He is fighting what has been dubbed an impossible battle, but Craig Montgomery is determined to win the Epsom and Ewell seat for the Labour Party. THAIS PORTILHO-SHRIMPTON reports...

Continuing my quest to get to know our local parliamentary candidates better, I follow Mr Montgomery on a sunny Sunday around Livingstone Park, in Epsom.

Along with his canvassing team and a car armed with loudspeakers playing the Monkees’ Daydream Believer among other tunes, Mr Montgomery sprints from door to door defending his parties policies and laying an expected attack on the Conservatives.

To one of the residents he says: “The big issue is what we’re going to do about the economy.

"While the Tories want to take 6bn out of the economy and cut public services we are more worried about maintaining recovery rather than taking money away from it while it is still fragile.”

A solicitor, Mr Montgomery tells me he has been working hard to conciliate his day job with election campaigning and will take a couple of weeks off to intensify his offensive on what has been a safe Tory seat for as long as many can remember.

As the canvassing continues, so do the attacks on Conservative policies.

Mr Montgomery tells a mother who worries about services for their children being cut: “If you look at services like the Sure Start, in Epsom, they want to take those away.”

As the afternoon goes by and the weather turns even more glorious, Mr Montgomery tells me about the different approaches between parties on the hot topic of immigration.

He says: “The key difference between Labour and Tories in immigration is that the Tories want to implement a quotas system and put a cap on the amount of people that can come into this country.

"What we are saying is we’ve put in a points system which works and we are looking to make it similar to the one used in Australia.”