Andy McSmith's Election Diary: How the Tower Hamlets corruption scandal goes far beyond just Lutfur Rahman

Lutfur Rahman was not the only one to come out badly from Judge Richard Mawrey’s report into intimidation and corruption in Tower Hamlets. There was a section on how Labour’s National Executive Committee dealt with “an astonishing catalogue of very serious allegations” handed to them in September 2010 by Helal Abbas, who had come a poor third, behind Rahman and John Biggs, in the contest to be selected as Labour’s mayoral candidate.

“There was no decision to confront Mr Rahman with Mr Abbas’s allegations or to ask him whether he had any answer to them,” the judge’s report says. “Indeed the NEC itself did not trouble to communicate Mr Abbas’s statement to Mr Rahman. He only discovered it later through the agency of his supporters on the Committee.

“The Committee did not even decide to hold an investigation. It did not summon Mr Abbas and ask him to justify his serious allegations. A resolution was passed to suspend Mr Rahman, unseen and unheard.

“Next, the NEC decided, then and there, to select and impose a new candidate. There was no suggestion that the Tower Hamlets Labour Party might be consulted, still less that there might be a new ballot….The NEC simply decided ad hoc that it would vote, then and there, between Mr Biggs and, of all people, Mr Abbas, whose accusations could have been, for all the NEC knew about it, a complete tissue of malicious falsehoods…. Mr Rahman, completely unaware of the accusations and given no opportunity to counter them, was summarily sacked as candidate and his accuser substituted.”

The 18 NEC members present included Harriet Harman and her husband, Jack Dromey, Angela Eagle, Keith Vaz and Dennis Skinner.

Quote of the Day

“I had a baby right here in Cornwall.”

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David Cameron’s jaw dropping pitch for the women’s vote, in Penzance. Was Samantha at the birth?

An Anti-Trident Tory

Last week, the airwaves were thick with warnings from the Tories that a Labour government reliant on SNP support could mean that end of the Trident missile system. Meanwhile in Hampstead and Kilburn, the most marginal seat in Britain, the Conservative candidate Simon Marcus, told a hustings: “For us to go to such huge expenditure with so many ifs, I don’t think is necessary.” His argument was that if it ever came to a point where the UK might use nuclear weapons, it would be in a conflict in which the USA was lead player – therefore we do not need an ‘independent’ nuclear armoury.

His Labour opponent, Tuilp Saddiq, said she had not made up her mind about nuclear weapons.

So if you live in Hampstead and want to be rid of Trident, you presumably should vote Conservative.

With Friends Like These

“If it was up to the right-wing of the Tory party, they would probably kick me out of the country.”

Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, Spanish-born wife of Nick Clegg, interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, on some of the people with whom her husband was in coalition.

St George and Gorgeous George

St George’s day yesterday brought forth the usual output of learned or ill-informed pieces on who St George was, including this from George Galloway, who fancies himself as a dragon-slayer: “St George was an Arab Palestinian buried in Karak in Jordan. I once placed flowers on his grave.” We cannot be absolutely certain who St George was, but it is generally believed that he was a Christian of Greek descent from Cappadocia, which is now part of Turkey. How that translates into his being an Arab Palestinian escapes me.

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