Labour and Tories combine to undermine referendum outcome

ELN Report: In May 2010, the people of Tower Hamlets voted in a referendum to introduce a directly elected Mayor to run the Borough. On 29th November, Tory Councillors backed a move by Labour to claw back executive powers from the directly elected Mayor.

Labour and the Tories were never happy with the referendum vote – but they were even more unhappy when Tower Hamlets voters elected Lutfur Rahman as the Borough’s first Mayor. Before the election, the all parties had worked on a set of constitutional changes to transfer power to the Mayor, as required by the referendum. After the election, when the people’s choice was clear, Labour staged a last ditch effort to tinker with the new constitution.  In a particularly vindictive move, they voted to reduce the Mayor’s salary from the level they had previously thought justified. Lutfur Rahman responded with dignity: “I stood as Mayor to serve the people of Tower Hamlets. I have given up my job to do so. I am not in this for the money.”

Labour’s latest move was a mixture of taking a small number of powers away from the Mayor and a further cynical attempt to belittle him. Despite the referendum vote to transfer power TO the Mayor, Labour proposed to take BACK the power to decide the Borough’s strategies on employment, enterprise, waste and parks – all powers they were happy to give the Mayor before they found out who the voters had elected. These strategies will now be decided by the full Council.

This leaves the public in real danger. As Labour’s actions are still being inspired by vindictiveness towards the person the voters elected as our Mayor, they will be able to use the strategies on these issues to attempt to sabotage the Mayor’s administration by pushing forward policies which are in contradiction to the Mayor’s priorities (which he put before the voters before his successful election).

The second prong of Labour’s attack was an attempt to belittle the Mayor whom the voters have chosen. Up to now, the Council has chosen one of the Councillors to chair the Council meetings – and with Labour the largest political Party, the chair has been the councillor whom they have nominated. After Labour’s amendments, the Chair of Council will be renamed the “Speaker” – which, with its association with the Speaker of the House of Commons, makes the post sound much grander. The Speaker will be the ceremonial head of the Council, the Borough’s “First Citizen”. Labour spelled out that  First Citizen will take precedence at all ceremonial events, such as royal visits, civic receptions, etc. In other words, if the Queen visits Tower Hamlets during the Olympics she will be greeted by a councillor chosen by 32 Labour Councillors – not by the Mayor who was elected by over 23,000 voters.

Moving the amendments, Labour Group Leader Josh Peck (chosen as a Labour candidate by Labour Party bosses in London over the heads of local Labour Party members) claimed that Labour was correcting Mayor Rahman’s abuses of power. Cllr Alibor Choudhury asked him what abuses of power he thought had occurred, by Cllr Peck refused to answer.

Cllr Peck also claimed a democratic mandate for Labour’s move. He announced that there had been complaints from residents about the power structures in the Council: in particular, there was the issue of an incinerator which had been hidden in a document. Again, Cllr Peck did not explain why some residents complaining to him about an incinerator trumped the democratic mandate of Lutfur Rahman winning the Mayoral election across the whole Borough.  He explained that these residents wanted things taking to full Council so that they could complain about them. It is always welcome to see a Labour politician supporting residents: however, Cllr Peck was also the politician who halved the number of petitions which residents can bring to each meeting of the Council.

Labour’s constitutional amendments included requiring appointment of local authority school governors to be approved by the General Purposes Committee.  In the debate, Cllr Kabir Ahmed pointed out that a meeting of this Committee had had to be cancelled to allow some councillors to attend their party political conference. He thought members of the committee should priortise their duties to serve the residents of the Borough, particularly if the Committee was going to get new powers.

Cllr Rania Khan pointed out that Labour has a dodgy track record on democracy. Labour Party bosses do not allow local party members to choose their own Council candidates (the method used throughout the rest of the Labour Party). These constitutional changes seemed to show a similar attitude to democracy: keeping as many powers as possible for a small, self-selected group of councillors rather than observing the democratic mandate of the electors. Cllr Peck took umbrage at this comment.  He said that he had long suspected that independent councillors (such as Cllr Khan) had not read the constitution. He told her that the Council constitution did not refer to Labour Party candidate selection procedures. Observers in the public gallery were left feeling that Cllr Peck had rather missed the point.

The Conservatives cannot wait to get their hands on the policies which Labour has wrested away from the Mayor and backed the amendment in the debate. No sooner had the vote been taken at the Council meeting, than Tory Leader Peter Golds was asking senior officers to confirm they would pull a policy due to go to the next meeting of the Mayor’s Cabinet – so the Council could decide it instead. Cllr Golds was utterly crestfallen when officers made clear that the Council has a proper process: strategy documents go to the Cabinet, to the Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee… and only then to the full Council.

The constitutional changes were backed by 35 councillors, with 14 councillors abstaining. The Mayor was backed by 23.283 electors, with 11,254 electors backing Labour’s candidate. Labour sees the voters decision as a mandate to take more powers away from him. Do we need to follow the “Arab spring” with a  “Tower Hamlets winter”?