Be upstanding in Kingstanding
Another hot off the press story from the northern wilds of Kingstanding.
Regular readers will remember that last week, Cllr Cath Grundy decided to stand down when her term as councillor in Kingstanding ended this May.
Local sources have told me that she will now be the candidate again after all.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Kingstanding
EXCLUSIVE: Labour councillor stands down
News reaches me from the darker reaches of Kingstanding that Cath Grundy, nemesis
of Sharon Ebanks and once
touted as a potential leader, is standing down from the council at this election in a move that has surprised senior Labour leaders.
Expect a sudden flurry of applications for what should be a safe Labour seat - whatever some of the wilder Tories promise. Yes, young Mr Sambrook, I mean you.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Kingstanding
Farewell, comrade - we're a poorer City today
Birmingham has lost one of its greatest adopted sons, as Sir Dick Knowles has heard the voice of the great returning officer in the sky. He was the man who worked hard to lay the foundations of the reborn Birmingham we have today and probably the man who has the greatest claim to the mantle of Joe Chamberlain.
His integrity was first class. I hope people will study his career and take his life as an example of the way politics should be conducted. He was a great servant to Birmingham. He was a very nice and kind man.
That from Neville Bosworth, the Tory leader of the early 80s.
Liam Byrne adds
This is a huge loss for the city. He was an absolute giant of a man in the renaissance of Birmingham. But, he was also one of those men who managed to combine vision and determination with a genuine kindness and compassion to improve the lives of ordinary people.
Sir Albert Bore comments that,
Dick was the leader who saw the way out and he saw that we had to turn the basis of our economy around, which meant trying to overcome the dependency there was on manufacturing industries. There is no doubt in my mind that Dick Knowles as leader contributed massively in steering Birmingham in a new direction. He had vision and could stand on the stages of the world but at the same time he had a very common touch.
Sir Richard Knowles, 1917-2008.
Labels: Birmingham Labour
She's no lady...
David Bell reveals that Ladywood wants a woman candidate.
That's hardly a surprise - the constituency executive voted in favour of it some weeks back and the NEC has now confirmed their view. The decision, by the way, doesn't rest with the local party, nor yet the regional organisation, but with the national executive. The local party were asked for their views on whether they should have an all-woman shortlist and agreed - actually, the party rules pretty much required it anyway, as Ladywood should be a safe seat and was previously occupied by a woman Labour MP. They also said that they felt that a BME (black or minority ethnic) candidate would suit the seat, but that was a view and not a formal request. It is a view to which they are entitled, but one that carries no force.
The final decision over who will stand for Labour in the next election rests with the local membership, not the executive committee.
John Hemming can't resist giving his considered legal opinion
To define the candidate you want by their ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation is not only illegal...
Predictably, John is partially wrong in fact. It is entirely legal to define a candidate by gender, but not by ethnicity or sexual orientation.
Anyway, why is Khalid Mahmood interfering in a neighbouring constituency - rather as he did in Sparkbrook during Roger Godsiff's reselection campaign?
The Stirrer is wrong on one count - this has nothing to do with Elaina Cohen - the former Tory parliamentary candidate turned Labour stalwart. She was actually militating against an all-woman shortlist in the first place - a lone voice against it - and is quite unlikely to win the nomination in any case. Penny Barber is also a long shot, as her otherwise admirable day job for the Brook Advisory Clinics would not go down well with the significant black Christian vote in the constituency.
Rumours suggest that the Mahmood faction has actually been pushing the candidacy of
Ansar Ali Khan, the Labour councillor from Washwood Heath, which would explain his opposition to an all-woman shortlist.
My feeling is that the candidate who will win the nomination hasn't yet appeared on the local political journalists' radar.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Ladywood
Mandy welcomes Gordon to the conference
'Demon Eyes' Mandy at a fringe meeting on the EU and Billy Bragg greets visitors to the blog.
It seems to be a universal truth that the quality of the food and drink at fringe meetings is directly related to how left-wing the meeting is. The pro-smoking people, FOREST, were offering champagne, while the Cuban solidarity campaign offered no nibbles and a small amount of rum. The level of socialist fraternal solidarity decreased noticeably as the rum ran out.
Some imaginative soul sketched the slogan shown left on the beach, demanding that Labour keeps the promise of a referendum on the EU constitution.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, conference
Missing out
I meant to write a piece on Respect and Salma Yaqoob tonight, as I thought I'd run a story I've had for a while, but The Stirrer beat me to it. I'd been reminded of it by the ructions developing within Respect over an impending split between the Muslim side and the SWP groupings that formed that particular peculiar alliance. Specifically,
Gorgeous George Galloway's eight page indictment of the current poor health of the party, which includes this paragraph.
