Jas Athwal
Tarry had been disciplined for having the audacity to stand on a picket line with his fellow Trades Unionists. The incident, which happened at London’s Euston station, clearly got his card marked. And while the game-playing adolescents who hold sway in The Red Team might have thought they’d put one over on the Rotten Lefties™, the deselection has returned to bite them.
Because Jas Athwal is now in a whole load of trouble, and for reasons that are causing serious embarrassment to Labour. Athwal owns properties (plural), which are rented out. Yes, he is a landlord. As the BBC has reported, “Jas Athwal, the newly-elected MP for Ilford South, owns 15 rental flats, making him the biggest landlord in the House of Commons”. There was more.
“A Labour MP rents out flats with black mould and ant infestations, the BBC has discovered”. Oh dear. Do go on. “In one block of seven flats owned by Mr Athwal nearly half the tenants said they had to regularly clean their bathroom ceilings to remove mould. Mr Athwal has now also admitted his flats do not have the correct property licences required under a scheme he introduced as Redbridge Council leader. He had earlier claimed to the BBC that he had complied with the rules”. Didn’t follow his own rules. Lied to the Beeb.
But all would be well, because there would be remedial action. “Mr Athwal said he was ‘shocked’ and ‘profoundly sorry’ to hear of residents' issues, which he had not been aware of due to the properties being managed by an agency, and promised repairs and maintenance will be completed ‘swiftly’”.
And no more “On top of the black mould, the BBC saw evidence of ant infestations in a number of the seven properties” either? Maybe realising he was in deep doo-doo, Athwal let it be known that he was dispensing with the services of his letting agent. But he has convinced very few people.
Also, the BBC noted “[Athwal] added he did not take on tenants on housing benefit to avoid conflicts of interest with his role as the local council leader”, which is against equality law. Small wonder his protestations fell on deaf ears, with the word “Resign” featuring prominently in responses. Moreover, the impression was given that Athwal only took action because he got caught.
Meanwhile, Mish Raman - who sits on Labour’s NEC - mused “I am shocked and sickened that a mould and ant infested property owning slum landlord has the Labour whip while the likes of Apsana Begum, Zarah Sultana, Ian Byrne don't because they voted to remove the two child benefit cap … Keir Starmer's high quality candidate”. Athwal really should resign his seat.
And those at the top of the Labour Party should be pressing him to do so. But then a problem enters: Ilford South should be an ultra-safe seat, but Athwal’s majority was less than 7,000, and he scored just over 40% of the vote, as opposed to Tarry’s 2019 24,000 and 65.6% respectively. The humiliation of losing that seat will have Labour’s power brokers recoiling in horror.
Not winning Chingford and Woodford Green, being handed their arses by Jeremy Corbyn - well, Labour game players, do you feel … lucky?
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
10 comments:
I mean, yes, all the above is true except the part about Labour's power brokers recoiling in horror. The purpose of the exercise since 2019 was to purge as many left wing MP’s and candidates as possible and you have to say it is pretty much job done as far as that project is concerned. In the event Athwall does go, he won’t be replaced with a left-wing candidate and certainly not Tarry who might as well chance his arm as an independent in the event of a by-election.
And in related news, I see Sir Kier has lent his support to Peter Hendy, the guy who had an award winning rail engineer sacked for having the temerity to voice concerns about safety at Euston Station. Ah well, at least we got the Tory’s out eh?
The problem is, is that Labour don't care. They're in for five years, bar a far right coup (a statement that I would have laughed at years ago, but seems less funny now), and that's five years of hard, hard, troughing. Building bridges doesn't mean literally, it means setting up well paying jobs for when they crash and burn in 2029. It means keeping wealth sweet, housebuilders happy, hedge funds purring, and the city onside.
What it doesn't mean is stopping the sewage flowing into our rivers and the bullshit coming out of water company CEOs mouths. It doesn't mean ending predatory companies taking over our NHS, schools and other depts, or really ending Private sector corruption and profiteering with regards rail, energy, and infrastructure.
New Labour and the Tories literally are two cheeks of the same sweaty arse..
Where's the beef?
Athwal is simply following the property owning example of "centrist" Bliar and his gang.
You know, "entrepreneurs"....."creators of wealth"....."trickle down"...."free markets".....
Havent you missed something, Tim??
https://skwawkbox.org/2022/10/11/exclusive-party-insiders-labour-ignored-harassment-adviser-to-dismiss-complaint-vs-athwal/
Councillors, council leaders and local property matters? Conflicts of interest? Corruption?
Apart from anything else, even the dimmest right-wing Labour bureaucrat should be able to recognise that 'multi-property-owning -landlord-council- leader' is likely to mean embarrassment and trouble down the line.
This should be just as worrying, as it's a far bigger issue. Yes, poor rental property is unacceptable, and had the Tory's not voted it down, should have been dealt with by the bill to ensure all property was fit for habitation. By humans, not roaches that is.
Thanks to austerity cuts and slashing of 'elf and safety' (thanks mr Littlejohn) regulation by the last two govts, unsafe practise and accidents are work are becoming more regular again. Inspections have tumbled, prosecutions a fraction of what they were before 2010. Put that together with piss poor whistleblower protection, and creeps like Hendy can get away with, well, murder.
The fact that Stal.. sorry, Starmer, has welcomed him into the fold does not bode well.
Imagine that your slumlord were your MP. Imagine that your slumlord MP were also your councillor. Imagine how helpless you would feel. Imagine how helpless you would be.
Jas Athwal was a Council Leader and is now an MP while apparently unaware, both that a blanket refusal to let to benefit claimants was now illegal, and that such benefits were no longer administered by the local authority, but by the DWP. He is either lying, or he really is that ignorant. Either way, on the first point, he has broken the law.
Athwal's imposition in place of Sam Tarry was not a failure of vetting. The people who are back running the Labour Party, as they have almost always done since its foundation, cannot begin to see the problem with anything that he has done.
And now, those people are the Government. The likes of Lucy Powell, who either truly believes that there would have been a run on the pound and that the economy would have crashed if barely a billion pounds in winter fuel payments had not been cut from a budget of more than a trillion, or is prepared to peddle such dangerous falsehood while knowing that it would lead to the deaths of freezing pensioners.
Here's an interesting observation on how Athwal got "elected" in the first place - Quisling "Labour" in action:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/09/02/jas-athwal/
23:36.
Athwal is lying.
He follows the example of Starmer and his apologists who lied their way into Downing Street.
It's what tories and their corporate media do. It's why Britain has become the far right racist thieves shithole it is.
There is no reason whatsoever to think the decline will halt any time soon. It will accelerate.
New Labour, Old Tories, no difference. The entitled rich moan that 'no-one appreciates their hard work', and politicians bend over forwards to lower their taxes, put loopholes in legislation big enough for them to salt away billions, while pensioners who genuinely have worked hard are told, 'get stuffed'. Its a sad reflection of our society that cuts to benefits are applauded, cynical 'migration' to new benefits is seen as great because it will see hundreds of thousands unable to claim, 'saving' £5 billion. Then we have Lucy Powell blathering that pensioners going without will 'save the economy'. No, saving the economy can only be done by taxing creeps like Athwal harder. But New Labour don't believe in taxing the rich, any more than they do stopping ruthless slum landlords become Labour mps...
Post a Comment