Here’s a clip of Councillor Rabina Khan on BBC’s Newsnight discussing the steps we need to take to tackle vaccine disinformation. You can see Rabina and her husband going into their community, in a socially distanced way, to support local residents – addressing their concerns directly.
Brexit is coming, the hedge fund’s growing fat, who will put a billion in Phil Hammond’s hat? If you haven’t got a billion, 3,000 troops will do, if you haven’t got 3,000 troops, then God bless you…
But at least we’re giving some opposition to this wastrel administration…
Lib Dem peers defeat Government to force Prevent review (this one arrived late last night)
Cable: Decision to ramp up no-deal is psychological warfare
Dropping migration target an admission Brexit won’t control immigration
Lib Dems: Putting troops on standby is simply scaremongering
Lib Dems table no confidence motion in Government
We’ve also received a press release from Tower Hamlets …
Mr Cregan, 33, said he had the “greatest respect” for his Labour colleagues on the council and said would support them in votes “where it is due”.
But he criticised Mr Corbyn’s leadership, particularly on Europe and said he was dismayed by “what is going on at grassroots level in the party”.
By contrast, he said, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron offered a clear lead against Brexit. “The Liberal Democrats are fighting for Britain to remain an open, tolerant and united nation in Europe,” he said.
Senior Lib Dems were delighted to have a toe-hold on Tower Hamlets. Chris Maines, chair of London Liberal Democrats, said: “Thousands of former Labour members and supporters across London have joined the Liberal Democrats over the past few months.
“They will help us provide the real opposition to this Conservative Brexit government, which does not represent the majority, and a Labour party getting in line behind Theresa May and pushing for a hard Brexit.”
I’ve supported the Lib Dems for as long as I can remember, but until now, only ever from the comfort of my sofa. I’ve always been interested in politics, I studied the subject at college and university, but never felt compelled to get involved.
So what prompted me aged 36 to join the party? Well, on the face of it, it’s easy: Brexit. The referendum result was my call to arms. Like many others I joined the party a few days after the vote, realising that it was time for apathetic liberals (small l) like myself to stand up and fight back.
Most of my adult life was spent in a political system dominated by the centre ground. As a second generation East European, I was proud to be part of a tolerant and generous society that welcomed everyone. Brexit woke me up to how quickly things can change. It was a stark reminder of how xenophobia and intolerance could become prevalent. All those history lessons about the 1930s suddenly began to make sense.
On reflection, the reason I didn’t didn’t get into politics earlier, was probably because I didn’t think I needed to. My views were mainstream and pretty well represented in politics. I joined the fight when I saw this change. The Liberal Democrats were the only party I could see that would be able to revive a fair and tolerant centre ground.
On April 3 2016, just under 12 million documents were leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca containing financial details on over 200,000 offshore companies. While the bulk of our nation’s media coverage was of David Cameron’s family investment fund – Blairmore Holdings – and the former Prime Minister of Iceland’s resignation, most news outlets underplayed the real significance of the investigation: the details of shell companies used to profit from criminal activity and how the lack of transparency in opaque jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles or Bahamas provides cover for organisations involved in people trafficking, narcotics, selling arms to despotic regimes and terrorism.
On Saturday, Tower Hamlets Liberal Democrats are moving a motion demanding that the UK calls time on the lack of progress in our overseas territories and sets a deadline for the implementation of centralised registers which make the beneficial ownership of companies available both to relevant authorities and to the public.
The UK has a strong record in this area: Vince Cable drove forward the development of legislation for Companies House to implement a register of Persons of Significant Control during the coalition and the register is now starting to be filled with statements of beneficial ownership. It is due for completion in June 2017.
Last month, Liberal Democrat Expand launched with an ambitious plan for the party to widen its net, to work in those areas where we had disappeared.
After the devastating election result last year, one of the first people back into the fray was Elaine Bagshaw, who had to run in a by-election for Mayor in Tower Hamlets.
