BBC1 Sunday Politics London report on Newham Mayoral Trigger rerun after "decades and decades" of one person in power...

A somewhat neutral and balanced report by BBC London on the Newham Mayoral Trigger ballot rerun to decide our next Labour Candidate in the local elections in May.

The clip features Cllr Conor McAuley, a former Newham Cabinet member, who strongly criticises the current mayor, Robin Wales, over his housing policy citing 389 homes in the Stratford Carpenter Estate being left empty since 2005, while only the day before, homeless people were being evicted a short walk way by the Council and issued with CPNs (Community Protection Notices).

I will admit that I have not always seen eye to eye with Conor over the years but I am mystified that some people have been given all the credit for the 2012 Olympic bid and for the regeneration in Newham, when in fact it was Conor, as the Chair of the Council's main planning Committee for many years, who was as much as anyone responsible for facilitating the construction of the Westfields Shopping centre, which then made possible the successful Olympic Stadium bid.

There were some errors in the clip. I am not sure what "Centralist Labour" actually means? and why Conor is definitely not a supporter of Momentum, there is a very widespread coalition of Labour Party members across the entire Labour political spectrum who have supported the call for an open selection, which includes Momentum, Fabians, CLPD, Progress, Co-Op Party, Labour First, Compass and a number of trade union affiliates.

So far 8 branches have voted overwhelmingly for an open selection. There are 12 more to cast their votes as well as trade union and socialist society affiliates.

On Friday Cllr John Whitworth withdrew his challenge to the Mayoral position in favour of Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz.

Newham born and bred, Chair of Scrutiny and Custom House Councillor, Rokhsana Fiaz has made it clear that she would stand as a Mayoral candidate if there was a contest. 

Former Olympic Stadium Stratford report by Cllr Conor McAuley to his ward

Councillor’s Report to Custom House Branch Labour Party September 2017.

Former Olympic Stadium Stratford

I have been approached by a few Party members concerned about the stories they have seen in the local press about the apparent loss of the £40 million Newham Council investment in the stadium, prior to West Ham United Football Club moving in.

Members have asked me how and why Council came to invest such a large sum of money in the stadium and is the money really lost?

There was extensive discussion prior to the Olympic Games in 2012, as to the future of the Stadium once the games were over. There were two extraordinary meetings of Newham Council in November 2011 and March 2012 at which this was discussed. (I was prevented from taking part in these debates as I was a member of the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Planning Committee and it was deemed that I might have a ‘prejudicial’ interest in the matter – so I took no part in the decision making).

Under the heading ‘Securing a Community and Regeneration Legacy for the Olympic Stadium’ members of the Council agreed to create a company ‘Newham Legacy Investments’ to which it would lend £40 million. This company would then enter into a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) with the Olympic Park Legacy Company for the purposes of managing the legacy of the Olympic Stadium and island site around the stadium. The £40 million would then be invested into this new partnership.

Outside of the Council there has been much debate as to why it was necessary to invest £40m into a stadium which would be used primarily by West Ham United, a wealthy Premiership football club owned by two multi millionaires.

The Mayor has argued ‘This is not just for a Premier League football club, this is for community benefit. If it was purely about the football club I could not justify doing this’.’We are not sacrificing anything for this. We are doing prudential borrowing but we cannot use this borrowing for anything else and it does not affect our borrowing capacity or what we can spend. It has no negative impact’.

He said.

"Of course this is not entirely true. We could have used the money to invest in other community priorities like social housing or refurbishing some of our now closed community centres (like the Upton Centre). Sir Robin was also quoted as saying; “even on the most disastrous figures, even if everything goes wrong we still make a profit on this. The risk is really, really minimal.”

So where is the money now?

It is shown in the Council’s recently published accounts as an ‘Impairment’ totalling £44.4m of a Long Term Debtor in one of the Council’s group undertaking, Newham Legacy Investments Ltd. 

‘These charges are subsequently written-off to the Capital Adjustment Account.’

The Mayor and one or two other councillors are arguing that an ‘impairment’ is not a ‘write off’ but they are contradicted by the very next line in the accounts which states that these charges are subsequently written off.

