By Jonathan Isaby
It has emerged this morning that Andrew Pelling, the former Conservative MP for Croydon Central and ex-London Assembly Member for Croydon and Sutton has joined the Labour Party.
A Croydon councillor between 1982 and 2006 and a GLA Member between 2000 and 2008, he was elected Conservative MP for Croydon Central in 2005, but after difficulties in his personal life was suspended from the Tory whip in 2007.
He then went on to stand as an Independent in the constituency at the 2010 general election (polling a little over 3,000 votes), claiming that being an Independent meant he was "now just a politician who ‘takes up local issues’, which is no bad thing".
But he has now joined Labour, which, as the Croydon Guardian reports, will "come as no surprise, as Mr Pelling has been rubbing shoulders with Labour since becoming an outcast from the Conservatives".
He tells the paper:
"I may have endured a difficult journey to get to this point but it has not been a difficult decision to join Labour. On a national level, the Labour Party have got it right on the economy. The Conservatives are cutting too deep and too fast.
"I found the Conservative Party in Parliament to be a party of privilege with little empathy for Croydon. With a few notable individual exceptions in the Conservative Party it was the Labour Party who showed compassion and concern for me in difficult times for me personally. I was very touched by this."