Since then, she has built a team that is out there on the streets several times a week building an organisation from the ground up.
She writes about what she’s been doing on the Liberal Democrat Expand website:
The first has been about being brave and changing the mindset about “no go” areas. Wards that we were told would never vote Lib Dem had actually never been asked. I’m still shocked that in some places people won’t go and knock on council houses because apparently “they aren’t our people”. We definitely haven’t found this to be the case in Tower Hamlets. From a London perspective, it’s a foolish way to approach things as people move so often. At one point in Tower Hamlets 25% the electoral roll would change every time a new one was issued.
My other issue with “no go” areas is that for us to be in majority government we absolute have to win in places like Poplar & Limehouse and other areas that we dismiss as ‘not our territory’. Poplar & Limehouse is a passion project of mine partly for this reason but also because it’s in these areas that people need Lib Dems the most. Every time we write-off an area we write-off the people in it and that’s not a narrative we should be signed up to.
As you’ll be aware from various posts on Liberal Democrat Voice over the past few weeks, Elaine Bagshaw has been fighting the Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election caused by the disqualification of the previous Mayor, Lutfur Rahman.
Elaine has fought a busy and energetic campaign, helped by new members taking part in their first election. She made progress in number of votes, percentage of the vote and went up a place from 6th to 5th. That ‘s a result that she can be pleased with. The result, from the Tower Hamlets website, was as follows:
Like most of you I don’t “do miserable” and I’ve been itching to start the fight back. Local Government has always been Lib Dem territory because we believe in communities and remain aghast at how badly so many are served by their local governments. So when I got a chance to support Elaine Bagshaw in launching her campaign for Mayor of Tower Hamlets I jumped at it. Of all the places that need effective local Government focussed on people, listening to people and functioning with integrity, Tower Hamlets must be near the top of the list. As Elaine says, it’s a largely deprived community in the shadow of the extra-ordinary wealth of the City of London.
Elaine has lived in the area for years so she knows Tower Hamlets’ issues like the back of her hand. But what I also love is that Elaine is part of the new generation who will now take over our party. I don’t mean just new as in young, though that is true of many, but also the flood of new members of all ages who are joining with such a sense of purpose and with a vision of the future. Old warhorses like me can provide the back-up but one silver lining of a bad defeat is that a natural passing of the baton takes place. And goodness those folk did turn out at Elaine’s launch, at least 50 of them, all ready to spend the day on the doorsteps.
Elaine Bagshaw launched her campaign for Mayor of Tower Hamlets on Saturday, saying that the borough is in need of a clean-up and a resilient, bold, Liberal Democrat voice in our Tower Hall. The position of mayor is vacant following the conviction of Lutfur Rahman for breaches of election law.
Elaine lives and works in the borough and is offering new ideas and a fresh vision including:
Making sure that there are affordable homes for working families, by ensuring that all new developments in the borough include an allocation of social housing
The #libdemfightback has been incredible since last Thursday. As well as being astounded at over 100 people joining Tower Hamlets Liberal Democrats in less than a week, we’ve been straight back out on the doorsteps talking to people as part of my campaign to become Mayor on 11 June. We’re finding that we’re getting a great reception, as Thursday’s result has driven people to realise that we share so many of our core values. Our new members are joining us at each event as well – full of enthusiasm, energy, and new ideas that will help reinvigorate our party. The photo shows us out with new member Anna Ovsyanikova, who is holding the clipboard.
Tower Hamlets has always been a borough full of contradictions. We live in the shadows of the City and Canary Wharf yet we have the second highest unemployment rate in London and 49% of our children are living in poverty. With a Tory government now in power preparing to slash the pupil premium that brought over £70 million to our local schools and further cuts to welfare, it’s even more important that new ideas and liberal values are at the heart of our Town Hall.