I am appalled not only by the loss itself but by the fact that we had to study the annual accounts to find this information.

Such a fanfare was made about the original investment, one might think that the Council was seeking to bury the loss.

It tends to remind me of the £4.3+ million lost in the Council’s investment in 2012 in the London Pleasure Gardens project that was supposed to animate the Silvertown Quays area south of the Royal Docks. The Council lost every penny of this investment and it even had to pay the winding up costs of the company.

As I understand it, Newham’s Overiew & Scrutiny Committee has never looked at this loss, so I doubt their commitment to look at the Stadium debacle,

The Council’s draft accounts will be discussed further at the Council’s Audit Board on 27 September. It could be a difficult meeting.

Frankly I believe the whole Stadium deal deserves a proper scrutiny by an independent agency. Perhaps Mayor Sadiq Khan can deliver this.

Cllr Conor McAuley

20/09/17

(John Gray - This is a huge issue also to my constituents - I posted sensible concerns about this issue by Cllr Rachel Tripp here"

Custom House for Sadiq Khan as London Labour Mayor

Picture from a cold, wet, windy canvass session this morning in Custom House, West Ham. Lyn Brown MP (and her little Labour attack dog, Cara), Local Councillors and Party activists were out knocking on doors, talking to residents and asking them to support Sadiq as our next London Mayor in May.

Custom House is a Labour heartland but it was still humbling to see the instinctive support we get from so many life long committed supporters.The message we have to get out is that due to PR,  every single vote will count in the May elections.

Newham voters could end up deciding whether or not we have another rich multi-millionaire, old Etonian as London Mayor or a proper Londoner. 

"Five Million Conversations (How Labour lost an election & rediscovered its roots)"

The picture is from last Thursday's social at Custom House branch, West Ham Labour where the guest speaker was BBC political reporter, Iain Watson.  He spoke about his new book on the failure of the Labour Party to win the last general election "Five Million conversations - How Labour Lost an election and rediscovered its roots". 

This is of course a very topical (and to me personally painful) subject that must be addressed by anyone interested in politics. The meeting was chaired by local member UNISON activist, Kim Silver. 

Iain began by speaking about the official Labour Party report by Margaret Beckett, which will finally be published later today. There will be no surprises in the report he thinks. Labour lost due to 4 main reasons:-

1.  Labour never took on the "myth" that they caused the financial crash. 2. Ed Miliband was not seen as strong a leader as David Cameron. 3. Fear of SNP and finally - 4. The most challenging, Labours "lack of  connection" problem with some voters over immigration and benefits.

Ironically Labour was not seen as too left wing, since most of the most popular policies in the campaign were those of the "left".

He doesn't think that Labour Party staff were to blame but surely having 106 "attack" seats and no "defensive" seats was wrong. The Tories had 50 "defensive" and 50 "attack" with far, far more resources. They had on the ground information, since they had surveyed every single parliamentary constituency. Labour thought they could take 3 seats that they didn't even win in 1997.

The pre election attempted coup against Ed Miliband by some Labour MPs didn't help.

Despite being Scottish, the scale of the SNP victory in Scotland surprised him. In the past Labour used to argue successfully against the SNP that "divorce is a expensive business". Now it is clear that many Scottish voters simply don't care about this cost. There has been a "mood change".

He thought Ed was a decent candidate but made mistakes. The Labour campaign was brittle and too protective of him.

After the election and during the leadership elections, Iain remember the trade union GMB hustings in  Dublin. Jeremy Corbyn was the only candidate who was clearly against the Tories benefits cap, Liz was for it but the other candidates did not give convincing answers.

In the Q&A I asked whether with hindsight, Labour was never going to win in 2014. There had only been a single one term government in 100 years and that was in 1974 after the 3 day week. The British electorate do not like one term governments and will nearly always give them the benefit of the doubt.

Also, since I, like so many others, were so absolutely wrong about the outcome of the Labour leadership campaign, we should be humble about any predictions that Corbyn will not win.