There is a custom of anathematisation in the organisation which is deeply unhealthy and has been the ruin of many a left-wing group before us. This began
with Salma Yaqoob, once one of our star turns, promoted on virtually every platform, and who is responsible for some of the greatest election victories (and near misses) during our era... Now she has been airbrushed from our history at just the time when she is becoming a regular feature on the national media and her impact on the politics of Britain’s second city has never been higher.
I actually think that Salma is a particularly strong political performer and is one of the few assets in Respect. The Stirrer claimed that Salma had been courted by all three major parties. I doubt that the Tories thought for a second she'd come over to them and the behaviour of the Lib Dems towards her suggested that perhaps she had spurned their advances, but I did have it on good authority that Salma had been approached by Labour (a story broken by The Stirrer).
According to the Stirrer, she immediately rejected their proposals. My understanding is that this was a solid offer of the Ladywood seat vacated by Clare Short, which is almost certain to be an all-woman shortlist. The Stirrer reckons that Short's departure makes the seat more vulnerable, but given her near-invisibility in the seat and her unpopularity amongst even loyal party members, that seems to be wide of the mark.
A Respect split has been likely for a long time. Initially, the two disparate groups that comprise the party (the SWP and members of the Muslim community) were united in their opposition to the Iraq war in particular. As our involvement in that particular debacle starts to wind down, public opposition will decline and the SWP need to find their next campaign organisation to infiltrate. Stripping away dissatisfaction over Iraq also reveals greater divides within Respect - there is huge division over social issues, which have so far been papered over in the name of party unity.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Ladywood, Respect
What a Hunt
Even as the Liberal Democrats launched another one of their election petitions - this time whinging about how their poor candidate in Aston was treated (they really aren't good losers), a
bitter little campaign is being waged over on The Stirrer's message boards.
In the real world, Cllr Hemming's whinging that Labour activists were wandering about claiming that the Lib Dem candidate,
the man who changes his name and party with equal haste, Saeed Aehmed, had been arrested. I do hope that there's some evidence to back this up and not just the usual hearsay from Hemming and his motley crew. Of course, the irony is that only a few years back, it was the Lib Dems who ended up settling a libel action after one of their leaflets referred to a prominent Labour councillor as a 'whoremaster.'
Mr Hemming said he was also considering whether to inform prosecutors about other matters relating to the election. He claimed presiding officers in an inner city ward were telling voters to back Labour candidates...
Why is he merely 'considering' this? Shouldn't he have already reported this serious allegation to the authorities?
Meanwhile, Hemming, Mullaney and Jon Hunt are putting the boot into Cllr Muhammed Afzal with their own interesting interpretations of the legal process (Cllr Afzal was found to have been involved in the electoral fraud in Aston and Bordesley Green in 2004, but later cleared on appeal -
a fact dealt with in great detail in an earlier post here.Cllr Hunt shows his grasp of legal technicalities:
'In Scottish terms, the case against Cllr Afzal remains unproven. The appeal decided he had not had a fair trial, not that the allegations against him were untrue.'
Errrm. Jon - we're not IN Scotland. I've checked and note the distinct lack of deep fried Mars bars and other ethnic typecasting. What Jon is saying is that if we had a different legal system in England and Wales, then we might have had a different answer. Sadly, even that is wrong, as Cllr Afzal was cleared on appeal. How often do I have to repeat this?
The Liberal Democrats may hate him and may believe him to be guilty - they are entitled to their beliefs - but the fact remains that if you win an appeal and have your conviction quashed, no matter how technical the grounds may be - you are therefore innocent of the charges for which you were convicted. That's a fairly clear legal statement, I would say.
Here we have the Liberal Democrats once again hiding behind their millionaire leader - happy to libel someone in the sure knowledge that he can't afford to take on their crack legal team of Hemming and Cllr Ayoub Khan.
Cllr Khan has just been appointed to the Cabinet with responsibility for local services and community safety and I'm sure he'll remember the rapid
ejection of the last Asian councillor to hold that post when he failed to do what the bosses demanded. According to the Mail, Cllr Khan has put his legal studies on hold for a year to do the Cabinet job - well aware that he'll only be in post until May 2008, when Labour removes the sole remaining Liberal Democrat from his Aston seat. Until then, Aston ward meetings could be rather good entertainment value, as Cllr Afzal sits beside his tormentor, Cllr Khan.
Labels: Birmingham Council, Birmingham Labour, election fraud, Liberal Democrats
Normal service has been resumed...
Well, perhaps not normal. Blogging will be light until after the local elections - there are things more important than my keyboard.
I've not been dodging blogging for the past week - no matter what some of the commentators say. I've simply not had time to comment.
