Political Editor WALTER CRONXITE on the latest self-serving excursion by Croydon’s £84,000 per year part-time Mayor
Seeking support: Jason Perry is off to Manchester to get backing at the Conservative annual conference
Jason Perry is in a fight for his political career. And he is doing it at your expense.
Paid £84,000 per year as the elected Mayor of Croydon, that works out at more than £300 per day, money paid by our cash-strapped council out of your Council Tax. Which Perry has hiked by 27% since he came to office, and will probably increase by the maximum 5% from April, just before he is due to face the voters in the 2026 local elections.
And what is piss-poor Perry doing for the people of Croydon tomorrow and on Tuesday?
Absolutely nothing.
That’s because Perry is appearing at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester in a little self-serving promotional tour.
According to a schedule circulated among his rapidly diminishing band of followers, part-time Perry, the Mayor who failed to fix the finances in Croydon, will be at Manchester’s Alan Hotel on Princess Street tomorrow from 10.30am to 11.40am for a bash organised by the Centre for London on “London’s Temporary Accommodation Crisis – The groundbreaking plan to house homeless families”.
Maybe Perry will pick up a tip or two, since he’s not delivered a single new council home in Croydon since he became Mayor almost four years ago.
Perry, a big fan of Westfield and goody bags, is sure to enjoy another session he is due to attend in Manchester tomorrow: “How can regeneration present itself as a political opportunity for the Conservatives?”, which is being staged by an organisation called Connect from 3.30pm at Exchange 1 at the Manchester Central conference centre.
This year’s Tory Party conference is important to Perry as it is probably the last he might attend with any kind of elected legitimacy and so rub shoulders with his party’s “big beasts”, such as… errr… Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary.
Come next May, Perry seems likely to lose his status as Mayor of Croydon, and the Conservatives will therefore also lose control of Croydon Council, but probably not because of Labour winning the local elections as much as Reform UK taking voters, and council seats, from the Tories.
Official business: Jason Perry’s visit to Manchester is being undertaken in his official capacity, and is therefore funded by Croydon Council Tax-payers
So it is that after an evening no doubt spent at one reception event or another, pressing the flesh with some top Tories and probably raising a glass or three to the centenary of the birth of Margaret Thatcher, Perry will be hard at it again on Tuesday, all at your expense.
Croydon’s £84,000 per year elected Mayor will be attending events organised by the Taxpayers’ Alliance (“Local government unleased: Time to set councils free”) and the Conservative Councillors’ Association (“How to manage the spiralling cost of social care”), before rolling up at the Midland Hotel at noon for an event titled: “London’s Future: Where and How can Conservatives Win?”
Which might be a bit of salt in the wounds just a couple of days after a Tory London Assembly Member, Keith Prince, defected to Reform.
Pressing the flesh: being in Manchester might make Perry feel important
Of course, none of this would matter if Perry was attending Conservative Party Conference in his own time, taking a leave of absence from his Mayor duties. But he’s not.
Perry’s packed agenda in Manchester was announced by him on a little social media flyer under the header: “Jason Perry – Conservative Mayor of Croydon”. So this is official business. Paid for by you.
Perry has also been busy performing for a Conservative audience by writing an article for the in-house party website, Conservative Home. His pre-conference piece tries to cast him as some sort of saviour of local government – obviously far removed from the real experiences of long-suffering Croydon residents.
For Perry’s article doesn’t mention his 27% Council Tax hikes. Also missing from the
paean of self-praise is any mention of the record £136million bail-out Perry asked for from government earlier this year.
Nor does Perry explain that that emergency funding was necessary because of his council’s “runaway” spending, including paying a contractor more than £700 per hour to help Croydon’s head of HR, Dean “Shagger” Showsmith, to make more cuts to council jobs.
After just three fly-tipping prosecutions in almost four years, in his article Perry even tries to make out his administration has somehow dealt with the blight on Croydon’s streets: “We are sending a clear message: Croydon is no longer a soft touch,” Perry lied.
The failed Mayor, whose final months of his administration will be spent under the supervision of government-appointed Commissioners, even tried to portray his time in office as some kind of success. “It’s working,” Perry lied.
“One blitz clean, one enforcement action, one repaired street at a time, we are showing that recovery is possible,” Perry wrote.
Croydon residents would be entitled to ask for their money back after Perry’s years of failure.
Read more: Council accused of cover-up over multi-million agency spend
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Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
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Will part time Perry play a double bluff? Do all this bluff with the rapidly diminishing Tory membership and then defect to Reform with a few months to go to carry on driving Croydon into the ground. He is a Tory boy don’t you know.
If he was capable of planning ahead, Piss-Poor Perry should have taken some brochures and flyers for plastic guttering and other building products that his family firm supplies up to Manchester with him, as he will have more time available to try and sell those things once he has been consigned the Croydon Council’s scrapheap next May. He is just lucky that other people at his business have been keeping it going while he has neglected it while he was busy running Croydon into oblivion.