East London News A Force for the community…
ONCE AGAIN, Tower Hamlets veteran politician Helal Abbas Uddin has seen the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) take a decision which affects his political future. But this time, rather than being in his favour, the NEC has dashed his hopes of becoming Labour MP for Poplar & Limehouse.
Current MP Jim Fitzpatrick made it clear long ago that the 2015 General Election was the last one he would contest. In the event, Fitzpatrick did stand in the snap General Election in 2017 and he has recently confirmed that he will not stand again – even in a snap General Election. But for four years, a number of ambitious Labour Party members have been sounding out local members with a view to filling Fitzpatrick’s shoes.
One of those with a serious interest in taking over was former Labour Councillor Helal Abbas. Abbas took over as Leader of the Council after the elections in May 2010 – the elections which saw a referendum decide in favour of putting a directly elected Executive Mayor in charge of the Council. The Council decided to hold the first election for the Executive Mayor in the October of that year.
The Labour Party held a selection process and local members decided that Cllr Lutfur Rahman would be their candidate for Mayor, with Cllr Abbas coming in third position. Cllr Abbas instructed solicitors, who wrote to the Labour Party NEC alleging that Cllr Rahman was (a) and extremist and (b) that there were allegations about the integrity of the membership list, as alleged by a Channel 4 Dispatches programme presented by the (now disgraced) Andrew Gilligan.
On that occasion, the Labour Party NEC supported Cllr Abbas. They sat on his solicitors’ letter for ten days, not putting the allegations to Cllr Rahman – before deciding, just four days before close of nominations, to remove him as Labour’s candidate and install Cllr Abbas as the candidate instead.
In some ways, the NEC decision did Cllr Abbas no favours – Cllr Rahman, standing as an independent candidate, won the mayoral election with 23,283 votes, while Cllr Abbas came in second position with just 11,254 votes from across the borough.
Boris Johnson’s victory in the Tory leadership contest has speeded up Labour’s parliamentary selection process. Given the possibility of a snap General Election being called this autumn – either before Brexit, if Labour wins its “no confidence” motion, or just afterwards, if Boris goes for his own popular mandate – Labour has put its parliamentary candidate selection process in overdrive.
Chris Weavers’s announcement on Facebook – he’s disappointed he can’t stand, but doesn’t acknowledge he had virtually no chance of being selected.
Yesterday, Labour Party veteran grandee Chris Weavers, former Chair of the Tower Hamlets Labour Party, announced on Facebook that officers of Labour’s NEC had declared that the new candidate for Poplar & Limehouse would be chosen from an All-Women Shortlist (AWS). The news was confirmed to us by other sources who had seen the minutes of the meeting which took the decision.
Nine years ago, the Labour Party NEC put its faith in Helal Abbas to be Labour’s candidate in the boroughwide mayoral election – only to find that he did not repay that faith. Yesterday, they declined to put that faith in him again and restricted the seat to women party members.
However, it is unlikely that Abbas will lose all hope and retire. He is thought to be considering trading on local discontent with the performance of Rushanara Ali, working to trigger a full selection contest in Bethnal Green & Bow – and then stepping in to her shoes on a wave of local gratitude for seeing her off. Watch this space.
•From our archives:
Cllr Helal Abbas suspended by Standards Body
Bi-election loss adds to Labour woes
