Labour Uncut reports:
Uncut understands that the NEC meeting on 30 November will see Ken Livingstone stage an audacious bid to get Lutfur Rahman reinstated to the party.
According to Labour officials, Ken has already discussed the issue directly with Ed Miliband, talks which a Livingstone insider described as “positive”.
Rahman, who defeated official Labour candidate Helal Abbas in last month’s election to become directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, has asked Livingstone to broker his return to the Labour fold.
Sources close to Tower Hamlets Labour party confirmed that discussions have taken place between Rahman and Livingstone about his bid for re-inclusion, and that Rahman had decided to delay appointing a full cabinet in the borough until his status in the party had been confirmed. In contrast to the Livingstone camp, they believe that Ed Miliband will not endorse a return for Rahman, and that Livingstone does not enjoy sufficient NEC support to secure his readmission otherwise.
The decision to push for Rahman’s inclusion will create serious tensions within the local party. Local MP Jim Fitzpatrick has made his own submission to the NEC calling for disciplinary action against Ken’s public show of support for Rahman during the campaign.
Sources close to Ed Miliband have indicated that such action is unlikely.
Ken Livingstone has, of course, expelled himself from the Labour Party, by supporting the main challenger to the Labour candidate in an election. However, as we have seen, the pretence that this is not so is being maintained for the purpose of party unity.
The effect on the Labour Party if a single member of the Lutfur Rahman/Islamic Forum Europe entryist bloc is allowed back into the Party will be catastrophic. Labour will have shown that it is powerless to prevent a small faction from standing up to an Islamist entryist bloc, with connections to the far Right clerical fascist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
However, this is a hypothetical. I do not think that Lutfur Rahman or his cronies will be re-admitted to the party. In the wake of revelations about the connections between the Al Qaeda preacher Anwar Al Awlaki and the Islamic Forum Europe, Labour knows very well that it cannot win a national election, with the likes of these people as a faction within the party.
Ken Livingstone has been riding for a fall for some time. Let’s hope that this month’s NEC meeting will be the end of this absurdity.
UPDATE
Gilligan is a must read.
