Darryl Chamberlain

Quiz Greenwich & Woolwich election candidates at hustings this week

Polling station
There won’t be so many leaves on the trees at this election

Voters in Greenwich & Woolwich will get four chances in the next week to quiz the candidates to be their next MP as yet another general election approaches.

Seven candidates are vying for success on Thursday 12 December, although it would take a political earthquake to dislodge Matt Pennycook, first elected as the area’s MP in 2015, from the role. A former Greenwich councillor who was first elected in 2015, he had a stonking majority of 20,714 in 2017, scooping 64.4% of the vote.

The Conservatives came second in 2017, maintaining their share of the vote at roughly a quarter; Thomas Turrell, a long-time campaigner for the party in SE London, will be hoping to beat or improve on that 25.4% share. The omens are not good for him: the Tories’ last election victory in Greenwich was in 1935; it is nearly a century since their last Woolwich win, in 1921.

The only way seems to be up for the Liberal Democrats, staring up from a 7.4% vote share in 2017; Rhian O’Connor will be hoping to beat that with an explicitly anti-Brexit message. In the European elections, internal figures suggest that the Liberal Democrats came top in Greenwich & Woolwich as angry pro-EU voters lashed out against the two big parties – but first-past-the-post Westminster elections are a very different thing, despite what the bar charts in the Lib Dems’ election material might suggest. Pennycook has already committed to supporting a new referendum on EU membership, and campaigning to stay in.

The Greens were badly squeezed in 2017, losing their deposit. This time around they will be standing Victoria Rance, the co-ordinator of the Stop the Silvertown Tunnel Coalition, which has gained a high profile since being formed in May.

The Brexit Party will be represented by Kailash Trivedi – a late replacement for its previously-announced candidate, Matthew Wadhams. There is also a pro-Brexit independent, Sushil Gaikwad. There is also a Christian People’s Alliance candidate, Eunice Odesamni.

You can quiz some or all of them at the following hustings:

As for neighbouring Eltham, Keep Our NHS Public held a hustings last week (they were kind enough to let 853 know, but unfortunately we didn’t finish the story in time – apologies), which you can read about over at the London Masala and Chips blog.

The list above has come from a scan through social media – if you know of any others, drop us a line and it’ll get included.

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