Saturday, February 13, 2010

Good luck Terry with Leyton & Wanstead shortlist

Terry Paul, West Ham Labour Party member (and our former CLP Chair) has been shortlisted to be a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Leyton and Wanstead. I know a few activists in this neighbouring East London CLP and I understand to him to be one of the “front runners”.

My Labour Party blogging “mucker” Alex Hilton on Labourhome lists the shortlisted candidates here.

John Cryer, former MP for Hornchurch who lost his seat in 2005 and is now political officer for union Unite

Tristram Hunt, historian and broadcaster

Sophie Linden, a Hackney councillor and former special advisor to David Blunkett

Terry Paul, chairman of the West Ham Labour party.

Roxanne Riaz

Ahmed Shazad, a millionaire businessman

I don’t know any of the other candidates and obviously the choice now is with the Party members of Leyton and Wanstead. All I can say is that I have found Terry to be a hard working Labour Party activist. He is a local boy made good; he is very personable, ferociously bright, articulate, passionate about his politics and full to the brim with ideas. I would agree with Alex that he would make a good MP.

Good luck Terry! Hustings are next Saturday to be followed by a postal ballot of all members.

(Picture is of Terry last year on the “dog and bone” tele-canvassing for Labour)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I lived in Leyton and Wanstead I couldn't think of anyone I'd want more to be my MP than Terry Paul. He's from East London, he listens and he'll do his best for the constituency.

Mike Law said...

Let's hope Terry makes it, he'll be a cracking MP.

Good luck Terry.

John Gray said...

Terry

touch wood - quickly.

Anonymous said...

I worked for John Cryer for the whole eight years he was MP for Hornchurch, which is incidentally an East London seat not a million miles away from Leyton and Wanstead. He is a man of enormous integrity, energy, talent, compassion and political principle.

He was a frequent rebel against the Blair Government, voting against the Iraq war, tuition fees and cuts in lone parents and incapacity benefit. He turned down a job as a ministerial aide in order to concentrate on his constituency where he worked assiduously on behalf of thousands of people who approached him for help. He was one of those Labour MPs in marginal seats who had to face Lord Ashcroft’s Tory millions and lost his seat extremely narrowly.

I am without any doubt that he would serve the people of Leyton and Wanstead with equal dedication and skill if given the opportunity to do so.

John Gray said...

Hi Laura

I am sure that we can agree that Terry and John will both be worthy candidates.

Anonymous said...

Hi John

I can't comment on Terry as I had not heard of him until he went for L & W. Obviously we need to get behind whoever becomes the candidate.

I am concerned that there have been some very uncomradely attacks made on John Cryer by some of Terry's supporters, (mostly anonymously, which hardly increases thier credibility). I am sure this is not being done with his encouragement but perhaps Terry could remind people of the code of conduct and the need for Labour to focus on retaining this seat at the general election.

John Gray said...

Hi Laura
I am absolutely positive that Terry would condemn “uncomradely attacks” by anyone! Not that I am personally aware of his “supporters” doing so.

But I don’t think it is really helpful to make allegations anonymously yourself about supposed other anonymous allegations. It just all gets rather daft. I also don’t actually think your comments are that helpful to John.

Things are no doubt rather fraught at the moment and I do agree with your comments about the need of everyone to focus on the overriding priority of retaining the seat for Labour at the General Election.