ONE of the key members of Camden Council’s leadership has announced he wants to head out west and stand for parliament in Hillingdon.

Labour councillor Danny Beales holds one of the main portfolios at the Town Hall as the regeneration chief who has fronted the ‘Community Investment Programme’, a wide-ranging set of development schemes which has drawn in money for new homes, schools and community facilities.

While there have been award-winning updates of estates such as the overhaul of Agar Grove, the policy has caused controversy, for the amount of demolition of existing stock elsewhere and the number of expensive private flats added to council-owned land needed to fund the projects.

Mr Beales, who in recent years has  simultaneously tipped as possible successor to council leader Georgia Gould and a likely parliamentary candidate, said on Friday that he wanted to stand for Labour in Uxbridge and South Ruislip – the seat currently held by former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson.

In a promotional video for his candidacy, pledged to be a “visible MP who puts our community first, living in the area all year round”.

Amid months of government chaos and a year in which the Tories have had now seen three different occupants of Downing Street, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has ordered that his party be on an “election footing” and a series of selection decisions have been made or are in progress over which candidates will be on the ballot paper.

While there have been demands for a general election to let voters decide who should lead the country following the shambolic 45-day reign of Liz Truss, her replacement Rishi Sunak has said he will not hold one and most polls show the Conservatives would suffer huge losses if he did.

Although he was briefly in the running to return to Downing Street during another weekend of chaos, Mr Johnson’s 7,210 majority in Uxbridge and South Ruislip looks vulnerable under current election forecasts.

Mr Beales has had the support of a team of Camden councillors and activists who have travelled to the west London constituency to campaign for him. In his promotional film, he said he was born in one of the hallways of Hillingdon hospital rather than the maternity unit “because of Tory cuts”.

He tells Labour members that he went to local schools and, as he talked about in an interview with the New Journal earlier this year, experienced homelessness twice as a teenager. “As a cabinet member [in Camden], I’ve led the largest council house building programme in a generation because housing is a human right,” he said.