Southampton Independents has been getting answers from candidates in the 2024 General Election. We have been requesting interviews.
There has been no response from Sidney Yankson, a Conservative councillor for Redcliffe ward on Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council in London. He is also the Conservative candidate for the East of Southampton, in the Southampton Itchen Constituency.
Perhaps Mr Yankson is busy serving the "6,000" constituents that he claims to represent. But at the same time, on his own cut-and-paste Conservative Party Parliamentary campaign website, he now claims to live in Southampton. Questions arise from this:
- So which group of residents is Mr Yankson representing? London or Southampton?
- How can a councillor for Kensington, 77 miles away, represent Southampton in Parliament, and do his job representing his Council constituents too? If Kensington was adjacent to Southampton, it would not be an issue. But Kensington isn't adjacent. It is 77 miles away.
- And how can he be doing both these things, and be a barrister as claimed on his website and in his Register of Interests on Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council?
We would like to ask Mr Yankson, but he has not responded to our request for interview, or answered the basic questions that any serious Parliamentary Candidate should be able to answer. These are the same questions that we have asked all Southampton Itchen and Southampton Test candidates, some of the answers for which we have published from other candidates.
Bearing in mind that Councillor Yankson is Vice-Chair, Audit & Transparency Committee, we would have thought that he likes questions being answered quickly. But this is the Council in whose area the scandal of the Grenfell Disaster occurred and it is a sad fact that Conservatives still control that Council despite the disaster in 2017.
In 2023, six years after the Disaster and despite a Public Inquiry, local people still told the Council that it "had not changed or got worse". On the day that Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the General Election, the Police said there would be no prosecutions until "late 2026 at the earliest". Of course neither Mr Sunak nor the Police would try to "bury bad news" under the General Election announcement.
Perhaps Councillor Yankson has another view or more information about his Council, or on Grenfell, or on getting justice for Grenfell, or on our successful campaign for sprinklers in Southampton City Council's tower blocks, but without responses from him, it is impossible to tell.
Why Southampton Independents Is Covering the 2024 General Election
Southampton Independents recommends no particular candidate in the 2024 General Election. We publish this information and the information about the other candidates to help inform Southampton residents for their vote, or for them to choose not to vote or to positively spoil their ballot by writing "none of the above". The choice is yours.
The other candidates for Southampton Itchen, with their answers to our questions, are here.