Tower Hamlets ruling Labour councillors being deselected?
Dear Ed, IT IS interesting to ponder which Labour councillors are being reselected to fight for their seats at the Tower Hamlets council elections next May—and just who is being booted out. Many are in the Cabinet who were never elected as Labour party members
Dear Ed,
IT IS interesting to ponder which Labour councillors are being reselected to fight for their seats at the Tower Hamlets council elections next May—and just who is being booted out (Advertiser Website August 28. Many are in the Cabinet who were never elected as Labour party members.
Some illustrated their contempt for democracy and all the voters who supported them at the polls by defecting to Labour mid-term, most of them from our favourite’ one-issue party Respect.
I wonder when the penny dropped for the defectors about their leader George Galloway. Was it that cat suit moment on Channel 4’s Big Brother? Or was it one of his embarrassing rants in the Commons?
They now have paid positions on board Labour’s tax-funded gravy train. Rania Khan learned to forgive Labour for the Iraq War so much she is now happy to cash her �24,000 a year cheque as cabinet member for regeneration. Remarkably enough, so did her mother who also defected and is now deputy Mayor on �13,000 a year.
Waiseul Islam, another Respect defector, was rewarded with �16,000-a-year as Olympic Ambassador’.
The star of the show has to be Oliur Rahman, yet another Respect defector, who has been made cabinet member for employment in a borough which continues to have the highest jobless rates in the country. Cllr Rahman, who once told a council meeting he didn’t want council staff to be risking their lives’ travelling on the DLR late at night, five minutes after Labour tried to spin’ that crime was falling in Tower Hamlets, also takes home �24,000 of council taxpayers’ money for his trouble.
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It is rumoured that some Labour councillors have already been deselected. Will we now see them rejoin Respect in a principled’ move?
All of this is crucial to the leadership of Luftur Rahman, who clings onto his role by a two votes.
If enough of his friends get deselected and the wrong people get elected next May, he also could end up with the boot. That’s only if Cllr Rahman does not get deselected first himself.
After Smithgate’ and �400,000 council tax money paying off chief executive Martin Smith, might regional Labour bosses boot him out too?
Matthew Vaughan
Caledonian Wharf, Cubitt Town, Isle of Dogs
