‘Playboy with no political interest’

Ealing Southall

The campaign for a crucial London by-election slid into personal abuse and bitterness yesterday as rival parties tried to exploit Tory embarrassment over its candidate posing with Tony Blair.

Labour branded Tony Lit unsuitable to be the area’s MP and called him a “Tory playboy”. He was photographed only last month at a Labour fundraising event with Mr Blair.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats tried to stamp themselves as the main challenger to Labour in Thursday’s contest. Today they will send out 45,000 copies of a campaign newspaper carrying the picture of Mr Lit with Mr Blair, hoping to attract both disaffected Conservatives and Labour voters still upset about Mr Blair’s role in the Iraq war.

The Conservatives tried to play down the disclosure that Mr Lit’s Asian radio station, Sunrise, paid £4,800 to Labour for the table where Mr Lit and his father, Avtar, sat with, among others, Stephen Pound the Labour MP.

Mr Pound compounded Tory discomfort yesterday by suggesting that Mr Lit had shown little interest in politics at the dinner and that his father had successfully bid £4,000 – apparently for payment to a charity, not Labour – for the pleasure of going to a fundraising dinner in the US attended by Hillary Clinton.

Mr Lit, who has since left Sunrise, said that he had attended the event for the Asian business community. “But like many British Asians I feel the Labour Government does not have the answers to the challenges that currently face the country.”

A Conservative spokesman said: “This was a dinner organised for Asian businesses and Sunrise Radio attended. Tony Lit has always been a Conservative voter.”

Lib Dem attempts to establishing the party as the main challenger to Labour have been hindered by the high-profile Tory campaign. Yesterday the party made plans to produce 45,000 copies of a campaign tabloid newspaper carrying the photograph of Mr Lit with Mr Blair.

Lib Dem literature has already featured pictures of President Bush with Mr Blair, even though he is no longer Prime Minister, based on the party’s belief that many ethnic minority voters associate him with the invasion of Iraq.

Lord Rennard, the Lib Dems’ chief executive, who is running the campaign in Ealing Southall, told The Times: “If Labour are ahead, then the way they can now be beaten will be if former Conservative supporters now switch to the Liberal Democrats.”

He said that about 500 Liberal Democrat campaigners had been delivering leaflets and canvassing voters in Ealing Southall over the weekend, led by Sir Menzies Campbell and Simon Hughes, the party president.

The party has a huge two-storey campaign headquarters on an industrial estate near Southall station and has quietly been mounting an intensive leaflet-based campaign, helped by volunteers flocking from across the country.

Clearly, although without making this explicit, the party has been putting much greater effort and resources into the Ealing Southall by-election than into the second contest taking place on Thursday – the by-election in Sedgefield, Mr Blair’s former seat.

Times Online