Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Absurd claim from the Labour deputy leader of Croydon Council

As the second comment says, the Lib Dem candidate had the same name as the Labour candidate not the Tory. Oh well...

More evidence that the Labour Party is in a strange place at the moment comes from Croydon (hitherto best known as the land of inflammable trousers).

There, says the Croydon Advertiser:
A Labour politician claims the Liberal Democrats sabotaged his party's election chances - by selecting a candidate with the same surname. 
Stuart Collins, deputy leader of Croydon Council, claims the Lib Dems helped the Conservatives beat Labour hopeful Marina Ahmad in Croydon and Sutton by selecting Amna Ahmad to stand in the constituency. 
Ms Ahmad is less than impressed with the conspiracy theory and has called on Cllr Collins to apologise.
Given how low the Lib Dem base vote is at the moment, any confusion between our candidate and the one from the Conservatives is likely to harm the Tories not help them. It is an absurd claim

Remember how the Literal Democrat candidate robbed the Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders of victory in the 1994 Euro elections.

3 comments:

William said...

What should worry the party is that it is seen as plausible in some quarters, and certainly plausible enough to report in newspapers.

This shows the lasting damage the coalition has done to the party brand: people will genuinely think that scratch a Lib Dem and a Tory sympathiser or activist lies beneath.

William said...

Also - one more comment...
You wrote:
"Given how low the Lib Dem base vote is at the moment, any confusion between our candidate and the one from the Conservatives is likely to harm the Tories not help them."

The confusion was between the Lib Dem candidate and the Labour one - not the Lib Dem candidate and the Tory one. And it was Labour who were complaining that this suppressed the Labour vote as people voted Lib Dem instead on seeing the name.

All nonsense of course - but slightly different nonsense.

Jonathan Calder said...

Thanks for pointing that out. They seems to have kissed and made up anyway.