Allegations of irregularities become concrete example of branch fix that prevented Muslim woman MP being automatically selected to stand again

In 2022, Poplar and Limehouse’s left-wing Muslim woman MP Apsana Begum faced a ‘vicious and misogynistic’ campaign to deselect her that had left campaigners and women’s groups horrified.

The campaign followed a party attempt to remove Begum as the London constituency’s MP by prosecuting her for housing fraud. The stitch-up fell apart when a court threw out the charges brought by allies of her allegedly-abusive ex-husband – forcing Labour party vultures, who had been at the court in anticipation of a guilty verdict to announce a contest to replace her, to slink away disappointed and unable to install a favoured right-winger in the overwhelmingly Labour-voting seat.

After the ‘lawfare’ failed, Begum’s many supporters accused the party of gross abuse of process, of bullying and intimidation, and even of outright rigging in its determination to ‘trigger’ Begum and force her into a selection contest – and Begum was even threatened with ‘serious abuse’ by a relative of her ex.

Now Skwawkbox has received details from local members of one of the selection meetings demonstrating how the trigger vote was rigged – a vote that both exemplifies the stitch-up tactics and would have ensured Begum was selected again automatically had the party reacted and investigated properly. These can now be exposed and they corroborate earlier evidence at the time of the process.

Begum’s trigger ballot process started in May 2022, just after the local council elections – and from the start, locals say it was marred by blatant breaking of party rules.

Only an MP and her supporters are allowed to campaign during the process, and no-one is allowed to campaign as if they were an alternative candidate. Opponents of Begum who supported her being triggered completely ignored these rules. Many complaints were made to the party but were ignored.

The trigger ballot meeting for Lansbury and Poplar – a branch consisting of two wards combined – was the first of the CLP’s votes to be held, on 31st May 2022. A large group of people vocally supporting a vote to trigger Begum gathered outside the hall, telling people to vote for the trigger and giving out slips of paper with marked up dummy ballot papers to guide any unsure of the process, acts completely against party rules. Branch officials told these agitators that what they were doing was completely against the rules, but they refused to stop.

Inside the hall, the meeting was in uproar before it even began, with aggression and abuse by Begum’s opponents, who were even ‘yelling and jumping up and down and waving fists in the faces of branch officers’. Some went as far as openly demanding that Labour’s official protocol for the meeting be abandoned and to go straight to a vote, so they could – in as many words – ‘vote for the trigger and go home!’

At this point, a senior officer of the constituency-wide party (CLP) turned up at the meeting, despite having no official role there – Skwawkbox understands that several CLP officers are close to Begum’s ex-husband and determined to oust her.

As people were being ticked off the eligible voter list to ensure only those entitled to vote took part, several people arrived who were not on the list, fuelling the aggressive and intimidatory atmosphere as they demanded to be let in.

The CLP officer said they would check eligibility through their phone – and insisted that four extra people be allowed into the meeting and given ballot papers. Requests to clarify where this information came from were ignored.

When the vote was taken, the result was 43-43 – meaning that if the four pro-trigger voters were not eligible to vote, the real result would have been a victory for Begum by 43-39. This would have meant Begum won the required ten percent in the CLP section vote – which under Labour’s rules meant she had won the trigger process and would automatically stand again as Labour’s candidate in the next parliamentary election.

Labour ignored a string of complaints about this meeting and dismissed the few it responded to. But when the membership system was finally accessible again (after being out of action because of a hacking attack), branch members were able to confirm that the one extra ‘member’ allowed in by the CLP officer – the only one known personally to other members present – was not eligible to vote, because her membership had been confirmed well before the trigger meeting to have lapsed. There was no way she could have been on the CLP officer’s ‘list’.

The names of the other three names allowed in were written at the time on the master copy of the attendee list – but the CLP observer, also an opponent of Begum – insisted on taking it away with him. But even if they were bona fide members – which they were not because they appeared on no membership list – Begum still won the vote 43-42, and so would have automatically been selected to stand again.

Members have lodged multiple complaints about this abuse of process but have been ignored. Even if the other branch votes were held in perfect propriety – which goes against reports of the way they were conducted – the real result in Lansbury and Poplar was enough to select Begum uncontested.

Labour has been accused repeatedly, up and down the country, of rigging trigger and selection processes, sometimes successfully – for example in nearby Ilford South to remove incumbent Sam Tarry – and occasionally not, as when Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne was able to fight off repeated attempts.

So bad has the party’s conduct been that even journalist Michael Crick – no left-winger – who runs the ‘tomorrowsmps’ Twitter account detailing the latest selection news has publicly voiced his own concerns about Labour’s rigging and abuse of its selection processes. Now the mechanism – or at least one of them – for rigging in Poplar and Limehouse to oust a popular left-wing MP has been laid bare by the evidence and the testimonies of locals.

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