Labour Begins to Select Council Candidates

We are getting interesting, and disturbing reports from Labour councillors who have recently been interviewed to determine if they are suitable candidates to stand for election in 2022. 

All of them have reported that their questions were largely about how many times they had been out leafletting and canvassing for Labour. Important stuff. No campaigning usually means poor election results. What might be worrying for the residents of Newham is that none of the candidates were asked what contribution they would make to the council or how they would best represent their residents. An omission you might think. Not necessarily. If the point of councillors is to campaign for the mayor and not to focus on the needs of their residents or Newham, there is some virtue in havine a supine council without opinions which will not rock the boat.

Readers will recall that some time ago Mayor Fiaz was caught opining that she wanted to get rid of 30 sitting councillors. It seems that she is well on the way to achieving her aim. We can reveal how.

One case we came across was of a councillor who had seen his report from the Whip’s office prior to the interview, he had been shown it by the Deputy Whip who had written it. It seemed fine to the councillor who was somewhat surprised therefore to discover 30 minutes before the interview that there were two new entries, both complaints, supposedly from the Whip’s office. Given that they hadn’t been there when the Deputy Whip showed the councillor the draft report, it was apparent that the complaints had been added after the report was written. It was not at all obvious who had added the two complaints, but the list of those able to do so is very small and may be limited to one.

Then there is the question of what was in the complaints. The first turned out to be a complete fabrication. The second complained that the councillor for a ward had supported residents in a disagreement with the council. Just in case anyone is in doubt, that is one of the essential roles of a councillor. 

In the modern Labour Party it seems that representing residents and doing your job properly is now considered disloyal.

In another case, a councillor discovered that there was a complaint against him on his file some 30 minutes before the interview was due to take place. This was a matter that the Chief Whip had informed him of briefly, at a social event several years before. It was not something that had been investigated; there was no report; there was not even an interview with the councillor concerned. What there was, was a complaint, but a complaint so serious that the Whip had chosen to do nothing about it for three years. This complaint was considered to be sufficient to undermine the councillor concerned, regardless of the veracity of the allegation.

The Labour Party has form for dodgy tricks to get what it wants irrespective of who’s in charge.

Prior to the General Election in 2019 there was a vacancy for the parliamentary seat in Ilford South, the long-standing MP, Mike Gapes stood down having left Labour for the short-lived Change UK/The Independent Group.

The leading local contender to replace him was the Leader of the Council, one Jas Athwal. Athwal may have been popular locally, but he was no fan of one J. Corbyn. This was something of an embarrassment to the then Labour leadership who were intent, by using entirely democratic means, (of course) on getting their own people into the House of Commons. 

You might think that Athwal was a poster-boy for the intersectionalists in Corbyn’s Labour, but alas, he was the wrong sort of POC. He was independently minded and had actually done something, both in business and on the council.

It was an entirely fortuitous coincidence for the Corbynite faction therefore, that as the selections were announced a complaint of sexual harassment against Athwal was received by Labour HQ. With remarkable alacrity, which they seemed unable to apply in other cases, they suspended Athwal. The suspension made him ineligible to stand as a candidate.

This left the field open for one Sam Tarry, a pro-Corbyn candidate favoured by the then leadership and actively supported locally by one Rokhsana Fiaz. 

By one of those remarkable coincidences, with the conclusion of the general election the complaint of sexual harassment against Athwal seemed to disappear into thin air.

Cynics might suggest that the whole thing might have been trumped up in order to torpedo the leading local candidate, but we, of course would never suggest such a thing. We wonder how many sitting councillors have now had complaints listed on their reports from the Whip’s Office, which will magically disappear the day after the May elections.

Addendum

We have been a little critical of the Labour Party for its inability to handle complaints in either an efficient or timely manner. It seems that we might have to eat our words.

The panel appointed by the NEC has now finished its work amongst the sitting councillors who want to stand again. The time has come to interview those ordinary members who remain.

Some years ago, a sitting councillor, Seyi Akiwowo and an aspirant councillor one Rohit Dasgupta lodged complaints with the Labour Party into the behaviour of one party member, alleging both homophobia and racism. Little seemed to happen and as was the practice in the Labour Party the substance of the complaint was left to wither.

However, the party had not completely forgotten about it and when the time came for the said member to be interviewed as a potential candidate to stand for council the said member was suspended. 

Suspension, as we have seen above means that the person cannot be considered as a candidate.

We were delighted to hear that the Labour Party were able to conduct all of the investigations and come to a conclusion that reinstated the member within the space of 24 hours.

We are sure that the alacrity with which this was dealt with had nothing to do with the said member being a well-known ‘brown-noser’ for Mayor Fiaz and is everything to do with a new commitment to openness and due process. We anticipate hearing the results of the complaints of antisemitism, which have been in abeyance for the last two years.

Or not.