The Mayor of Tower Hamlets has been found guilty of corrupt electoral practices and removed from office. There is a 200 page judgement which outlines in detail the allegations against him which range from personation to the old offence of “undue spiritual influence.” There is a section on that latter offence which goes through the history of it being used in Ireland against the undue spiritual influence of the Catholic church in the 19th century. The judgement also goes through the history of toxic Labour factionalism in the borough which is an eye-opening read to say the least. The judgement also relies on the judgement in a case which may well be familiar to readers – that of Phil Woolas, when the Oldham East election result was overturned back in 2010.
It is pretty shocking to have the result of an election turned aside because of compelling evidence of various types of fraud.
There will now be a by-election in which Rahman will not be allowed to stand. He will also have to pay £250,000 in costs.
Local Liberal Democrat candidate for Poplar and Limehouse Elaine Bagshaw commented:
Community politics and cohesion is central to a liberal society, so as Liberal Democrats we will be working in the by-election that will now happen to unite our community so that we can move forward and build a stronger economy and a fairer society in Tower Hamlets.
Five days after it was pre-briefed, Nick Clegg finally made his speech on A Liberal Vision for Education at Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets.
(Morpeth is, by the way, a fantastic school. I visited it for my day-job 18 months ago, and was shown around by two of its pupils, Vanessa and Mahir: the transformational progress of London schools in the past decade is one of the modern wonders of Britain.)
In the London Borough of Camden, Hat Trick productions ran into hot water after setting up a spoof but official looking polling station immediately outside a real polling station, encouraging members of the public into coming to vote before revealing to them that the polling station was part of a prank for a political satire show.
Hat Trick also sent someone out door knocking, claiming to be a Liberal Democrat activist but really setting people up for more spoofs, to be caught on a hidden camera.
One Liberal Democrat supporter was called on at home by the fake Liberal Democrat activist, who …
Scotland Yard was today asked by the elections watchdog to investigate “unprecedented” evidence of voter fraud ahead of next week’s polling for London Mayor.
The Electoral Commission passed evidence to police after six Labour councillors in Tower Hamlets wrote to warn of “serious abuses of the electoral register”. It follows growing concerns of cheating in the east London borough, involving the creation of bogus voters at a series of addresses.
An investigation by the Evening Standard this year found instances of eight names registered in one room to vote. It is claimed that a man locked up in
The Electoral Commission has published the results of its third survey of reports of electoral fraud and other malpractice, this time covering the 2010 general and local elections and for the first time including data for every police force. Commenting on the findings, Electoral Commission Chair, Jenny Watson, said:
There was some high profile reporting of alleged electoral malpractice around the elections and perceptions of fraud continue to be a concern to voters. Yet these figures do not support the more pessimistic perceptions: there’s no evidence of widespread attempts to commit electoral fraud, or of election results being called into question. It is important the public have accurate information on electoral malpractice and I would like to thank police forces across the UK for proving the data to make this analysis possible.
It’s taken a lot of work to get to this point and no one should be complacent about the risks at the elections and referendums this year. We continue to work closely with the police, elections staff, the Royal Mail and political parties to ensure the threat of electoral malpractice is reduced, and we’ve seen examples of excellent joint working between police forces and electoral administration teams.
The UK Government’s commitment to introducing individual electoral registration will be another important measure to help tighten up the democratic process. The next step is for them to consider introducing the requirement for ID at polling stations in Great Britain, as is already the case in Northern Ireland. We’ve raised this in our report after the UK Parliamentary General Election and asked Government to lead the debate.
The reference to showing ID at polling stations reflects increasing concerns over impersonation at polling stations in the last few years, partly as a result of many of the easy ways of carrying out postal vote fraud having been curtailed by changes in the rules.
Overall the Electoral Commission found that 232 cases of alleged malpractice were reported to the police as a result of the May 2010 elections, with the police deciding in 137 cases that no further action was required.
