‘Like a sauna at a David Lloyd fitness centre’: but at least the mayoral candidates kept their clothes on for last night’s Croydon Business Association hustings
ELECTION SKETCH: In a cramped ‘hub’ in Broad Green, the first full hustings of the 2026 Croydon Mayor campaign took place last night. KEN TOWL was there, so you didn’t need to be (and you couldn’t have squeezed in, anyway)
The reception area of the Croydon Smile hub is taller than it is long. The building, dark wood and glass on the outside, pointing up at the sky like a black wedge of cheese, looks like an architectural metaphor for aspiration. The Croydon Business Association chose it for their mayoral hustings.
Inside, it has the look of a sauna at a David Lloyd fitness club, all exposed pine, with five people seated in a row being grilled. Fortunately, they kept their clothes on.
These are some of the people with an aspiration of their own, to be executive Mayor of Croydon for four years starting on May 8. There might have been six, but we don’t find out why there is not until the end…
Running with the sauna idea himself is Michael Pusey MBE, the mayoral candidate for the Taking the Initiative micro-party. When the candidates are asked what they will do to regenerate the town centre, Pusey’s big idea is to build a leisure centre for the people, “something similar to a David Lloyd, but affordable”.
Phone records: TTIP’s novice candidate, Michael Pusey, was caught out at his first hustings
But on the other hand, “We’ve already got a Boxpark, so there’s no need to duplicate it.”
Well, that’s a relief. Pusey appeared to be struggling.
New to this game – his candidacy had only been announced a couple of hours before this debut public appearance as a candidate – he had missed his cue at the beginning when the hopefuls were given two minutes to introduce themselves. He took the invitation literally: “Hello, I’m Michael Pusey MBE, and I‘m the candidate for the Taking the Initiative Party.”
There, un-politician-like, he stopped talking, and listened while the other four candidates gave their carefully prepared introductory speeches, each designed to frame the debate to come.
Conservative Mayor Jason Perry was the fixer, the man who, given he is the incumbent, and given he is Perry, got things done. He had “fixed the borough”, he said, he had cut the grass and dealt with fly-tipping and thus “fixed the look and feel”.
Notably, I thought, he omitted to say he had fixed the finances, which was his big promise in the 2022 election. He liked a vehicular metaphor. Croydon was “back on track, moving forward, maintaining momentum”. His eyes glazed over with pride, as if he imagined himself on the first train out of East Croydon, under the Bridge to Nowhere and out to the sunny uplands of the North Downs.
Rowenna Davis, a Labour councillor in Waddon, was the consummate professional. She deftly thanked the organisers by name, and introduced herself as a mum of two, who had taught at a local school. She had a three-point plan, jobs and homes for the centre, safer streets and a cleaner borough. We were, after all, she said pointedly, with a subtle side-glance at an uncomfortable-looking Perry, the “fly-tipping capital of England”.
Next up was Major Richard Howard, Liberal Democrat and ex-bomb disposal expert who has actually saved people’s lives. If this wasn’t enough, it turned out later that he had also had a senior role in “ammunitions management” in the breaking down of Camp Bastion (the British military base in Afghanistan) which, he said, was the size of Reading.
He now works as a financial advisor. Part of me thought, “We don’t need an election – just put this guy in charge!” But we can’t start thinking like that, can we?
The political reality, of course, is that the candidates are not evaluated on their personal merits alone but in the context of both local and national politics. Locally, Liberal Democrats have little history and, apart from up in Crystal Palace, no organisation, and so Major Howard, personally a very impressive man, sits at 66-1 with the bookies.
For the Green Party, Peter Underwood emphasised his education: economics at Oxford, followed by a Masters in Business Administration (this was the Croydon Business Association after all), and he seemed to have a handle on the reasons for Croydon’s dire financial situation. He is a smart guy and he seems to have a handle on reality and you might trust him to run an administration – if not diffuse a bomb – but, again, like Major Howard, he is an outsider in this race. Though, at 10-1, better placed than Howard.
Tight fit: Labour’s Rowenna Davis was confronted with her party’s disastrous financial record at Croydon Town Hall
Pusey was given a second bite of the cherry, and it felt like the fair thing to do, so he got a chance to set his vision. He told us about training BMX bikers, upselling property and suggested we vote for him rather than someone from the other parties because he was “a real person”.
When asked what they would do about opportunities for young people, the candidates talked about consultation with them, about youth workers, liaison with businesses. Pusey said he was connected, had networks. Because of these networks, he said, “We can pull on McDonald’s, we can pull on Ikea.”
It reminded me of his TTIP colleague in the general election, Donna Murray-Turner, the candidate for Croydon West, who had promised to fund her campaign promises with donations from supermarkets.
