VOTE Luke. He’s Not a Tory!

If you thought that the promotion from nothing to deputy cabinet role within 48 hours was fast, it is nothing compared to what one of Newham’s newest councillors has planned.

Within hours of getting the new role Charters had become the bag-carrier-in-chief for the mayor and can be seen accompanying her on various visits. We are not sure whether this means that Asser has been replaced, but rather suspect that his star is waning.

Then we discovered that Charters had no sooner been elected as a councillor in Newham than he disclosed that he wanted to be elected as an MP some 200 miles away. It seems that he was brought up in the York area. He wants to go back.

Here he is pressing the flesh.

And his website, Luke for Outer York is here, complete with cringeworthy video in which he tells the people of the villages around York why he is the better candidate than the incumbent. He’s not the Tory. Err, that’s it. But then again, that is about all that Labour seems to offer at the moment.

He tells his prospective voters that he is “working hard for the people of Newham”, which may well have been his aspiration, but after two weeks in office it was probably a bit of an exaggeration. 

We understand that Luke’s wife is expecting their first child. We wish them all well. The gossip mongers at Dockside have let it be known that Luke has let it slip that he would not want to bring up a child in Newham and that after the baby arrives, they would be seeking to relocate in Essex. (If Cllr Charters would like to deny this, we will be happy to publish his denial on the website.)

There is nothing wrong with choosing to bring up your child in a more comfortable area. Newham may not be the place for everyone.

There is quite a lot wrong with claiming to want to represent the people of one of the poorest boroughs in the country, when what you want is a sinecure and a stepping stone, and you use Newham tax payers to pave your way.

Once upon a time, Labour was a party of imagination, aspiration, inspiration; it attracted men and women with experience and ideas about how to improve society and a burning desire to bring about change. They didn’t get everything right but they were trusted because of who they were, because of their record, and because of their character. 

Labour seems to have become a party of recent graduates who think that the public owes them a well-paid job for life. Politics has become a profession, but that suggests a degree of expertise. Politics was once a calling; it is now simply a job. And a job in which it is better if you don’t have the ability to think for yourself or the balls to do anything original.