London local by-election leafletting
- This topic has 19 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 1 month, 1 week ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Here’s how TUSC misinterprets the result:
West London council by-election victory a rebuff to Starmer’s Labour
Dennison was certainly standing on an anti-Labour platform but not a left of Labour one. He presented himself as a rallying point for all those against the Labour Party.
In another local by-election in Brentford, last May, TUSC stood against him.
We hadn’t expected another local by-election before the full council elections next May and certainly not in August, the height of the holiday season. But another one has been called in Hounslow on 21 August following the death of one of the councillors for Cranford Ward.
As we weren’t expecting one we have no more copies of our non-candidate local election leaflet. So we are using the surplus of leaflets printed for the Durham miners gala. 250 of these were distributed door to day and a further 600 will be next Thursday.
We met the Reform Party candidate, Khuswant Singh, supporting a light blue turban. Their names suggest that the Labour, Tory and Green candidates are also of Sikh background. This reflects the composition of the ward, 52% classifying themselves in the 2021 census as “Indian”. The fifth candidate, for the LibDems, has a Rumanian name. Nothing wrong with that as it indicates an integration into politics here.
https://www.hounslow.gov.uk/elections-voting/statement-persons-nominated-councillor-cranford
The Reform Party leaflet does not mention immigration, only potholes and fly-tipping. The Tory one does with a photo of their candidate pointing at a hotel in the ward used to accommodate asylum seekers and stating that “the safety of our children and women is being compromised”. They must be really desperate in out-prejudicing the Reform Party.
The ward is normally a safe Labour one, in fact the safest in Hounslow (over 70% of those who voted). If they lose Labour will be in dire trouble.
We distributed another 600 or so leaflets yesterday in Cranford in a part just outside Heathrow Airport’s perimeter fence. The people living there have to put up with the constant noise of planes landing and taking off literally just above their house. But workers can’t be choosers.
In all, that means 900 leaflets have been distributed. We are not expecting much of a response in terms of the QR as this is an experiment to see what might be expected in an area where most of the inhabitants are descendants of recent immigrants.
The contest here, perhaps unexpectedly, seems to be between Labour and Reform. As mentioned, Reform is not running a xenophobic campaign about asylum seekers with medieval views (they are leaving that to the Tories). We did meet one elector — the son of a “Kenya Asian” — who did express derogatory views about all Muslims. He wasn’t going to vote but said he would consider voting Reform at a general election.
Here is an example of the sort of campaign that Reform are running here:
https://x.com/PrabhdeepReform/status/1952829839158731218
They could be mistaken for LibDems. Incidentally, neither the LibDem or Greens candidates appear to be doing anything.
For the record here is the result:
HOUNSLOW Cranford
DHILLON, Hira Singh (Labour) 951
SIDHU, Gurpreet Singh (Conservative) 679
SINGH, Khushwant (Reform UK) 405
VIRDI, Gurpal Singh (Green) 156
LEITOIU, Miruna (Liberal Democrats) 145
Turnout: 21.65%
There were 19 rejected ballot papers.Labour won but their share of the vote fell from over 60% to 41%.
The response to the QR on the leaflets we distributed was not nothing.
For the record, our Corbynite reformist opponent in the local by-election in Islington Junction Ward a year ago has just defected to the Greens:
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.