Rokhsana Called Back? NEC Panel Unable to Decide?
It seems that the interviews for the Labour Candidate for Mayor were held on Tuesday 1st February. As we predicted, the only candidates were Rokhsana Fiaz and Unmesh Desai. No results have yet been announced.
It seems that Ms Fiaz needed to be called back for a second interview on Thursday 3rd February. The procedure has been somewhat opaque so we don’t know the reason that the panel needed to see her again.
We have hazarded a guess. We know that the panel was chaired by a senior member of the GMB union. This is the same trade union that is currently in dispute with Newham over the issue of Newham managers bullying Newham staff.
Could it be that the panel were concerned that they were at risk of appointing a person who oversaw a “bullying culture” against unionized staff? Or it could have been her oversight of the Group with unprecedented levels of antisemitism. Or it could have been the membership irregularities that have seen 1000 Labour Party members in Newham expelled. Could it be to ask why so many of her previous supporters are now leaving the Labour Party? We don’t know.
Maybe she doesn’t seem like such a ‘safe pair of hands’ any more.
We are told that the panel which interviewed the Newham mayoral candidates included the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. The inclusion of such elevated individuals in the selection of candidates for local government candidates is highly unusual, not to say unprecedented. We are told that the inclusion of Angela Raynor was at her insistence.
We wonder, does the inclusion of the Deputy Leader of the Party indicate the start of a new programme, whereby senior MPs will assist local parties in their selection of council candidates or was there another reason?