She Doesn’t Live in Newham and She’s Joined Another Party

Readers will recall that we reported that Cllr Pushpa Makwana had upped-roots and moved with her family to Havering borough within weeks of being elected to a seat on Newham Council.

Her moving out of the borough, might have seemed a cynical act to a disinterested observer, but not it seems to the Mayor or the Chief Whip. Quite how well she can represent the people of Plashet Ward from Havering is anyone’s guess. Still, there’s only another three and a half years to go before her time is up.

Here we see a note on social media from the Havering Residents Association. Readers will note that they are (still) encouraging members to vote in the local elections on May 5th.

It’s all virtuous stuff, encouraging residents to vote. We see that they also welcome a number of new members to the association, including a Pushpa Mak.

What we don’t see, yet, is that they are standing candidates in local elections.

That sounds rather like it might be our own councillor for Plashet.

And indeed, it is!

There may be some issues that she has with the Labour Party with regard to this. 

You will see in the table below, the results of the local election for May 2022. The table is for Rush Green & Crowlands Ward, where Labour did quite well. You will also see that one of the parties competing for votes was Havering Residents Association.

It seems that Newham Labour Councillor, Pushpa Makwana has joined another party which stands against Labour in the district where she now lives, in Havering.

They did respectably, but not brilliantly in Rush Green & Crowlands, but in neighbouring wards the Residents’ Association have taken seats. They currently hold 20 seats, whilst Labour holds a mere nine. There is no guarantee as to where the 500-600 votes taken by the Residents Association would have gone if they weren’t standing, but it is plausible that a fair number would have gone to the opposition Labour candidates and Labour only needed 200 to take one of the seats.

Somewhere, deep in the back of our collective memories, there is a Labour Party rule which says you can’t be a member of a party or organisation which stands against Labour in elections.

So what, we wonder will Chief Whip, Anamul Islam do about this clear breach of the party rules?

In addition to her representing (or not), the residents of Plashet Ward, here are the committees that she serves on:

It is not unreasonable that we ask Labour to sort itself out.