Another hold up with the Lib Dem selection in Sutton and Cheam

There's news of a further hold up in the attempt to find a Liberal Democrat candidate for the eminently winnable seat of Sutton and Cheam.

Early yesterday Michael Crick tweeted:

🟠 SUTTON & CHEAM: one source says the hustings have been postponed because two comp
laints were received, and the source suggests John Sweeney and Trish Fivey may now have been added to the shortlist. Can anyone confirm or deny any or all of this? https://t.co/CVJdQbVwZK

— @Tomorrow'sMPs (@tomorrowsmps) April 21, 2024

According to Inside Croydon, the original shortlist for the meeting had only two names on it: former London mayoral candidate Luisa Porritt and Sutton councillor Luke Taylor.

Radical Bulletin in the latest Liberator (issue 422) reported after the original call for applicants was issued:

This presumably means that Sutton & Cheam’s former prospective parliamentary candidate David Campanale has finally been ousted from that role after an interminable series of appeals that began last summer when the constituency first sought to remove him.

Although Campanale was originally a Liberal Democrat he left to join the highly socially conservative Christian People’s Alliance and rose to be its leader and author of its 2010 general election manifesto. Some of this was unexceptionable but it also said: “A new hierarchy of rights has put the needs of sexual minorities above religious freedom” and inveighed against “sex in view of families enjoying parks and open spaces” (Liberator 416).

He stood as a Lib Dem candidate in Spelthorne in 2019 - though few outside the area appear to have noticed - but Sutton & Cheam is a rather more serious proposition as the party held it from 1997 to 2015.

Some Sutton members felt they should have been better acquainted with Campanale's past by the party before the original selection meeting and were unimpressed to be told they should have looked on Google.

The current Conservative member for Sutton and Cheam, Paul Scully will not stand at the coming general election. In 2019 he had a majority of 8351.

As Liberator says, the seat was held for the Lib Dems, in the person of Paul Burstow, between 1997 and 2015.