Ealing Southall

Chris Paul kindly calls this blog "interesting and idiosyncratic", and urges his readers to visit it, so I'm happy to return the compliment, and to post the following from his blog:

Dr Rai is the agreed candidate of the bearded, turbaned, visible Sikh community who felt upset and underrepresented when Gurcharan Singh and two other long listed candidates in their niche communal grouping were not shortlisted. But what's going on?

- Why did Gurcharan and two other turbaned Sikh's defect and support Dave-id Cameron's secular and unsympathetic Tony Lit? What has been promised?

- Why have the Sikh Federation, Sikh Sangat and fellow travellers who insist they are interested only in getting a visible Sikh (man) selected and elected punished the Labour Party - who have done the most BY FAR to advance their cause as representatives, Exec Members, Mayors - and backed a party which has done nothing? Which didn't even have a selection process? What has been promised?

- Why did Sikh Sangat publish a most scurrilous story - claiming that the champion of their cause, Dr Rai, had hanged himself, associating this claim with various false and highly defamatory claims, accusations of racism, calls to remember an assassination in 1984 and the killing that followed it, and naturally plugs for Tony Lit - when they are out to see backing for a bearded, turbaned, visible Sikh, like Dr Rai, and not some cross-dressing trans-political millionaire?

- What involvement, if any, has Grant Shapps, or his agents and allies, had in this ridiculous, malicious, communalist carry on?

I also have a couple of questions of my own:

- Is it conceivable that this sort of behaviour would be tolerated if it were engaged in by a faction of English-speaking Christians, whether White British, or Irish, or Afro-Caribbean, or Saint Helenian, or whatever?

- Is Tony Lit in fact a member of the Labour Party?

At least if Lit wins, then the latter question should be addressed to Eric_Wilson@labour.org.uk, copied to as many political journalists and bloggers as you can find email addresses for. But don't expect any sort of answer; I certainly never got one to the Louise Bagshawe question, even though a simple No would have sufficed, just as it would here.