Hi Simon

As a long term reader of you, glad that you cover the British local election but I beg to disagree with the article that you have just published.

Taking a closer look into the election results, it does not seem to be backing up on the notion of an electronic Chinatown. Ideally these analysis below should be done by 蔡子強 but obviously he is no UK election correspondent so I regrettably have to be the one who do the hard work.

1. It is very hard to overstate the success of the Richard Choi and Andy Ng Siu Hong. Richard Choi wins in a favourite terrain of Liberal Democrat’s heartland, but as the highest vote councillor, that is a solid proof of local support. 

2. Andy Ng’s success is even more notable, especially in a traditionally Tory area. In 2024, he took the last seat with a margin of merely 29 votes. This time, he leads with 1491 votes, an increment of more than 300 votes in two years and leads his closest opponent by more than 400. According to statistics, with the BNO petition as a proxy, the number of BNO Hongkongers in the entire Wokingham borough is likely in the region of 1500, of which only a fraction of it would be in Andy’s ward in Maidan Erlegh and Whitegate. Norman Jorgensen, the former Tory councillor who have just passed away in 2025, had a personal support strong enough to get him elected, even so, he only carried the ward with 1187 votes. Andy won 300 more, which shows you the level of his local support.

3. By the time of writing, we have another Liberal Democrats councillor following the victory of Ying Perrett in West Surrey. She competed in favourite climate in the picturesque countryside, with faith carrying the election by a margin of 11 votes, which is a smaller margin compared to her last election before the restructuring of the local government. She would likely need hard work to be re-elected as the Tories would likely be constantly after her seat.

4. Regardless of your political affiliation, it is always better if Hongkongers are represented in every major party, as demonstrated in the bipartisan support of the BNO visa in Westminster. One of my biggest worries would be the generally the right wing/Tory leaning tenancies of the Hongkongers observed, but this election exactly disproved my concern. I think Simon’s article might be written before the election of Lewisham is called, when the first Hongkonger Green Party councillor Tam Hau Yu is elected in Deptford. 

5. The election results of Simon Cheng also suggests that despite the overwhelmingly negative, primarily online, reception on his Labour Party affiliation, it does not suggest the locals in his constituent viewed him in the same way. Simon got 924 votes, which is despite losing, 150 votes more than another Labour candidate. As per statistics published online, 400+ BNO Hongkongers resides in Brent and the election results suggests that this must have helped on his vote share.

6. The reason of the Hongkonger ex-ETO official Reform candidate to run has always been obscure to me. (a) If he is indeed an active agent of the Hong Kong Government, one of his motive could be running to win. But then he should not be running Ealing Southhall, the primarily Indian district of London. He could well be running Chinese dominated districts and to advertise using WeChat or TikTok, but none of this would seem. An equally unlikely motive would be he runs to mask the other Reform candidate, who is also an agent. This is not proven in any news source.

(b) If he has no longer ties with the Hong Kong governments he has plenty of ways to demonstrate so. A YouTube video with Simon or Jacky would do, we got former government officials from Hong Kong who did that. But he did not do that either 

(c) Therefore the most logical explanation based on current evidences would be that he runs for Reform as a Paper Candidate, and that we all have been interpreting too much. Have Reform been choosing the wrong candidate to run though? You just need to google James Mcmurdock. Reform supporters being Reform candidates, the quality of such candidates has of course a ceiling. 

7. Hongkongers are participating in all parties, with some candidates won and some lost, which is normal and healthy in a normal, functioning democracy. Despite the skirmishes and arguments online, the election results itself does not suggest that argument sustains locally nor in the voting booths.

8. The above is actually in line with the anecdotal evidences of the Hongkongers locally, when local Hongkongers markets thrives, community grows despite relentless, most foreign, attacks of their so called malpractices and overcharging primarily seen online.

9. The real problem for the Hongkongers in Britain is that while we do have Hongkongers councillors elected, our preparedness for democracy is not enough. Distractions to politics are, of course, not something new, but instead of focusing on one Reform candidate, how many Hongkongers are aware of the expected fiscal outlay based on Reform’s policy? How many can tell what are the main proposals of the Green Party and how would it affects the working people? Campaigning for certain foreign policies popular for Hongkongers, or benefiting Hong Kong, is fine. But this has to be done in a British-centric way, i.e. illustrate that how it would be beneficial to the British, or we risk doing exactly what we loathe, the same thing as those campaigners who campaign in Britain local election for a foreign country in the Middle East.

10. I’ve written too much for an election analysis but despite the election results, with Hongkongers elected here and there, we have to do better than what we currently are. Till we have built Jerusalem, in England's green and pleasant land.