Readers will recognize that Open Newham is not above the salacious; nor opposed to rummaging through the political detritus every now and again.

But even we were unsure about how to deal with this story.

A letter, purporting to represent a large number of Muslim organisations in the borough has been written to Lyn Brown MP. Brown, readers will recall, chose not to vote for the SNP cease-fire motion.

The purpose of this series is not to support or challenge the policies that the mayor has reneged on, it is simply to remind readers that there were significant promises made to the electorate that have been ditched once she got into office.

We will touch on this only briefly because we have covered it at length elsewhere. However, we should note that within the space of 12 months, Mayor Fiaz had suddenly dropped the manifesto commitment to 50% social housing in all new developments.

We are anticipating the announcement of cuts totalling £40m. Behind this are the hidden service cuts that have not been announced.

For instance, last year, Special Education Needs and Disability Children (SEND) packages were frozen by the London Borough of Newham. This means that their budgets were not increased while their costs rose.

The team supporting Sophia Naqvi published the picture above. (We have done similar.)

It named and showed the faces of five Newham Chief Execs in six years. The inference was that there was some problem between the Newham Mayor and her senior officers that meant that they didn’t stay around long.

Across the country, schemes requiring an element of social (or affordable) housing have been negotiated. Usually, these take the form of 30%-35% social/affordable housing with the larger portion, 65%-70% being sold or let at commercial levels.

In a race that echoes the recent battle between Lakmini Shah and Thelma Odoi, it seems that Cllr Terry Paul convincingly defeated Cllr Lewis Godfrey for the vacant position of Scrutiny Chair.

Figures from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities show that the number of affordable homes built in Newham is dropping. In 2022-23 some 844 affordable homes were completed. This corresponds to a figure 1156 in the year before. This shows a drop in completed homes of almost 25% in a year.

The current balance of the council is as follows. Of 66 council seats

• The Majority Group. Labour has 60.

• The Main Opposition. The Independent Group has 3.

• The Green Party has 2.

• Non-aligned antisemitic independent, (wanting to get back in the Labour Party) councillor, has 1 seat.

Spoiler Alert: It didn’t work!

It appears that the results of the last two byelections have rattled the London Region of the Labour Party. Regional officer, Larry Culhane, visited Newham on Monday 4th. We understand that he had a private conversation with Mayor Fiaz, which must have been fun for both of them.

We understand that residents of Beckton, that’s the same Beckton where Cllr Asser is a councillor, wrote to the Deputy Mayor. The Beckton Environmental Action Team, has sent numerous emails to Cllr Asser reporting the public drinking by contractors and littering.

Amidst all of the gossip that is floating around Labour Group in the light of Labour’s poor performance in recent elections, we came across some interesting snippets.

Readers will note that we took down an article regarding Cllr Godfrey. This is rare and in this article we outline why.

Open Newham has learned that Cllr Miriam Dawood told cabinet colleagues that she was resigning. It is understood that Dawood handed her resignation to Mayor Fiaz. Fiaz in turn asked that didn’t publish the resignation until after the Peer Review had been completed.

For reasons best known to herself (and her expensive Assistant Chief Executive for Marketing), Mayor Fiaz ‘launched’ her bid for Newham to become Borough of Culture in 2024 in the somewhat dank and run-down surroundings of Queens Road Market. What’s more, she chose to do it on a cold winter evening.

We noted in our article concerning the complaint that Cllr Godfrey has had lodged against him, that he has told people that his What’s App account has been hacked.

We’ve collated the remainder of the memes below. The Naqvi campaign used humour and some acerbic reflections to make their points. These clearly hit home with the voters.

Drawing up trends on the basis of three by-elections is clearly a dangerous exercise. However, there is clearly a substantial dissatisfaction with Newham Labour and this is being shown in the polls.

This has to be the outright winner. It combines humour whilst making a political point and does so without rancour. *****5 Stars!