One of the issues that this website has repeatedly returned, is the mayor’s obsession with pursuing her pet projects, regardless of the costs or the benefit to the residents of Newham. This is an issue that both her internal and external opposition have alluded to.

We know that the party machinery is somewhat defunct, but you would have thought that Newham Labour might have done some editing of their website, it has been months since Cllr Gulamussen defected to the Independent Group.

We have chosen to reflect upon the Peer Review 2023 and note that it illustrates a sea change when compared with the review undertaken a decade before. 

It seems that Mayor Lutfur Rahman has got himself into hot water again in neighbouring Tower Hamlets.

It’s so hard being a dinosaur. Keeping up with the changing trends in what is and is not acceptable is tiring. We have learned and internalised that the sexual objectification of women, at least by men is a modern sin. It seems that the sexual objectification of women by women is quite ok.

At the February council meeting, Cllr Josh Garfield stood up to speak on the budget debate. It is difficult to hear on the video, but it is very apparent that members of the audience saw fit to hiss and jeer at him.

A by-election is not a general election. Turnout is typically low. Only 31,107 voters bothered to cast a vote in the Rochdale by-election, (compared to 46,476 in the 2019 general election). It is a chance to give the government a bit of a kicking without disturbing anything too much.

Newham Council have agreed, after much internal dissent, a budget. Central to the budget is the plan to sell £16m worth of capital assets.

On the same day as the council meeting that agreed the budget the BBC disclosed that 19 English councils had been given permission to sell their capital assets in order to subsidise their revenue costs (see list below).

Amongst the changes at the cabinet meeting in February, the threatened cuts to the commissioned youth work were reversed. My London reported the U-Turn which will restore the money to commissioned youth work budget.

How does a party that denies the ‘block-vote’ effect stand up to a challenge from an organisation which seeks to capitalise on a block-vote?

Labour’s Islamophobia Policy says the following:

Seven voluntary sector groups have written to the mayor and the chief exec to protest the cuts in youth service funding, (see text below). The mayor has planned to take some £300,000 from the youth service budget over the next two years.

It is evident that Mayor Fiaz is now struggling for her political survival. At the cabinet meeting on Tuesday 20th February she was planning to submit her budget plans for approval.

Key to any mayor’s success is their ability to pass a budget. It is their ability to raise and spend money that shapes their programme. If they don’t have control of their budget, if they lose the support of their party, they become lame-ducks.

In an embarrassing volte face, the Labour Party have been forced to remove their endorsement of Azhar Ali. Labour was defending a majority of over 9,000 and Ali was facing a serious challenge from George Galloway. Both men were seeking to capitalize on the Muslim vote in a by-election that was dominated by events in Gaza. Does that sound familiar?

We see that Momentum stalwart, Tahir Mirza has announced that he will be standing for the Independents against (Sir) Stephen Timms MP in the forthcoming general election.

Along with the rest of the country, we are assuming that there will be a general election in either the summer or the autumn of this year. Members in the West Ham and Beckton constituency have begun to murmur about choosing the candidate. It seems that some of them would like to participate in the democratic process.

We understand that, in the twinning of strong constituency Labour Parties with their less robust colleagues in distant shires, the CLPs in Newham have been twinned with the party in Ipswich.

It seems that there has been some movement on the matter of the standards committee report. Readers will recall that Newham Council spent several tens of thousands of pounds of council -taxpayers’ money on an investigation into allegations made by Cllr Terry Paul, against the mayor for allegations of bullying towards staff and councillors.

Our crystal ball is a little cloudy. We are thus, unable to say whether Labour’s problems are a temporary blip or whether we are seeing a permanent realignment.

There has got to be just the smallest sense of irony in the fact that Fiaz and Labour are slashing the grant to The Theatre Royal at the same time as they are spending more than that in seeking to become the Borough of Culture.