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Ed Miliband's first big electoral test

Labour risks losing the key Tower Hamlets mayoral election.

By George Eaton Published 18 October 2010 13:15

The race to become Tower Hamlets's first-ever directly-elected mayor ends this Thursday and poses Labour's biggest electoral test since Ed Miliband became leader. As the Guardian's London blogger Dave Hill points out, the chance to win control of the "Olympics borough" and its billion-pound plus budget makes this contest more significant than most by-elections.

Labour, which took Bethnal Green and Bow back from Respect at the general election, is under threat from independent candidate Lutfur Rahman, who was removed as the party's candidate amid criticism of his links to the Islamic Forum of Europe and concerns over the "eligibility of participating voters".

With the support of local MP Rushanara Ali (who I interviewed earlier this year), Labour's Helal Abbas (who replaced Rahman as the party's candidate) submitted a dossier to the National Executive Committee attacking Rahamn's record as leader of Tower Hamlets council and claiming that he had been "brainwashed by extremists".

He wrote:

In my opinion, Luthfur Rahman has been brainwashed by fundamentalists in IFE and they are using him for the purposes of entry into the Labour party.

And added:

The whole environment in Tower Hamlets changed after Luthfur Rahman's leadership. There was intimidation of those who do not go to prayers.

Rahman was suspended from the party pending an investigation into alleged irregularities, but his decision to run as an independent meant he was automatically expelled. He has since won the backing of Respect and his campaign is funded by millionaire "curry king" Shiraj Haque. Labour has warned that the contest is "extremely close" and that the result will likely depend on turnout. Abbas's selection was controversial, not least because he finished third, not second, in the original contest. Christine Shawcross, a member of Labour's NEC, suggested: "they put forward Abbas so as not to leave themselves open to the charge of deselecting a Bangladeshi and replacing him with a white man."

Ahead of Thursday's election, Ali said that the stakes were high:

We do not want the people of Tower Hamlets, and especially the Bangladeshi community which I am so proud to be a part of, to be known to this country for the wrong reasons.

Thanks to a strong Labour campaign, Respect and its proxies were defeated across the East End at the general election. But future success could be thrown into doubt if Rahman wins this influential position.

 
 

4 comments

swatantra's picture

Mon, 2010-10-18 13:39 — swatantra

... won' be till 5 years time.
The little local diffculties in Tower Hamlets isn't going to tell us much. Labour could well do without internal bickering and alledged dodgy vote rigging in future. Its about time firm action were taken to stop this nonsense occuring.

Muhammad Haque's picture

Mon, 2010-10-18 17:48 — Muhammad Haque (not verified)

You say:
“As the Guardian's London blogger Dave Hill points out, the chance to win control of the "Olympics borough" and its billion-pound plus budget makes this contest more significant than most by-elections.”
Really?
So democratic accountability, ethical representation, due process, constitutionality, ‘natural justice’ or ‘universal adult franchise’ do not matter at all? And they don’t merit a single mention in your piece, which is a pastiche of the least authentic bits of Dave Hill and the most repugnant parasitical retailing of someone else’s poison as being allowed by the brothers owning the Daily Telegraph to be spread via Andrew Gilligan these seven months since late February 2010?

Stuart Madewell's picture

Mon, 2010-10-18 20:51 — Stuart Madewell (not verified)

George, this is very poor journalism, you are relying on other people to make up your mind without looking at the issues in any detail

Wais's picture

Tue, 2010-10-19 12:22 — Wais

This Thursday most Tower Hamlets voters will be asking whether to vote for Independent candidate Lutfur Rahman who got democratically selected by local Labour party members or Helal Abbas who came third with a fourth of the votes that Rahman got but was later imposed by the NEC as Abbas instilled fear in a 'dodgy dossier' implying that Rahman will run the borough like an Islamic state. Not sure how that would be possible with the gay chief executive and hedonistic staff (and 20 English police officers) Rahman appointed when he was council leader between 2008 and 2010. The NEC should not have believed the rightwing Telegraph Andrew Gilligan's lies about Rahman being an Islamic 'supremacist' or 'fundamentalist' (like the BBC hadn't and subsequently sacked him) when deselecting Rahman. Now that the Labour votes are divided we shouldn't be surprised if the Opposition win the mayoralty as Labour votes get split, thanks to the NEC's last minute decision and failure to investigate any allegations prior to September 4 when the local selection took place. After all, it was the London Regional Labour Party that created the membership list, not Rahman or the IFE (which can barely run a library let alone takeover Whitehall and the country!). Ed Milliband needs Muslim votes and must therefore stay well away from Tower Hamlets. He should work with whoever becomes mayor and take Rahman back into Labour especially if he wins, as he can influence London's ethnic minorities as the only ethnic minority mayor to vote for Labour in not just the London mayoral election but also in the next general election, making Ed M our next PM, especially by working closely with Britain's 2 million Muslims through the Muslim Friends of Labour and other networks that believe in secularism and even voted un-anti-semitically for both Miliband brothers in their recent Labour leadership contest!

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