Perry, on the other hand, knew how to appeal to his audience. “If we want jobs for young people,” he said, “we have to support businesses.” Indeed, there was a strong consensus in the room that small businesses are a Very Good Thing. There was even a red-blue consensus that unions were a Very Good Thing. After Davis had commented that unions needed a “seat at the table”, Perry insisted that, at least in Croydon while he was Mayor, they did.
Questions from the audience started badly, but got better. The first questioner wore a purple TTIP badge and had a question designed to damage Davis. “Labour bankrupted the council. Why vote for you?”
Such a question will not have been unanticipated. “I was a teacher at the time,” said Davis, and went on to distance herself from her predecessors with an emphatic condemnation of what they had done to Croydon and to the reputation of Labour. It is to Davis’ credit that, at 6/5, she is the favourite in this race but she, just like Howard and Underwood, are subject to the vagaries of a wider context beyond their control.
In this room, only Perry can be judged on his own merits. “But the debt was caused by your party!” shouted the questioner, audibly peeved at Davis’s failure to collapse into vicarious sobs and apologies. The questioner was shut down. This was a CBA debate, not a TTIP barracking.
The next question was from a man whose accent identified him as being from Scotland, who was not wearing a big blue rosette, and who did not identify himself as Conservative Councillor Alasdair Stewart. His undercover question, clearly pre-arranged with Perry, was “What have they achieved for Croydon?”
On the clock: Tory Jason Perry claimed that as Croydon’s Mayor, he had fixed the borough’s fly-tipping problem
It gave Perry the chance to make an interesting dismissal of his unwanted fly-tipping capital of England accolade by claiming that the statistics were for reporting rather than actual fly-tipping. So Perry’s stance seems to be that we in Croydon are just a little too fussy when it comes to people dumping rubbish in our streets. He actually got applauded for that.
A few more questions later, it was nearing 9pm and the candidates got another two minutes to put their headline pitch to the crowd.
Underwood: I will consult so much that voting for me to be Mayor is voting for you to be Mayor.
Howard: There is much we agree on. I will consult with other parties, end Punch-and-Judy politics.
Davis: I’m a mum, an ex-teacher, love Croydon. It’s between me and Jason. At this, some in the audience called out “No it isn’t!” – so much for an end to Punch-and-Judy politics. Davis continued by saying that she is best-placed to take Croydon’s case to a Labour government.
Perry: I am Croydon born and bred. I groaned inwardly and ticked off the last quote from my hustings bingo card. I wasn’t surprised that Perry had said this – he always does. I was just surprised that he had been able to hold it in for two whole hours. For Perry, we are back on track, going forward. It is a journey. Please let me continue, or we’ll go backward.
Pusey: Everybody knows what I have done. I have trained BMX riders and produced Dizzee Rascal.
And why was there no sixth candidate?
An official from the CBA thanked everyone and said that it had been a good debate – he was right, it had. He added that the candidates present all had something in common: “Decency”. Unlike, he said, another party which was divisive and had been invited but had declined to send anyone.
“Were you referring to Reform UK? You invited them to send someone but they declined to take part?” I asked.
“Yes, they could have sent someone but they declined.” No love lost there then, between the CBA and Reform.
Unbeknown to the CBA organiser, or to me at the time, as the hustings was going on, Reform was in the process of having to pick another candidate to stand for Croydon Mayor. By some reckoning, that’s the fourth since last year, and the third that’s still living. So attending a hustings was probably not among their priorities last night.
Even their latest pick might change between the time you’re reading this and tomorrow night’s big reveal at the Fairfield Halls with Nigel Farage.
Though if that’s the chaotic way they manage their own internal party affairs, imagine what Reform might be like if put in charge of Croydon Town Hall.
Mayor Jason Perry has refused to give a pre-election interview to Inside Croydon, where he would face questions about his record in office- Paid-up subscribers to this website can listen to The Andrew Fisher Interview with Labour’s Rowenna Davis by clicking here
- And you can listen to last week’s Andrew Fisher Interview with Liberal Democrat Richard Howard by clicking here
- Andrew Fisher will be interviewing the Green Party’s Peter Underwood over the next few weeks
- We still have an empty Zoom slot available for Mayor Perry, should he pluck up the courage to face some proper public scrutiny
Read more: Game of musical chairs for Reform as Tebbutt takes ‘new role’
Read more: Et tu Brute: Fringe party claims credit for getting Perry elected
Read more: Farage party picked a dead woman to run for Croydon Mayor
Read more: Mayor Perry failed to stop Farage rally in council-owned venue
Read more: Surrey Street market trader Joseph quits Labour in race row
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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“The hub in Broad Green”? Is that where the Broad Green library used to be, before (failed mayor) Piss-Poor closed it down ?
No.