So far two cases have been to court (one conviction and a fine of £200, one acquittal), two cases saw police cautions issued and 23 were concluded with the police giving informal advice short of a caution. The other 68 cases are either still with the police or awaiting decisions by prosecutors.
These apparently comforting figures have been attacked by some as showing undue complacency by the Electoral Commission:
Critics have attacked the report as a whitewash, stating that the lack of successful prosecutions simply highlights how difficult it can be to investigate voting irregularities.
Rob Hoveman, an election agent for the Respect Party, which claimed postal-ballot rigging was commonplace in East London, said: “The fact is that it remains very easy for votes to be cast through personation, for false voters to be registered and, above all, for undue, inappropriate and illegal pressure to be applied in the casting of postal votes through the postal vote on demand system.”
He added: “Just because a crime hasn’t been prosecuted doesn’t mean a crime didn’t take place.” (The Independent)
In addition to these concerns over whether particular problem areas exist which need more effective action, the details of some cases which were not pursued suggest that there is more going wrong than the number of successful prosecutions indicates. The Electoral Commission’s report gives this example from Peterborough:
Initially, Peterborough City Council followed robust sifting procedures of several hundred applications to register to vote and to vote by post. Following this, 150 applications were identified as high risk and referred to Cambridgeshire Constabulary for further investigation.
A man was identified to have delivered the applications to the City Council. He was subsequently arrested and his computer equipment was seized from his home address.
He denied any knowledge or involvement concerning fraudulent voting applications and summarised his involvement as being a delivery driver for the Conservative Association. He freely admitted handling the applications and denied any knowledge as to how they were constructed. Low level enquiries were completed with the Conservative Association to identify the existence of reliable third party evidence that might identify those involved but none was found.
The defendant was bailed to allow the examination of his computers to identify the existence of source documents (tenancy agreements in particular) which may have been used in support of false applications and to complete an identification procedure involving potential witnesses. Both these lines of enquiry were negative and no further action was taken against him.
A joint decision was made by Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire Constabulary that, as no person appeared to have been denied their right to vote in the 6 May elections nor any suspect identified, no further investigation would be carried out. Furthermore, no further referrals, intelligence or complaints, were received by Peterborough City Council or Cambridgeshire Constabulary in relation to allegations of electoral fraud.
Trial by Jeory has the story from the contest to be Mayor of Tower Hamlets:
Lutfur Rahman’s campaign does seem to have galvanised a section of the Tower Hamlets community and many, if not most, are certainly very angry young people who are fuelled by a fair degree of hatred.
That bitterness has been targeted in almost equal measure at the Labour NEC and the party’s official candidate, Helal Abbas … There are many in the Labour party who believe the level of vitriol is similar to that experienced by Oona King in 2005 when she was beaten by Respect and
There are good reasons for having laws that require local councils to be politically impartial in their publicity work. The Mayor election currently underway in Tower Hamlets has shown, once again, the big problem with the existing rules (for English and Welsh councils).
The council wanted to include a 200 word statement from each nominated Mayor candidate in the latest council newspaper. With the option open to every nominated candidate, this would have been a fair and useful step. However, the restrictions …
Over at Dave Hill’s London Blog on the Guardian website, there’s a candid and in-depth interview with John Griffiths, the Lib Dems’ candidate in the contest to become the directly elected Mayor of the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Here’s an excerpt:
… Griffiths knows what he’d do if he won. “The main function the mayor has to perform is to be an advocate, a champion, for the borough,” he says. “In the present situation, with a government of a different political hue from that of the Council, it’s critical that there’s someone there who can really stand up for
The Tower Hamlets Mayoral election campaign continues to do its best to beat political fiction for implausible twists, witness the appearance and then disappearance of a disgraced ex-Assistant Chief Executive in Lutfur Rahman’s election film as recounted on Harry’s Place.
The Liberal Democrat candidate is John Griffiths, who you can find on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news and how to help his campaign.
You select a candidate in a keenly contested election.
You then receive complaints about how the contest was run.
