Former Labour Mayor Named Tory Candidate For Slough

A long term Labour Councillor and former Mayor of Ealing has been named as the Conservative candidate for Slough at the next general election. Gurcharan Singh defected to the Conservatives after he failed to secure the Labour nomination for Ealing Southall at the 2007 by-election.

For twenty years Cllr Singh had meticulously worked his way through the local Labour party to get the nomination, only for the central party to stop him at the last minute. The furious councillor defected to the Conservatives, without stating a single change in any of his political views.

Within a few years his new strategy was starting to pay off as he was selected to fight Ealing Southall as the Conservative candidate in 2010. His efforts led to Labour increasingly their majority over the Conservatives from 6,958 at the by-election to 9,291 at the General Election. Nonetheless he was undeterred.

In a four man field Singh, who was described by one Slough activist as not “fully fluent” in English, won the nomination on the first ballot. Although the ballot was secret a large number of Sikh’s came to the selection and were seen celebrating with him after the win. Breitbart London understands that other party members looked “either gloomy or angry”.

One Slough Conservative said: “It wouldn’t have mattered if Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or William Hague had have gone against Singh. He’d have won whatever happened. The other candidates spoke incredibly well, whereas Singh had to read his speech out and could not be described as fully fluent in the English language.

“It was a complete stitch-up and it was a waste of time attending the meeting at all. Singh could have recited the phonebook and he’s still have got it.

“It’s not hard to understand why Singh stood for the seat, after all he’s clearly just in politics for himself. What seems inexplicable is why the Conservative Candidates Department let a careerist, socialist who can’t really speak English on the approved list? Surely they should be vetting to weed out time wasters like Singh.”

Despite Slough’s location in the leafy Home Counties it is famed as a den of political intrigue and corruption. The local council is beset by almost constant defections, in some cases councillors have defected in their first month of office.

Slough is one of the smaller UK local authorities and the government has expressed interest in merging it with a neighbouring borough. The most likely bedfellow: Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, is firmly opposed to any merger as they are said to fear importing poor standards from Slough.

The parliamentary seat is currently held by Labour’s Fiona McTaggart, who was once described by the journalist Benedict Brogan as “a Scottish laird who is as wealthy as she is humourless”. She is expected to hold the seat as she has a majority of 5,523.