Conservative candidate for Mayor of London in 2020

I first became aware of Shaun Bailey when The Sunday Times did a big double page spread article a few years ago, probably around the time of David Cameron and George Osborne's had just assumed their respective positions as PM and Chancellor At that time I thought he sounded like a breath of fresh air. In the article I think he saw himself as a prospective Tory candidate. He made no bones about the fact that he came from a rough estate in White City, West London (I think). He pointed out that many of his contemporaries were from the same single mother backgrounds as himself and often left to run wild. He attributed the fact that some of these young men went off the rails because there was rarely any father figure around and the mothers who raised their children alone, sometimes didn't have the wherewithal to keep them away from the gang culture. He did say, if I remember rightly, he had a strong matriarch in his own mother who was a guiding light and during his formative years he enrolled in, I think, in The Boys Brigade or some such youth group of that nature and that and the influence of a strong mother is what kept him on the straight and narrow. He was aware that a lot of his peers didn't manage to lift themselves out of this world and he attributed much of that to an unfortunate start in life. I would say that I think there are a multitude of reasons why women become single mothers and those I knew when my children were growing up did an outstanding job, I wouldn't want to ever underestimate how difficult raising a child/ren alone could be. On occasions, benefits and the desire to set up as an independent person with a home may have been the impetus for some very young women to become pregnant and that among other matters was the thrust of the interview that I read in the ST with Shaun Bailey, and the fact that many of his contemporaries were trapped in a downward spiral because of the circumstances of their background. These were the observations about his personal experiences. Please don't quote me as saying that I agree that benefits is MAIN and only reason why some women become single mothers, I know that is not the case.

Thanks TerriBull I think what concerns me most is that he places all the responsibility on women, surely this only exacerbates the problem by giving young men a "get out of gaol free" card? "The girl wanted to get pregnant because she wanted a flat, not my responsibility."
It's stepping back to a time I thought we had moved on from.

As it was 12 years ago, maybe he too has moved on?

Good post TerriBull

I was reading about him a week or so ago and he sounded like a very grounded, hardworking, compassionate and street-wise young man from a background which would ensure he understood hardship and what it was to go without. I imagine many people, of all political persuasions could relate to him.

As a single mother because of divorce when the children were young I had very little support and worked like a Trojan to give my children the best start I could. Now adults, they have worked hard and have professional careers and are self-supporting. They feel the pinch like most young people (our generation did too)

Single mothers come in all shapes, sizes with all sorts of circumstances. Very few are wastrels expecting the state to fully support them. That notion is a tired old one that needs binning!

I wonder if he still holds to what he wrote here:

Accommodating Muslims and Hindus “robs Britain of its community” and risks turning the country into a “crime-riddled cesspool” as a result, the Conservative candidate for London mayor declared in a thinktank pamphlet he wrote a decade ago.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/oct/03/tories-london-mayor-pick-shaun-bailey-multiculturalism-robs-britain-of-its-community

Is this the same Shaun Bailey who has been targeted by trolls claiming to be Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn supporters calling him a "Uncle Tom" and a "bigoted coconut"

Trolls are trolls, sunseeker and come in all variety of political stances. So pointing a finger at supposedly left wing trolls is a timewasting deflection from the important issue. And that issue is the beliefs of the candidate himself.

I've just re-read my post and for some reason I've put an apostrophe and an s after Osborne, shouldn't be there. Going back to the subject, yes I've heard that Sunseeker, also I believe he has been described as a "coconut" kind of self explanatory, brown on the outside, white on the inside. I've read various black people state that some in Labour think they have ownership of the black vote. Which would imply their rationale if that is the case, that the black community are a homogenous mass who all think and behave in the same way Shaun Bailey must be deemed doubly audacious because he's a black, West Indian man, from a working class background, parented by a single mother and was brought up on tough estate!

It’s twelve years since he wrote that btw.... people do change their minds on certain subjects.
He could be just what London needs, a man from a poor background.

Why on earth does it matter what other people say about him, sunseeker and TerriBull ? Do you think it's going to influence voters?

Do you not think that what he says himself is more important?

I'm just wondering if the tories thought that, after the success of Sadiq Kahn, a 'diversity' candidate would be better than a white one.

And perhaps they think that a black racist will be better received than a white one...

I do think it matters when another MP calls him a "token ghetto boy" as remarked by Emma Dent-Toad, Labour MP for Kensington, although she was pressurised to apologise for her comment at a later stage.

I said 3 years ago Corbyn was the right candidate to win the leadership election. I was wrong. We can all say things we later regret

There is some truth in him being 'token' - he didn't last long in the inner sanctum of Downing Street.

The Tories obviously needed someone different from the likes of Zac Goldsmith to stand a chance against Sadiq Khan.

Of course they do, it’s politics not a vicars tea party.
Khan was fielded by Labour for the position of Mayor for the same reason, that he would appeal to a lot of Londoners.