At last, Electoral Commission investigates potential electoral fraud in Pakistani and Bangladeshi districts
As readers will know, our distinguished contributor, Ageing Albion, has highlighted recent electoral fraud cases and the lack of any practical follow-up by the authorities. Judge Mawrey’s remarks in Birmingham (2005) about our system disgracing a banana republic which Ageing Albion described, now seem finally to have hit home, as reported in the Daily Telegraph of 8th January by their political editor, James Kirkup, under the heading “Watchdog’s fear of Asian voter fraud”. (See “Postal Vote Fraud still being ignored by government and politicians alike” and “Pathetic Government: Electoral Tinkering Again”.)
The only downside is the usual sluggish response of the quango concerned – the Electoral Commission. It feels that it won’t be able to do anything in time for the next General Election, 16 months away. “Why not?” we ask. Not only will this crucial election be fought with constituency boundaries which are massively out of date (favouring the Labour and LibDem parties), but unless the Electoral Commission gets its skates on, with fraudulent procedures as well. The best should not be allowed to be the enemy of the good enough. What’s difficult about asking all voters to supply a passport photo ID at polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales, as they do in Northern Ireland, and ensuring all postal votes are certified by a competent authority as is required for passport applications?
May 27th, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Reports from the Spectator http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/sebastian-payne/2014/05/tower-hamlets-londons-rotten-borough/
and the Telegraph here http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100272429/lutfur-rahman-what-you-should-know/
suggest that stamping out voting fraud has not made much progress, despite the judicial warnings highlighted on this site. Voting aside, the standard of governance in Tower Hamlets appears to be questionable. One question which Mayor Rahman might usefully be
asked is a simple yes/no one: does he believe that there should be a complete separation of church and state in politics, in particular the local authority politics in which he is employed?
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April 23rd, 2015 at 3:09 pm
“Otherwise we are lost”.
Recently the Electoral Court has, yet again, had to deal with industrial-scale fraud in our electoral system, this time in Tower Hamlets. The judgment can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/judgment.pdf
The Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, has been removed from his post. The whole judgment is worth reading, but I select the final two paragraphs as particularly important:
“685 On past form, it appears inevitable that Mr Rahman will denounce this judgment as yet another example of the racism and Islamophobia that have hounded him throughout his political life. It is nothing of the sort. Mr Rahman has made a successful career by ignoring or flouting the law (as this Petition demonstrates) and has relied on silencing his critics by accusations of racism and Islamophobia. But his critics have not been silenced and neither has this court.
686 Events of recent months in contexts very different from electoral malpractice have starkly demonstrated what happens when those in authority are afraid to confront wrongdoing for fear of allegations of racism and Islamophobia. Even in the multicultural society which is 21st century Britain, the law must be applied fairly and equally to everyone. Otherwise we are lost”
In some parts of the country, people will – or should – be wondering if there’s any point to the forthcoming general election.
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May 1st, 2015 at 7:49 am
It has transpired that some of Rahman’s “useful idiots” have been keen to ignore all evidence on the matter and continue to support him: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/30/unite-leader-len-mccluskey-backs-dismissed-mayor-lutfur-rahman?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
These include George Galloway, who was pleased to accept a court verdict in his favour when he sued the Telegraph, and Ken Livingstone, who enthusiastically endorsed the court verdict removing Phil Woolas a few years ago.
Worse, the large Union now supporting Rahman suggests that the unions are in danger of returning to their antics of the Second World War in terms of providing useful idiocy in support of the enemies of ordinary British (see http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/6th-may-1995/14/we-didnt-all-pull-together
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