VIRENDRA SHARMA WINS EALING SOUTHALL BY-ELECTION
(19 July 2007)

Labour Party candidate, Virendra Kumar Sharma has won the Ealing Southall by elections. He was elected as MP on 19 July 2007 following the by-election, called after the death of the sitting Labour MP, Piara Khabra on 19 June 2007. Sharma was born in India and educated at the London School of Economics. Prior to his election as an MP, Sharma was the Mayor of Ealing and had been a councillor for 25 years.

Piara Khabra had held the constituency since the 1992 election, while the Labour party has held the seat since its creation in the 1983 election, and the predecessor seat of Southall since it was created before the 1945 election.

The government moved the writ for the by-election in Parliament on 28 June 2007, the day after the funeral of Piara Khabra. This by-election and the Sedgefield by-election, also being held on 19 July, were deemed significant because they were the first elections to take place during the tenure of the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

According to the Elections Office of Ealing Council, the electorate was 85,423 which represents an increase of 1,685 (2%) on the 2005 General Election.

Labour selected local councillor Virendra Sharma from a shortlist of two - with Jo Sidhu the other shortlisted candidate. As Khabra had previously announced his intention to stand down at the next UK general election, Labour had already decided on its selection rules and had chosen to have an all-women shortlist for the constituency at the next UK general election, but following Khabra's death, the Labour National Executive Committee decided the by-election selection would not be from an all-women shortlist. Following the selection, five Labour councillors defected to the Conservative Party.

The Liberal Democrats selected Nigel Bakhai as their candidate; he contested the constituency in 2005 and came second. The party fared worse than expected nationally at the UK local elections, 2007, and several newspapers claimed the Ealing Southall by-election would be a major test of Menzies Campbell's leadership, with a poor result potentially leading to a leadership challenge. The Independent also claimed the party regarded the Ealing Southall election as winnable, and were focussing resources on the seat, in preference to the Sedgefield by-election, to be held the same day.

The Conservative Party selected Surinderpal Singh Lit - commonly known as Tony Lit - as its candidate. He is the former Managing Director of Sunrise Radio and son of Avtar Lit who contested the constituency as an Independent candidate in the 2001 election and came third. The deputy chair of the local Conservatives, Brij Mohan Gupta, resigned from the party in protest at Lit's selection and endorsed Quentin Davies' criticisms of David Cameron's policies, joining instead the Liberal Democrats. Newspapers reported that Tony Lit attended a Labour Party fundraising event and Sunrise donated £4,800 to Labour in June 2007, before he switched allegiance to the Conservatives later that month . On the ballot paper, Lit was described as "David Cameron's Conservative" while the Sedgefield candidate was simply "Conservative".

EALING SOUTHALL BY-ELECTION RESULTS

Virendra Sharma said: "I am proud and delighted to be chosen by local Labour party members to stand for election here in Ealing Southall. I have been a local councillor in Ealing for over 25 years. Ealing Southall is a very special place. Local people are rightly proud of their local area. I will be a voice for their concerns and aspirations. We need more affordable housing. We need safer communities. We need better bus, travel and tube services. I will champion these issues on behalf of local people in Ealing Southall."