More Sad Farewells

Luke Charters and Cecelia Welsh are standing down, having served a full one year on the council.

After receiving over 200 applications from party members to stand for council, the Labour Party managed to interview almost a third of them and selected sixty plus, outstanding candidates to fight the seats for Labour in 2022.

Then they dropped one exemplary candidate, for living in Lincolnshire and replaced her with Rita Chadha, just in time for the election

Then they kicked one outstanding candidate out for antisemitism. Unfortunately, she was already on the Labour ticket, so the voters returned a Labour candidate whom the Labour Party had kicked out. The hapless residents of Canning Town are stuck with her.

Within a couple of months, another outstanding candidate had left Newham for the more salubrious climes of Tory-led Havering. But by then it was too late to do anything and she remains on the council, somewhat to the chagrin of many of the Muslim councillors who accused her of Islamophobia.

And now two of these outstanding candidates are resigning. We find from the internal communications of the Labour Group that;

“Cecilia’s mother has increasing care needs, she understandably is needing to spend more time with her family. Luke is stepping down to focus on winning for Labour in the crucial York Outer constituency seat as the party’s parliamentary candidate. We all know how vital it is to secure a Labour government at the next general election so that we can end the 13+ disastrous Tory years and a damaging cost of living crisis wreaking havoc on our people and communities everywhere.

“I (Mayor Fiaz) am grateful for all the hard work and dedication that Cecilia and Luke have shown as a (sic) Boleyn and Wall End Councillors over the past year. They wanted to pass on thank you messages to you all and I have e-signature (sic). I am sure you attached these to this email. I am sure that you’ll want to join me in wishing them both well.”

Luke Charters has had an interesting, if short career on the council. Adopted in 2022, elected 2022, appointed Deputy Cabinet Member 2022. Then suddenly dropped from the cabinet April 2023. Resigned from the council, May 2023.

In his farewell to his comrades Luke stated “It’s been great to have been involved with Newham which has led the way in recent years on things like free primary school meals and healthy school streets”. It seems that he is most enthusiastic about a policy introduced by Robin Wales, a policy Mayor Fiaz tried to scrap.

What a brilliant CV for a future MP.

Anyway, there’s going to be some more by-elections. What joy.

If there are any party members out there who haven’t heard, anyone can stand for the Wall End seat, as long as you’ve been in the party for 12 months. However, to stand for Labour in the Boleyn ward, you must “identify as a woman”. You know, like these self-identified women. So, there’s nothing to stop you boys…err, girls?

True to form, Labour still doesn’t trust the local party to run the proverbial drinking session in a brewery, so the arrangements will be overseen by the London Region of the Labour Party.