INSIDE SUTTON: The conflicting demands of being constituency MPs and ward councillors are beginning to take a toll, reports ROSE HILL
Wrong priorities: distrusted by some council colleagues, MP Luke Taylor has been devoting much of his time to campaigning for his party
Residents in Sutton are beginning to ask whether the borough’s two recently elected MPs are serving the public interest, or instead choosing to serve the interests of their political party – and themselves.
Liberal Democrats Luke Taylor and Bobby Dean were elected as MPs at the General Election last July, supposedly to represent Sutton and Cheam and Carshalton and Wallington respectively. Both were already councillors, Taylor for Sutton West and East Cheam, Dean for The Wrythe.
And both remain as councillors, each entitled to £12,600 in councillor allowances in addition to their £91,000 per year MP’s salary. All of it funded, of course, by the tax-payer.
Yet those two potentially demanding roles are not enough to keep Taylor and Dean fully occupied, it would seem.
According to his own declaration of members’ interests, not content with his Sutton and Westminster salaries, until October Taylor was also being paid £71,440 per year for a third job, by a firm of aviation consultants. Quite the high-flyer!
Essex-born Dean, meanwhile, listed two additional outlets for his seemingly boundless energies, in addition to his full-time role as an MP and his responsibilities as a ward councillor. On becoming an MP, Dean stopped taking his councillor allowances. But until the start of April, he was registered as the sole director of a public relations company called Speak Change Ltd, based at Otter Drive, Carshalton. He also claims to be a “producer” for the charity, Save the Children.
It is in trying to juggle all these demanding roles that moonlighting MPs Taylor and Dean appear to be falling down on their public jobs.
The LibDem duo have taken a rather flexible view of their Westminster duties, where Taylor has front bench responsibilities as Sir Ed Davie’s spokesman on London – not bad for a lad from Lincolnshire who tried, and failed, to get elected to parliament on two previous occasions before he hit the jackpot in Sutton.
Rather than being at the House of Commons handling matters of national importance, Taylor and Dean have been devoting their time to steadying the LibDems’ listing ship in Sutton, while acting as cheerleaders at two local by-elections.
It makes them among the most expensive council lobby fodder in the country.
Matters came to a head at the meeting of Sutton’s full council last Monday. Both MPs were at Sutton Civic Centre, where the LibDem group under leader Barry “Basher” Lewis needed their votes to help block a Conservative motion calling for a consultation about the use of e-bikes on Sutton High Street. They also helped to pass another motion offering a vague promise to improve access to GPs. Which is nice.
Dean remained silent throughout. His fellow MP, Taylor, spoke for a grand total of two minutes.
Lobby fodder: MP Bobby Dean had nothing to say while attending last week’s full council meeting at Sutton Civic Centre
There were just three members of the public in the viewing gallery, where they were outnumbered by security staff.
The only real spark of interest at the meeting came when Patrick Ogbonna, a Liberal Democrat councillor, broke ranks and abstained on a vote — an act of rebellion virtually unheard of among Sutton’s LibDems. Ogbonna’s dislike of Luke Taylor is, by now, an open secret.
Critics suggest that instead of fulfilling their duties as national legislators or addressing local constituents’ concerns, Taylor and Dean are wholly preoccupied with local party politics and electioneering in the run-up to the 2026 local elections.
Many local councillors, on stepping up to the national stage and becoming MPs, often resign their council position, causing a ward by-election (estimated cost: anything from £15,000 to £25,000 a time, depending on the ward size and council).
This doesn’t always go wonderfully smoothly.
Jim Dickson, the full-time professional lobbyist for property developers and part-time Labour councillor in Lambeth (he was a predecessor of Steve Reed as council leader at Brixton Town Hall) last year suddenly discovered a hitherto hidden interest in the people of Dartford, and was elected MP there. Dickson continued to draw payments from Westminster and Brixton for a while, choosing to resign from Lambeth Council in February, prompting a by-election in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction last Thursday. Labour, now deeply unpopular nationally, lost that council seat to the Greens. Whoops!
And in Sutton, the LibDems have already had to deal with two by-elections caused by absentee councillors. They managed to hang on to the Sutton Central seat vacated by David Bartolucci, who had a massive strop when he was dumped by “basher” Lewis as the deputy leader of the council. Bartolucci simply never bothered turning up for any council meetings.
Now, the LibDem leafleting cult is out and about on the streets of Carshalton South and Clockhouse, for a by-election caused by absentee councillor Amy Haldane, who over the past year opted to spend her maternity leave somewhere more tranquil — in north London.
So the idea of either Taylor or Dean giving up their councillorships right now might not suit the Sutton LibDems’ party machine’s interests – regardless of how ill-served the constituents of Sutton and Cheam and Carshalton and Wallington might be as a consequence.
“It’s not merely a question of skewed priorities — it’s a question of whether Sutton and Carshalton are receiving the parliamentary representation they were promised,” said one source who was at last week’s council meeting.
“On current evidence, it’s hard to see that they are.”
Read more: MP hands Westminster job to councillor who donated £3,000
Read more: LibDem candidate cutting a sorry figure on the eve of election
Read more: LibDem Choi holds Sutton Central council seat with 56% of vote
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