| Video | Andrew Rawnsley interviews Iain Duncan Smith The former Conservative party leader and current Work and pensions secretary talks about his war hero father, his time as a 'radical leftie' in Perugia and his support for the Iraq warAndrew RawnsleyMustafa KhaliliJohn Domokos guardian.co.uk |
Loyalist link to attacks probed Police investigate possible loyalist paramilitary involvement after officers are attacked by gangs in three areas of south-east County Antrim on Tuesday night. bbc.co.uk |
Elected commissioner could put police chiefs in impossible position, warns senior officer Elected police commissioners could put chief constables in an impossible position if they have too much control over officers on the streets, a senior police chief said today. telegraph.co.uk |
Tower Hamlets: what next for Labour? The borough's Labour group meets this evening in the serious and unusual setting of Committee Room 18 in the House of Commons. A message accompanying the agenda emailed to those invited says, "We are hoping to have Jim Fitzpatrick, Rushnara Ali and John Biggs in attendance." These people are, of course, the borough's two MPs and its London Assembly member. It could be quite an occasion. The main topic of discussion, needless to say, will be how to respond to the election of Lutfur Rahman as executive mayor of Tower Hamlets. Already, Labour members who wish to declare all out war on him are darkly hinting that some colleagues will be prepared to support him, especially if they are offered places in his cabinet. The name of housing expert Marc Francis is invariably mentioned in this context. Francis hosted the Rahman victory party that followed his short-lived period as Labour's candidate and is known to have been unhappy about Rahman's deselection by Labour's National Executive Committee. The Rahman camp is saying that their man is eager to re-build bridges and bring talented Labour people into his administration, which will probably comprise a deputy mayor plus eight others. It points out that most of the eight Labour Councillors - five women and three men, incidentally - who openly supported him do not have a great deal of experience in local government. Rahman's overture is that he wishes to implement the policy programme Labour had agreed and hopes the party's seasoned elected representatives will assist him in this work. Labour in London has firmly denied reports that its general secretary Ken Clark has warned any who do that they will face expulsion, though it's hard to imagine in these fraught circumstances how the Labour group could function effectively as a unit with some of its members working in the Rahman administration and others devoted to its destruction. Something will have to give. And if Rahman does indeed seek to implement the same policies as Helal Abbas would have done, opposing them will require a lot of ingenuity. They've surely got to have more to offer than anger and allegations about unsavoury connections. There clearly are splits within the local party and disquiet about the handling of the candidate selection process. There's also, I'm told, a bit of tension between the NEC and the London regional party. On Friday I spoke to a key member of the vanquished Helal Abbas campaign, who acknowledged that the defeat had been a "disaster" and said there would be a "serious postmortem," focussing on, among other things, the way the candidate was picked, why the turnout was so (for Labour) fatally low and the failure of the campaign to mobilise either a majority of the politically-active Bangladeshi community which comprises one third of the Tower Hamlets population or enough of its other natural supporters despite a headline theme of "uniting the East End." Significantly, this source said it would be a mistake to "blame it all on Ken and Ken," meaning Mssrs Livingstone and Clark for their respective roles. He said he hoped Livingstone would "pay a heavy price" for accompanying Rahman on the campaign trail but added "he didn't cost us 10,000 votes." He also said he though Clark had stuck to the right principles in his stewardship of the selection process and admitted that Rahman had "turned our attacks on him against us brilliantly." The source also disputed the view that John Biggs, who came second in the candidate ballot, should have been imposed instead of Abbas, who came third, and was passed over on the grounds that a white candidate could not win, saying "it was about seniority." I wouldn't like to be in Labour shoes. If the majority of the Tower Hamlets group refuses to co-operate with Rahman at all it will shut itself out of the running of Tower Hamlets for at least four years, risk looking petty and even shouldering some of the blame should his mayoralty prove as inefficient as some fear. If it chooses to kiss and make up, people will ask what it is doing making friends with a man it so recently vilified as a willing collaborator with sinister extremist infiltrators. It's hard to imagine a tidy ending. There is, though, one thing that Labour's NEC must surely do if it hopes to repair the damage done to its support in Tower Hamlets among Bangladeshi voters. Abbas's allegations against Rahman should be thoroughly investigated by someone quite separate from the Labour Party and the results made public, no matter how uncomfortable they are for the party. Without that, no postmortem will be complete.LondonLondon politicsLocal governmentLocal politicsDave Hillguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Bonfire strike talks break down Talks aimed at averting a strike by London firefighters on Bonfire Night break down. bbc.co.uk |