There was a blow for Harrow Labour yesterday when a key player in the Hindu community and longtime Labour supporter defected to the Conservatives – despite nominating Tony McNulty just days ago.
As the Harrow Times reports, so-called community leader Kanti Patel has written a letter claiming to have lost faith in Labour and criticising Tony McNulty for his record on expenses.
Despite signing McNulty’s nomination papers so that he could stand as the Labour party candidate for Harrow East, Patel said he had switched allegiance because the Tory party was more diverse.
He said he will be encouraging Harrow’s Hindu community to vote Tory because ‘Tony McNulty has lost the trust of the people who elected him’.
Patel, who has been a labour member for more than 40 years, also posed for a photograph with McNulty’s nemesis, London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Navin Shah, London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow, said:
“Kanti Patel is not a community leader. He’s just a bitter man who is trying to take revenge.”
And McNulty asked: “Why didn’t he say that to me a week or ten days ago when he signed my nomination papers?”
In other news, McNulty and Johnson carried on trading barbs. Earlier this week the mayor called for ‘a long period of silence’ from McNulty.
Yesterday, the favour was returned as McNulty said Johnson was ‘resorting to personal abuse’ so he could ‘detract from the questions he cannot answer on the police’.
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