Two damning pieces of news this morning.
The first comes from Erith and Thamesmead, where the already controversial Labour selection process has just taken a turn for the sinister. The BBC reports:
A London Labour spokesman said: “It was discovered that the seal on a ballot box containing previously received ballot papers for the selection of Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Erith and Thamesmead was broken.
“In order to maintain the integrity of the process, [Saturday’s] hustings meeting has been immediately postponed and a new date will be fixed.”
The candidates include Georgia Gould, the 22-year-old daughter of Lord Gould, a key aide to Tony Blair during his time as prime minister.
Even insiders are worried things have got out of hand. John Austin, the sitting Labour MP who is retiring, had already lodged a complaint with the party about alleged postal vote gathering among Gould’s supporters.
Meanwhile, the Times has a new and disturbing revelation about the Damian Green affair:
Police who arrested the Conservative frontbencher Damian Green trawled his private e-mails looking for information on Britain’s leading civil liberties campaigner.
Officers from Scotland Yard’s antiterror squad searched the computer seized from his parliamentary office using the key words “Shami Chakrabarti” – even though the Liberty director had nothing to do with the leaking of Home Office documents that prompted the investigation.
I wish I hadn’t used that “Is this really Britain?” headline so recently. Maybe I should have made it part of a series.
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