The fight for Southall

Ealing Southall
David Cameron, making his third visit to the constituency, will meet two former Labour councillors from a neighbouring borough who are switching to join his party.

One is Parmod Kad, general secretary of the Indian Overseas Welfare Association UK, who was appointed MBE two years ago for services to community relations in Southall.

He lives in Southall although he was a Labour councillor in neighbouring Hounslow, as was Sarbjit Singh Gill, who will defect with him to the Conservatives. Their decision will be hailed by Mr Cameron as another sign of broadening support for his party......................


............Mr Cameron’s repeated visits to Ealing Southall indicate how seriously he is contesting the by-election. Two senior Conservatives have admitted to The Times that they do not think they can win, but they believe a strong performance would demonstrate that the Tories were gaining support among ethnic minority communities.

A member of the Shadow Cabinet said: “We don’t think we will win but we want to come a good second.”

The Liberal Democrats, who came second in the seat in 2005, narrowly ahead of the Conservatives, claim the Tories have made a tactical error in making their campaign too personality-based by focusing heavily on their candidate, Tony Lit, whose father founded the Asian commercial radio station Sunrise.

Lib Dem campaign literature will hit back by highlighting that Mr Lit lives in Chiswick and not in the constituency itself, and claiming that he has neither had to suffer the local transport system and congestion, nor had to rely on local services, particularly Ealing hospital.

The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Iraq war also features strongly in their own literature, with one campaign newspaper carrying two prominent photographs of George Bush with Tony Blair, even though he is no longer Prime Minister.

The by-election, which takes place next Thursday, comes after the death last month of Piara Khabra, who was Labour MP for Ealing Southall from 1992. His majority at the general election in 2005 was 11,440.

Meanwhile Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem leader, made a campaign visit yesterday to Sedgefield, in the North East, where another by-election takes place on the same day, after Tony Blair’s announcement that he will stand down as the MP for the constituency.

The Times Online