Election Daily: It’s with a heavy heart…

44 days to go

MAN DOWN

A QUICK one this evening as we try to establish what on earth is going on in West Hampstead for the Conservatives. What we do know is that their candidate Ali Hassan-Ali, the former Camden police officer pictured on the left above, will no longer be on the ballot paper for them and is actually actively telling people to support Labour or the Lib Dems.

I’m not going to post his ‘heavy heart’ Twitter thread here just in case there is a risk of a libel bill, but the gist is that he wasn’t aware of what a shambles he now thinks the Conservatives election operation is when he first agreed to stand. He calls for a new leader of the local party and is clearly no longer pals with Oliver Cooper. If I’m following properly, he has already made contact with Labour about becoming his next party but local Labour organisers are not all aware of this and there is no chance of him becoming a candidate – for starters all their slots are filled.

In reply, I think the Camden Tories will say he wasn’t doing enough campaigning and maybe more. As usual, internal Whatsapp politics are apparently part of it. Hopefully things will become clearer tomorrow, but not for the first time the Tories haven’t taken all their candidates right through to polling day. This was a problem in 2018 when we were seemed to forever blogging about changes to the personnel.

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