The Liberal Democrats have selected Rob Blackie as their Mayoral candidate for the May 2024 elections to challenge current Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.
Earlier this year, in April 2023, EALING.NEWS caught up with Mr Blackie who at the time was also standing to be selected as a candidate for the 2024 London Assembly Member elections.
Mr Blackie has also recently visited Warren Farm with Hina Bokhari, London Assembly member, in the ongoing campaign to stop the Council from building on Warren Farm and to ensure it gets nature reserve status.
During his visit to Warren Farm, Mr Blackie said: “Labour’s plan for Warren Farm threatens skylarks and owls that are very rare in London. It’s time for Labour-run Ealing Council to change their plans so that our children and grandchildren can continue to enjoy this unique place.”
Find out more about Mr Blackie and his background from our April 2023 interview.
Rob Blackie has worked in marketing and communications covering digital and social.
He explains why his background makes him an ideal choice to get changes made. “I trained as an environmental economist, so I started off preserving wildlife in Africa. I worked on a scheme that gave ownership of wildlife to local people in African villages, fantastically successful. They found some elephants in Namibia 15 years after we started it, which might not sound relevant, but actually if you give people control over their own lives, they use it well and that’s something we could do a lot more than Britain. Over the last 15 years or so, I have been marketing to people who do difficult things. So I’m working with some people now developing cancer vaccines. And also environmental pesticides they won’t kill ladybirds and butterflies. And of course, I’ve watched a huge amount of climate change.”
“I have a record of delivering. I run a campaign that tries to beat censorship in Russia. And so we’ve got a big team of volunteers from around the world help us beat Putin’s censorship.”
He explained what are the core issues he sees in Ealing. “Around here, like anywhere else, performance and housing, pollution, property and environment.”
So in terms of youth, he explained what he is focused on. “Two things, one on jobs and one on jobs? London is one of the best cities in the world for education – primary and secondary school. Very often kids, particularly poor backgrounds, when they’ve been transitioning to work, diversity or not university doesn’t really matter.
“The way in which to do that in a modern society is internships. I think one of the things we can do in government, and make sure that London Government itself, is to offer internships for all, not just to the friends of the people there. So that’s one big thing.
“The second thing is to focus on young people who overwhelmingly end up victims of crime.”
