Being a millionaire, leading anti-Brexit campaigns and appearing on reality TV are all "completely normal" for a Liberal Democrat.
Geeta Sidhu-Robb, one of two shortlisted hopefuls to be the Lib Dem London Mayoral candidate, claimed in a campaign video posted on Friday that she's a "completely normal person like you."
"I'm not a politician, that's what I'm not, and I decided to stand for public office. What is that really like?"
— Geeta Sidhu Robb (@GeetaSidhuRobb) September 11, 2020
The former lawyer-turned-businesswoman should know since she stood as a parliamentary candidate - for the Conservatives - back in 1997. She listed, under the name Sangeeta Sidhu, as the Conservative Party general election candidate for the Blackburn seat, coming a distant second to future Home Secretary Jack Straw.
Sidhu-Robb was also among the directors of the People's Vote group, a private company set up in 2018 to campaign for a second referendum on Britain's 2016 vote to leave the European Union (EU). The campaign was wound up in January 2020 after voters handed the pro-Brexit Tories a landslide victory in the previous month's genera election.
She is also the chairwoman of Democracy Unleashed, a wing of Open Britain, which is a subsidiary of People's Vote. Its directors include former Labour government minister and EU commissioner Lord Peter Mandelson and Trevor Phillips, a former London Assembly member who unsuccessfully sought the Labour candidacy for the first London mayoral election in 2000.
While Democracy Unleashed has attack government adviser Dominic Cummings for allegedly breaching COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, Sidhu-Robb is herself a sceptic of vaccines and modern medicine. In a since-deleted interview with The Glass magazine, she claimed childhood vaccinations made one of her children ill, and trumpeted the health benefits of fasting.
— The Red Roar (@TheRedRoar) June 24, 2020
Reality TV fans got to see Sidhu-Robb's £7 million, four-storey Chelsea home when she appeared on the 2019 series of Channel 5's Rich House, Poor House. “I don’t think I’m rich yet, I just have a very high level of what I want to earn,” she said of her swanky lifestyle and £1,500-per-week disposable income.
The Millionairess and her friend Harriet Waley-Cohen swapped places with mum-of three Andrea, living in her two-bedroom flat in Stockwell. On arrival at the block, Sidhu-Robb declared: “I don't want to be at the top of that tower thing, it's my idea of hell on earth."
The London mayoral election, set for this year, was postponed until May 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Sitting Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan will face 11 other candidates including the Conservative Shaun Bailey, his closest rival in the polls. The original Liberal Democrat candidate Siobhan Benita dropped out in July, saying she could not commit to another year of unpaid campaigning for the election.
