George Galloway has launched the general election campaign of Wycombe’s former mayor Khalil Ahmed outside the town’s Guildhall.
The Workers Party of Britain leader told a crowd of around 100 people this evening that Ahmed can oust the Conservative candidate Steve Baker, Wycombe’s most recent MP.
Speaking from the back of a pick-up truck, Galloway said: “If you give him 20,000 votes on the July 4, he’ll be standing here as the next member of parliament for the Wycombe constituency.”
Ahmed won 20,552 votes when he ran for Labour at the last election in 2019, where he finished second to Baker, who took 24,766 votes.
The Downley parish councillor resigned from Labour last month due to the party’s reluctance to call for a ceasefire or ban on arms sales to Israel.
During the rally, Ahmed was declared the ‘anti-genocide candidate’ by Galloway, whose own Rochdale by-election victory earlier this year was largely fought over the issue of Gaza.
The Workers Party leader said: “We have a candidate here, who is of the highest rank, which is why I’m here.
“I should be in Rochdale, but I came here to High Wycombe because I have such high hopes of Khalil Ahmed. Ten years a councillor here – a former mayor.”
During the rally, Ahmed unveiled his six major pledges for Wycombe, which were plastered to the side of his team’s pickup truck.
Top of his list is improving Wycombe’s NHS facilities and the town’s hospital, which faces a repairs backlog of £100m and is still carrying out procedures from its crumbling 1960s tower, which has been earmarked for demolition.
If elected, Ahmed has also pledged to improve Wycombe’s air quality, bus services, roads and promised to continue to tackle food poverty in the town.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the rally, he claimed that boundary changes would work in his favour as the Tory-majority Hazlemere ward has been transferred to the Chesham and Amersham constituency ahead of the next election.
He said: “The boundary changes have obviously come into it. Now that Hazlemere’s gone, it is a loss of 3,000 mostly Conservative voters.
“The Tories’ performance has been shambolic as we all know and there has been a decline in their popularity across the country.”
Ahmed has served as a local councillor in Wycombe for 10 years, was mayor from 2014 to 2015 and co-founded the Wycombe Food Hub during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
In the July 4 general election, he faces Steve Baker (Conservative), Emma Reynolds (Labour), Toni Brodelle (Lib Dems), Catherine Bunting (Green), Richard Phoenix (Reform UK), Ed Gemmell (Climate Party) and Ajaz Rehman (Independent).
