officially the worst Labour candidate in Croydon local elections in history. Taylor lacked the common decency to respond.
Are these candidates for political office incapable of answering a few questions?
Are they scared?
“I’d get a complete kicking from within the party if I took part in the questionnaire,” one candidate from the reds or the blues told us.
Inside Croydon has charted, repeatedly, how Steve Reed, a domineering figure in right-wing Labour politics in London has threatened us, unsuccessfully, with libel writs and been party to attempts to hack this site, after our investigative reporting found that a company run by David Evans, now the Labour Party’s General Secretary, had benefited from £200,000-worth of council contracts from his mates in Croydon, and after we doggedly reported the short-comings of the likes of Tony Newman, Alison Butler and Paul Scott and their part in the bankrupting of this borough.
Yet these very same people now rely on public support – your support – to be elected to the House of Commons. Reed and Jones were there while the collapse of the council’s finances, while the Town Hall was being run by their mates was going on in front of them. They said and did nothing.
Under pressure: Tory Philp was trotted out on national TV again this week, and was as unconvincing as ever
Labour has selected a couple of candidates in Croydon who were not directly involved in the council’s financial collapse – Natasha Irons in Croydon East and Taylor in Croydon South. But neither have been prepared to answer questions about their party’s role in wrecking this borough.
Not that the Conservatives are much better. In Croydon East they have Jason Cummings, a councillor who has hiked your Council Tax by 21% since May 2023. While Philp has been part of successive Tory governments that have imposed austerity on Croydon and local authorities across the country, causing increasing levels of hardship, as we all pay more to get less.
So it was a shame that none of these culprits were prepared to make themselves available for a few open questions.
Q Why should we trust you or your party?
This was the question that Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire put to “Congo” Chris soon after he had demonstrated on Question Time that his grasp of the geography of central Africa was a little slack, even though he continued to advocate expelling migrants to Rwanda. Or is it Congo?
Bomb disposal: LibDem Richard Howard (centre) defused bombs, while Tory Philp bombed the economy
It is a question worth putting to Philp again, given his hapless part in the crashing of the British economy under Thick Lizzy Truss’s mini-budget, seeing mortgage payments soar for thousands in Croydon and across the country.
There was an interesting contrast among candidates this week. One of Philp’s challengers, Major Richard Howard, standing for the LibDems in Croydon South, released a video of his time working on the front line in a war zone for the British Army, as a bomb disposal expert. Unlike Philp, who put a bomb under the British economy.
All the candidates had sight of our questions. Perhaps this was a question that Jones felt she could not answer, given Labour’s part in the council’s financial collapse.
As for Taylor, who in previous, local elections, has tried to mislead the electorate by claiming to be from South Croydon, when he lives in Coulsdon, this was probably a question of integrity that he would struggle to answer. Taylor was introduced to local politics by Labour councillor Jamie Audsley, who was de-selected by Newman’s Numpties because of his support for having a directly elected Mayor. Taylor stumbled from the wreckage of that unscathed.
Q What is the single most important issue for you at this General Election?
No difficult questions: Sarah Jones was elected in 2017 on a wave of Corbynmania. She’s now a fully committed Starmerite
For Labour, this election is not about the people. It’s all about power, at any cost.
Who knows what might be the answer to this question, from Taylor (who appears oblivious to the fact that the council has run out of money) or Jones, since Labour appears to have abandoned all their principles, all of leader Keir Starmer’s promises, and pretty much anything recognisable as a “Labour policy”.
Q After 14 years of austerity, England’s local councils, social care, local services, are in a state of collapse. Including here in Croydon. What would you, and your party, do to fix Croydon?
Again, no answers from Philp – who has been part of the Conservative austerity machine for almost a decade – nor from Taylor or Jones, whose Labour Party has no additional spending planned to help the dozens of local councils in financial crisis, to stave off the impending emergency in adult social care, or to provide the essential local services that people depend upon.
Under a Starmer Labour government, it will just be more of the same.
Q What will you do to improve education in our schools and for our students?
Philp, Taylor, Jones: no answers.
Q Brexit?
Here’s the question that Tories and Labour try to avoid answering. Neither offer any solution to the greatest act of self-harm in this country’s history.
Q Gaza?
Tens of thousands of civilians, including children and women, have been maimed or killed by the nine-month onslaught by the Israeli defence force.
Powerplay: many of the candidates in tomorrow’s General Election don’t want to be held accountable for their parts in trashing Croydon, and the country
The candidates standing for election tomorrow – Philp, Taylor and Jones – are representing political parties that not only endorsed Israel’s military action against Gaza, which many believe to be war crimes, but in November, those party’s voted against a call for a humanitarian ceasefire.
No wonder that they don’t wish to be held accountable.
We might have also had some individual questions.
For Sarah Jones we might have asked…
Q Why did you say and do nothing when your party colleagues were bankrupting the borough?
Or
Q What has happened to your party’s 2021 suspensions of Tony Newman and Simon Hall over the council’s financial collapse?
Or
Q What do you expect to be the outcome of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into allegations of computer fraud over Labour’s selection of a candidate in your old stomping ground that is now Croydon East?
For Chris Philp, we might have asked:
Q What’s it like to be the Tories’ human punchbag on TV and radio? Do you have no self-respect?
And for Ben Taylor, we might have asked:
Q Does the Labour Party have a problem with black people, as the Forde Report suggested?
And Inside Croydon will continue to ask the difficult questions, the ones that the people who want your votes don’t want to answer.
Previous Croydon Election Questions:
Claire Bonham, Liberal Democrat, Streatham and Croydon North
Mark Samuel, Independent, Croydon South
Peter Underwood, Green, Croydon East
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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
The answer to the question in the headline is, you don’t have to as there are plenty of other candidates in all 4 constituencies, including 4 very good Liberal Democrats.
I suppose I’d better end by saying whoever you vote for, get out there and vote, vote, vote!
Encouraging people to vote multiple times, Yusuf?
Oh wait that’s illegal isn’t it.😊 vote just the once. Of course if we had a proportional system you could vote multiple times, let’s say I was getting ahead of myself!
In my reasonably long life , I have never been faced with not knowing who to vote for. Now is that time. None of them offer the answers that we as voters require to be answered truthfully. Where is the hope for our young people? Where is the education and health services that we should be expecting for all of our people? What hope is there for Social Care ? At least we will be well rid of Conservatives. They have caused so much damage.
On social care, the LibDems have promised free social care for adults who need it using Scotland as the model where it was delivered some years ago when the LibDems were in coalition.
Whatever you do, vote for a party that you can believe in and do not vote tactically. A tactical vote is a vote for nothing as the voter does not care about what the party’s policies are that the vote returns, only in getting the current party in power out. This blindness can result in getting more of the same, or worse, in return for your vote.
Take a look at all the candidates and what they have to say for themselves, and if none of them fulfil you expectations you can vote for “none of the above” by spoiling your ballot paper as it will be included in the count as it is included in the total amount of papers returned: not voting doesn’t.
It’s a depressing thought that the most likely winner in Croydon South will be either Ben Taylor – who claimed the council wasn’t bankrupt after posting the S114 notice, or Chris Philp – the man who would jump off a cliff if Rishi Sunak told him it would further his political career.