“Why should we trust you?” – Inside Croydon

It’s not just Croydon Labor who are in “special measures” with their national party officials, as alarm bells are being sounded in the Conservative Quarter over the electoral prospects of ‘Congo’ Chris Philp.
By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor

The Tories in Croydon have been placed in a form of “special measures” by their national party in an emergency move to try and help ‘Congo’ Chris Philp hang on to his MP seat.

The only problem with this is that with every public statement the MP for Croydon South makes, he opens himself up to more and more public ridicule.

Philp, the 2015 MP and police minister in Rishi Sunak’s ill-fated government, was doing the press rounds this morning and found himself subjected to condescension and derision, not from his political opponents but from Sky News and BBC news anchors .

Sky News’ Wilfred Frost mocked Croydon’s only Tory MP as Philp tried to raise a £4m fund to tackle knife crime – when everyone involved knows it’s just part of a package of £250 million of criminal equipment.

“With all due respect, £4 million – is this a joke? It’s not very much,” Frost opened his questions, showing that he had very little respect.

Philp was able to confirm the presenter’s point: “This is part of a quarter of a billion pound program for new police technology.”

Frost said: “So fair to say that today’s announcement … is a minor increase then?”

Barnett’s formula: Chris Philp was “interrupted” by Today program presenter Emma Barnett

Philp, faced with such irrefutable facts, yielded.

He then clarified that the £4m was included in the total and would be spent on new technology to allow police to scan people for knives remotely.

Philp didn’t fare much better when he appeared for the BBC Radio 4 flagship Today programme, in which broadcaster Emma Barnett was making her debut as a presenter.

Barnett has certainly made his mark.

“You went viral a few weeks ago with my colleagues Question time” Barnett said, digressing from the carefully worded message Philp must have thought he was about to deliver.

“Why should we trust you as Home Secretary and the government you are part of to keep us safe?

“Just to remind those who may not have followed you Question time. The audience gasped in horror when you seemed unsure if Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo were different countries.

“Why should we trust you?”

Phil grunted. He came out with post-Question time sorry for somehow asking “a clearly rhetorical question”.

“I had a hard time hearing what the questioner was saying,” said Philp, more than a little self-pityingly.

But Barnett’s basic question—”Why should we trust you?” – looks certain to be repeated to Philp from time to time between now and the general election.

Philp was at the cold, dead heart of ‘Thick Lizzy’ Truss’s government

As polls continue to predict a near wipeout of Tory MPs in the general election, Conservative Central Office must become increasingly aware that Philp is becoming more of an electoral liability than an asset.

According to a report from Grauniada This week, Croydon South Tories are among 200 local party associations receiving emergency help to try to keep the seat.

I mapped: how the Guardian portrays Tory seats at risk, including Croydon South

“The number of Tory constituencies marked as vulnerable and given extra support has risen from 80 to around 200 in recent months, according to a senior party source,” the newspaper reported.

“It means the party is extending its defensive strategy to seats with strong majorities of 15,000 or more.” That includes Croydon South.

A victory for Labor in Croydon South could be among the key gains that would transform Labor from simply the largest party in the Commons to a parliamentary majority.

But Phil really lose Croydon South and return to his property development business in Serbia?

National opinion polls suggest Philp is doomed. Are things really that bad?

His blunder about the geography of Central Africa is far from an isolated incident for someone who Grauniad’s sketchwriter described as “a nose in search of a bum”.

Philp was at the cold, dead heart of ‘Thick Lizzy’ Truss’s disastrous spell in office, from his depth as Chief Secretary to the Treasury to KamiKwasi Kwarteng for 38 days before serving as Paymaster General for 11 days . Philp’s reputation for his role in adding hundreds of pounds to people’s mortgages and causing runaway inflation will cost him votes in Croydon South.

But where will the voters of the reorganized Croydon South constituency go?

The Lib Dems and Greens don’t seem to have done much in and around Croydon South as the Greens campaign elsewhere in Croydon and the FibDems try to win back Carshalton and Wallington.

