The Republicans taught Labour well
It’s been an open secret for the past few years that the Labour Party has learned a lot from Republican election strategies –e.g. the mission statement backgrounds at any Labour press conference– but nwo it seems the Labour party has been taught too well. The Guardian reports about investigations of fraud going on in the Bethnal Green and Bow constitution, where rabid New Labourite Oona King is standing against Respect candidate and leader George Galloway:
Special branch officers are investigating allegations of electoral fraud in the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow after it emerged that dozens of “ghost voters” had been sent polling cards.
Detectives will focus on a number of addresses in run-down homes on Brick Lane, where dozens of electors are registered. The Guardian has uncovered evidence suggesting that these flats are either unoccupied, are business addresses or have long been inhabited by different people.
The electoral roll was last updated in November, when some of the ghost names first appeared.
At one address owned by Abdus Salique, a local businessman and Labour supporter who recently hosted a lunch for the party’s candidate, Oona King, and the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, there are 12 names on the roll.
But when the Guardian visited the premises, a businessman who rents an office in the building said that none of those named lived there.
Labour denies everything of course and I’m sure that if anything comes from those investigations, it will all turn out the work of “a few bad apples”, just like in
Birmingham. Funny how that happens.
Meaders of Dead Men Left, who has been campaigning for Respect in Bethnal Green and Bow, had already noticed Last week something fishy was going on:
Out canvassing yesterday evening. The door to a flat near Shadwell station was answered by a middle-aged Muslim woman, who said she would definitely vote Respect – as she had in the June elections – but was having problems with her registration. The polling cards sent to her address had the wrong names on them, as did the electoral register I was using to canvas. She had never heard of the two people supposedly living in her home, and claimed she had been living there herself for over ten years.
If Labour wins again tomorrow, as they seem to be, will sheenanigans like this taint their victory? Things are, as they say, developing.