Iain responded by saying that the opinion polls actually had Labour in the lead before the election and that it seemed at the time that maybe they could have won under Ed in a minority government with the SNP. The Labour Party faces an enormous challenge to win in 2020.  Boundary changes, the Tories are reducing Parliamentary Short money, the trade union bill will have an impact on its funding and Scotland will remain a problem.

Another question was why does Jeremy Corbyn have such a bad press? Iain thought he was honest and straight talking but the trouble is that he answers other peoples agendas and not his own. For example, what happened over his comments about "shot to kill" and a recent survey that found only 1:20 of people thought that Jeremy was "Anti-Austerity".  When the Tories were under pressure over the Trade Union Bill, Jeremy was side tracked by questions on Trident.

Next was on the threat from UKIP to Labour who came 2nd in 120 consistencies. Iain agreed this was a threat that has not gone away and that Labour in the past did not have a "core vote strategy".

Ali G thought that many CLP Labour campaigns (unlike Ilford north) last year were poorly run. We need to appeal to the "better off" voters. Iain agreed that he was surprised that the Labour policies such as on free childcare for all was hardly mentioned.

Sue asked how will Labour win back Scotland? Iain said that it would be really difficult. Possibly now that the SNP government will be given the power to raise all income tax rates, if they don't then the claim they are on the left and "anti-austerity " will be undermined and they will be open to attack.

This was an excellent evening. Iain was a great speaker and will try to make himself available to plug his book at all different events. Many thanks for the Custom House councillors and ward members for organising this social. 

Councillor Dianne Walls OBE

Congratulations to top Labour Forest Gate Councillor and former Newham school head, Dianne Walls, for her award of the Order of British Empire (OBE) last week at Buckingham Place.  Well deserved and what a great photograph! hat tip Conor.

West Ham Labour Party AGM 2012

Tonight was the Annual General Meeting of West Ham Labour Party. The Party Rooms in Stratford were packed with delegates from all our wards, trade union affiliates and socialist societies.

Picture left (and congratulations) is of our new Chair, Charlene McLean, seen here promoting the TUC March in March last year.

The Party Rooms themselves were unrecognisable since they had been freshly painted and re-carpeted. We are hiring the rooms out to a local History society who will be using it as a special museum during the Olympics (I'll post full details another time).

I did ask the outgoing Chair, Conor McAuley, at the beginning of the AGM if I could tweet during the meeting and he said there is nothing he can do to stop people texting or tweeting what was going on. I've used these tweets to make this post.

Conor is stepping down as Chair because he felt after 6 years it was time to give someone younger (and skip a generation) the chance to take positions of responsibility in the local Party. He was given a vote of thanks and applause for his long service to the Party as Chair.

During reports we learnt that membership has increased by 128 since the last AGM. Also that during the last election we had delivered the Labour vote (alas not enough to elect Ken).

I will post full details on the elections when I have checked I have got everything right. I stepped down from Agent/ Campaigner Co-ordinator since I have completely over stretched myself and the poisoned chalice (a term that all agents from all parties will recognise) has passed to Gordon Miller! I am still a trade union rep on the General and Executive Committee (for my sins).

During AOB the Keir Hardie tour next week was plugged and the coming by election in Wanstead and Leyton. Afterwards, off to the Golden Grove pub for more politics and of course lots of gossip.

Newham Annual Council Meeting 2012

Last night (Thursday 17 May) was the London Borough of Newham Annual Council meeting. It was held in our historic Stratford Town Hall.

It opened with live classical music from some of the 7000 Newham Primary school pupils who had benefited from the Council's "Every Child a Musician" programme" followed by the formal Council business.

This included a motion to better regulate the blight of Betting Shops (bookies) on our High Streets moved by Cllr Neil Wilson (and seconded by myself). Then speeches by Sir Robin Wales, our Executive Mayor, honouring Cllr Alec Kellaway (the Chair of our Pensions Committee) for his 25 years of service and Cllr Conor MacAuley for his 30 years!

The Newham Young Mayor and the (Old) Mayor Sir Robin Wales both gave speeches. Robin reminded us there was only 71 days before the start of the London Olympics and how the eyes of the world will be on Newham. 