Ben Taylor has been Labour’s candidate for the seat for 18 months and seems desperate to make a name for himself other than being the biggest loser for his party in Croydon’s council election history.

Back in Labour’s good books: Ben Taylor (right) at a rally with party leader Keith Starmer

Taylor, it’s worth reminding loyal readers, was part of a group of wannabe politicians brought together by Labor councilor Jamie Audsley, who was then ostracized and removed for daring to suggest that having an elected mayor might be better than having Tony Newman as a board member. “strong leader”.

Taylor and other Audsley “apostles”, such as Woodside councilor Amy Foster, appear to be back in their party’s good books again, if only with some form of parole. The workers are clearly thinking of Taylor enough to spend some money on a cover to cover the front of a Coulsdon store which was previously marketed as… oh yeah: Guitar Nuts.

But Labor is also in trouble in Croydon, with its reputation still battered by the council’s bankruptcy and the Croydon East candidate selection scandal, which remains a matter of police investigation.

MP Steve Reed’s disdain for the concerns of Muslims in Croydon and those opposed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is another cause of support for the borough’s Labor leaching.

This month’s London Assembly elections provided some hard statistics rather than speculation in the polls. The Conservatives won well in the Croydon South seat, with Labor representatives at the Excel count only talking about winning the South Croydon ward and closing in on Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown.

Waddon saw a strong Labor victory, but support in this ward is being transferred from the Croydon South parliamentary constituency in boundary changes ahead of the general election.

Despite Labor being 30% better in some national opinion polls than the Conservatives three years ago, in Croydon Labor has made little or no progress since 2021.

blue rim: how London Communications summed up the results of the 2024 London election. It’s bad news for Labor in Croydon

Equivalent GLA election day and the 2021 and 2024 local council by-elections in Park Hill and the Whitgift ward (which moves to the Croydon South constituency for the general election) and Woodside tell a grim story for Labour. In Park Hill and Whitgift, the Conservative vote could be down by 9.5%, but the Labor vote is also down by 0.6%. This is not the kind of performance that will make Ben Taylor an MP.

In Labour’s stronghold of Woodside, the party’s vote rose by just 1% and the Conservatives fell by 5.1%.

The type of swing equivalent to Labour, under changes to the 2021 national opinion polls, that Croydon Labor should achieve was seen south of the London border in Redhill West and Wray Common, where Labor won a place with a 21.9% increase in votes while the Conservatives fell by 11.4%.

That’s a huge 16.7% swing on the national equivalent that Labor should pick up in Croydon. But they are not.

London Communications’ chart of London mayoral votes by GLA constituency also highlights that in Croydon and Sutton, Labor is behind swings to the party seen elsewhere in the capital, with just a 0.45% swing move to Sadiq Khan.

Labour’s share of the vote in Croydon and Sutton fell below 30% in that London Assembly constituency for the first time since 2008.

Higher Conservative polls in former council estates such as New Addington and St Helier West (which the Conservatives won from Labor in a Sutton council by-election where the Labor vote collapsed by 13, 8% to 18.3%) bodes well for Philp in places like Hamsey Green and the Tollers estate.

Looking across the southern border, in areas demographically similar to parts of his constituency, Philp can take solace in overwhelmingly strong Tory victories in Chaldon, Warlingham West and Chipstead, Kingswood and Woodmansterne.

But every silver lining has a cloud. Tory party chiefs will also have noted landslide wins for independents in Woldingham and Tatsfield and Titsey and LibDem strength in nearby Caterham wards as the Tories lost five council seats in Reigate and Banstead, making it even more ‘without overall control’ and where Tandridge saw the Residents’ Alliance add two seats to that NOC, but where residents run the council.

The results of this month’s vote in Croydon suggest Philp may hold out. Provided, perhaps, he starts avoiding giving those car accident TV and radio interviews. As Mark Twain once said, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

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