Liberal Democrats Controversially Drop ‘Christian’ Candidate in Blue Wall Seat

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey during a victory rally at Chesham Youth Centre in Chesham, England, on June 18, 2021. (Steve Parsons/PA via AP)

The Liberal Democrats have deselected a former journalist with “Christian beliefs” only 10 months after he was chosen to be the candidate in one of their top target seats.

David Campanale claimed earlier this week, during an interview with GB News, that activists in Sutton and Cheam, a Conservative-held constituency in southwest London, had turned against him after learning of his faith.

Campanale said: “In this particular constituency, the activists ... since I was selected at the beginning of the year, said ‘now that we know that you hold Christian beliefs we don’t want to deliver your leaflets.’”

In June 2017 Tim Farron stepped down as the leader of the Liberal Democrats, saying “remaining faithful to Christ” was incompatible with leading the party.

In his resignation statement, Farron said: “To be a political leader—especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017—and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me.”

Farron was replaced by Ed Davey, whose Kingston and Surbiton constituency is next to Sutton and Cheam.

Campanale is a former BBC World Service journalist who was one of the first reporters to uncover China’s religious persecution of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province and also obtained the first interview, in English, with Asia Bibi, a Catholic who was sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy.

Soon after he was selected Campanale wrote on the Liberal Democrat Voice website, “Since my selection was announced there has been some scrutiny about myself and my past.”

Campanale once chaired Christian People’s Alliance

He went on to say: “It is true that after 18 years of voting for the Lib Dems, I left to chair the Christian People’s Alliance [CPA]. But I then quit the CPA almost a decade ago when it was infiltrated by extremists. I fully repudiate the offensive and divisive campaigns the people using the name now pursue.”

The CPA has stood candidates in UK elections since 2005 but has never obtained more than 1 percent of the vote. In June, its candidate, Paul Bickerdike, won 144 votes in the Wakefield by-election.

He also addressed his former associations with the Fidesz Party in Hungary.

Campanale wrote: “Back in the 1980s, when Fidesz was a Liberal party and Hungary was still behind the Iron curtain, I formed ties as others did within the Liberal Democrat family. Fidesz are a different party now, known best for rhetoric against asylum-seekers and increasing authoritarianism. I am on record as having used my platform at the festival as a liberal to call out their regressive views.”

Veteran journalist Michael Crick wrote on Twitter that he had spoken to a senior Liberal Democrat who said there had been “disquiet” that Campanale’s former political affiliations had not been disclosed during the selection process, and denied he was being discriminated against because of his faith.

Sutton and Cheam, which the Lib Dems held between 1997 and 2015, is currently held by Paul Scully, who had a majority of 8,351 at the last election.

Announcing his selection in January this year, Sutton and Cheam Liberal Democrats said, “The constituency is part of the Tory ‘blue wall’, immediately vulnerable to the party, following dramatic swings to the Liberal Democrats in by-elections in Chesham & Amersham and North Shropshire.”

The “blue wall” refers to Conservative seats in the southeast of England—like Chesham and Amersham, which fell in June 2021—which which were once impregnable but, since Brexit, are now thought to be vulnerable to the Lib Dems and even Labour.

In the 2019 election, after promising to “get Brexit done” the Tories won dozens of so-called “red wall” seats in areas which had voted for Labour for decades.

Sid Cordle, leader of the CPA, told The Epoch Times in an email: “All this means very clearly that Christians are not welcome in the Lib Dems. They have chosen to be not just a rabidly pro-EU party but also an anti-Christian party.”

A Liberal Democrats spokesman told The Epoch Times, “There is an ongoing process which is confidential to allow for due process and appeals, so it isn’t possible for us to comment at this stage.”