I was really pleased that the meeting also honoured all those Newham Residents who had been nominated for Inspiring Peoples Awards.  Kim Stevens, who is one of the tireless volunteers who runs the Vicarage Lane Community centre in West Ham ward (see Kim in collage bottom right) was so nominated and she had been honoured with tickets to the Olympics 100m Sprint Mens final! Well done Kim and well deserved for all your hard work to the local community.

Of course Keir Hardie (bottom left) the first ever Labour MP elected in this same Town Hall for West Ham South on the 4th July 1892 as ever kept a careful eye on events.

West Ham Labour Party AV Debate: 28.4.11

On Thursday evening former Labour Party deputy leader, Margaret Beckett and John Denham, former Labour Secretary of State for CLG took part in a Hustings on AV. Margaret was Against AV and John For. This was organised by West Ham Labour Party and our local MP, Lyn Brown. It was held in a new University of East London Lecture theatre in Stratford E15 and was sponsored by UNISON London Labour Link.

The meeting went very well. When you organise such events there is always a worry beforehand about how many people would turn up on the night. It was the eve of a Bank holiday and the media have been going on about how people are not interested in the AV referendum. However, when we went there to help set up at 6.15pm (for a 7.30pm start) some guests had already arrived at 6.30pm. Around 150 turned up and at the close of the debate at 8.50pm there was still a mass of hands still raised to ask the panellists questions or make points.   

Both John and Margaret had 10 minutes each to set their respective cases then there was the Question and Answer.  
This was thankfully an intelligent and even tempered debate unlike the rather puerile one that the national Yes and No campaigns have descended into at times. It was still a little sharp - with John or Margaret shaking their heads at what the other had just said and writing notes on counter arguments furiously. 

I am of course completely bias since I am a convinced YES supporter (who had already cast his vote by post) but I felt that John did have the edge.  

Margaret argued persuasively for retaining the First Past The Post (FPTP) yet was less convincing to me, in her attacks on AV. I accept many of her arguments since I do think that FPTP does have merits. However, many of her arguments against AV were in fact credible arguments against Proportional Representation (PR) which AV is not. I would agree with her that PR is unsuitable and flawed. To me AV is just a updated and modern version of FPTP.

It’s not perfect.  But the world will not end if it is introduced. I think AV is fairer and we do need to shake up our parliamentary political system after the mire over expenses.

I agree with her argument that all electoral systems are unfair to some and flawed to some degree and that this should be about principle not political advantage.  

While I support AV because I think it is right. I think that John made a telling argument about how the Tories had benefited from FPTP. The Tories dominated British politics in the last century in part due to FPTP. That is why Cameron is so opposed.   

I made a contribution about the level of support for AV in the Newham Labour Group and also made reference to The Today interview I heard with John Curtice, Professor of Politics, at the University of Strathclyde. He had number crunched that if we had AV in the last election, there could have been a Labour led Coalition government.  So I offered my update on the old saying that “the worst day of a Labour led Government is better than the best day of a Tory one”.  

We then had the traditional Labour Partry raffle and auction. Next was down to the "Black Lion" for drinks with John and Lyn. A good night was had by all.

Many thanks to UEL and the very helpful campus staff and all those who helped out to arrange such a successful event.

I will post photos on Facebook later but check out the professional snaps by Dan McCurry here.

West Ham Labour Party increase membership by 194

Good news at this evening's West Ham Labour Party Executive Committee meeting (EC).  Our membership has increased by 194 compared to this time last year.

I suspect that this will grow much, much further as the Coalition cuts begin to be felt and the penny actually drops how the Nasty the Nasty Party are when in power (with their new wannabe Nasty Orange Book allies).

West Ham is a solid Labour Seat and arguably the birthplace of the Labour Party. 

After the vital post EC analysis at The "Goose" in Stratford (draught pilsner larger and cast bitter at £1.49 per pint - not bad for London) I came home and checked the Party "Membersnet" and it confirmed we now have 623 members. Fantastic news.

(picture by Dan McCurry of West Ham CLP Chair Cllr Conor McAuley and Ed at West Ham leadership hustings