So you suspend the candidate and, er…, don’t rush through an investigation or recount the votes to find a new winner or put the runner-up in post but instead your national committee hands the candidature to someone else, without members getting a say in the matter.
Oh, and the original winner decides to stand anyway, but as an independent.
Welcome to the tale of Labour’s Mayoral selection in Tower Hamlets, as told over on Dave Hill’s blog.
The Liberal Democrat candidate is John Griffiths, who you …
First, the good news: all the reports so far indicated a strong surge in people registering just before the deadline earlier this month. The Independent has some further figures to add to earlier reports. Thankfully, Havering Council with its hostile approach to people using the Electoral Commission’s website seems to be very much the exception. Whilst its electoral division has called “ridiculous” the number of people registering at the last moment, other councils have welcomed the surge of interest rather than criticised it.
Then the not so good news…
Allegations of postal vote fraud: the scale of the allegations, …
There have been two further recent reports of police investigations into postal vote allegations:
Police to investigate claims of postal vote fraud in council poll
… A complaint has been sent by the Conservative party to Derbyshire police about suspected fraud in the Sinfin ward in the Derby City Council local elections – which will be held on May 6, the same day as the General Election.
The complaint involves concerns that a voter was approached by men requesting her to fill in and sign three postal voting forms in favour of the Labour party… (Derby Telegraph)
Police are investigating allegations of postal vote fraud by a London activist linked to one of Labour’s highest-profile parliamentary candidates.
The Met is examining an email in which Anisur Rahman, a Labour branch secretary in Tower Hamlets, admits “helping” a dozen voters fill in postal vote forms for the European elections.
Mr Rahman then told Rushanara Ali, who will become Britain’s first Bangladeshi MP if she is elected in Bethnal Green and Bow, that he was encouraging other activists to do likewise “for the benefit of the party”.
Electoral Commission guidelines ban activists from helping voters to fill in ballot
Saturday
Most of the day is spent at the Keynes Forum Policy Conference at LSE, at which one of the sessions is specifically about the European elections, or at least the interlinked campaign themes of the economy and the environment. Both Sharon Bowles (South East) and Fiona Hall (North East) are MEPs who know their briefs intimately, which is reassuring and underlines the value of electing people willing to specialise in specific fields. But through conversations during coffee breaks it becomes clear to me that local activists are really thirsting for simply-worded, bite-sized Euro-items they can just slot into their Focuses. …
Geoff Reid The Tories will come back wherever they decide to anchor themselves politically. What happens to Labour is perhaps more unpredictable. They had internal problem...
David Symonds It will be interesting to see what happens in this Parliament. Starmerism appears to be a variation of the old Labour govt from 1974-9 which includes corporate ...
Chris Cory Surprised you don’t know a lot of people in the party? It’s a national political party with 60-100,000 members (who knows the real figure) not the local go...
Peter Martin @ Chris Moore,
The Tories and Reform don't have to formally unite. They simply do what the Labour Party and Lib Dems have started to do. ie Have a non-aggres...
Nom de Plume I think for a party like the LibDems, in the UK, with the present demographic, under FPTP, the ceiling is about 100MPs. That is, if London does not get fed up w...
The reference to showing ID at polling stations reflects increasing concerns over impersonation at polling stations in the last few years, partly as a result of many of the easy ways of carrying out postal vote fraud having been curtailed by changes in the rules.
The council wanted to include a 200 word statement from each nominated Mayor candidate in the latest council newspaper. With the option open to every nominated candidate, this would have been a fair and useful step. However, the restrictions …
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
John Wood: From silly-ass curate to world-weary genius
Firebird
Starmer making a mistake over Single Market - Davey
Reviewing the general election
Weekly Road Report - West End Ward #dundeewestend
A quiet conference
From Creeting St Peter to the (Liberal Democrat) world...
Geoff Reid 
David Symonds 
Chris Cory 
Peter Martin 
Nom de Plume 