As far as John Tyrell's resignation and conversion to Socialist Labour goes, I respect anyone who chooses to leave the party over matters of principle. There have been difficult issues over the past decade or so - abandoning Clause IV, tuition fees and, especially, the Iraq War. Any of those could be enough for someone to leave the party - and people have done that.
It wasn't one of those big issues that caused John to leave. He's sent his membership card back over differences with the regional party over the selection of a council candidate in his ward. Not only that, but within hours of his resignation, he's standing for the Socialist Labour Party in his ward, in a move that could deprive the people of Handsworth Wood of a Labour councillor and split the vote to allow a Tory or a Lib Dem through the gap.
And that's something I'm sure he wouldn't want to see.
Labels: Birmingham Labour
Stirring up trouble
Predictably, the proposed all-woman shortlist in Ladywood is causing ructions in the local party - according to
the Stirrer.
Couple of points - in the name of accuracy.
Candidates don't need to be on the parliamentary panel even to be selected - local parties can select somebody and then hope that the NEC approves them afterwards. The selection for Ladywood is likely to be in the autumn of this year - but timetables like that are notoriously fluid.
The candidate whose name confuses the Stirrer is
Penny Barber, not Brook (she runs the Brook Advisory Centres in Birmingham, which explains his confusion). Penny did indeed stand in South Staffordshire in 2005, but not in the by-election which was caused by the death of the Liberal Democrat candidate during the general election campaign. She couldn't afford any more time off work and another candidate had to be found. Pedantic, I know, but I'm a political anorak - but that much you know already.
This does promise to be an interesting campaign for selection. It could get even more interesting if a get-out clause is found to allow an open selection, rather than the all-woman shortlist that the rules demand.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Ladywood
The Deselection Game
One of my correspondents asked me if Liam Byrne had been reselected as Labour candidate for Hodge Hill.
To my knowledge, no Labour candidates have yet been selected across the City. That said, Liam is in possession of a seat which has had no significant changes in the boundaries. To deselect an MP requires sufficient demands from members to trigger a ballot of all members. If the MP loses that ballot, then a full selection process is started. It is very rare for that to happen. A group of members with their own agenda tried to get Roger Godsiff deselected in 2005, but that attempt failed after a ballot of the membership. So, barring a seismic shift in the membership or any further decisions to stand down, most of the seats in Birmingham are sorted.
Labels: Birmingham Labour
The Doctor is out
I can't be everywhere, unfortunately. I tried omnipotence, but it wasn't really for me. You should see the travel bills. That, allied with a nasty flu bug have left me blogging a bit less than I would like, but still more than many of you want.
So, the news of
Lynne Jones' decision to stand down as a Labour MP only reached my ears on Friday afternoon and now is the first chance I've had to write about it. Ah well, good to let the mainstream media break a story for once.
This does simplify selections for Birmingham a lot. Roger Godsiff will now walk easily into Hall Green (frankly it was never a serious competition between him and Lynne, anyway). Steve McCabe gets the new Selly Oak and the remainder - Gisela Stuart in Edgbaston, Richard Burden in Northfield, Khalid Mahmood in Perry Barr and Sion Simon keeps hold of Erdington - are set, barring any other shock decisions. There are three other seats still to choose candidates - Sutton Coldfield will probably stick by the redoubtable Rob Pocock, who loves to niggle away at the Tories. John Hemming awaits his fate at the hands of a yet-to-be selected Labour candidate - the selection process hasn't even started in Yardley. The only other outstanding business is in Ladywood, which can be expected to attract a lot of interest as a safe Labour seat and restricted to an all-woman shortlist.
Lynne's departure will be a loss - she's renowned for her independence of mind and for driving Labour's hierarchy to distraction. A bit of that is always helpful to keep perspective on things.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Selly Oak
Putting the Lady into Ladywood?
According to
the Stirrer in the
Birmingham Mail tonight, Elaina Cohen has been '
appointed' as chair of that ward.
Forgive me for being pernickety, but last time I checked, officers at branch and CLP level were
elected. More often than I'd like, parties are scouring the membership to find people to do the legwork involved in running a political organisation rather than having posts oversubscribed, but the membership do still have a say.
Somebody also reckons that the post of branch chair gives her authority over Sir Albert.
Technically maybe, but I'm not sure he'd see it that way.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, Ladywood
Oh, do keep up.
Dave Radcliffe, one of the select group of blogging Birmingham Lib Dem councillors,
gives us his wisdom on the struggle for seats in Birmingham amongst the Labour MPs. His finger is on the pulse as always as he reveals what
this blog (and subsequently
the local print and broadcast media) covered almost two months ago.
Labels: Birmingham Labour, blogs, Liberal Democrats
