VOTING FRAUD SCANDAL: Two weeks since party officials cancelled a selection meeting at less than 48 hours’ notice, members have been kept in the dark over a promised ‘investigation’. By STEVEN DOWNES
Railroaded: members fear that Joel ‘Bodger’ Bodmer will be imposed as Labour’s candidate for Croydon East
Two weeks since Labour announced an emergency suspension of its selection for the new Croydon East parliamentary seat, and there has been silence from party HQ, with members and the shortlisted candidates (well, three of them at least) told nothing about what is being done to return to the process.
Many of the members in the new seat (and, privately, probably even some of the candidates), are preparing themselves for Labour officials to declare in the New Year that they are going to impose a candidate. Members fear that the candidate that they like the least and seems least qualified for the role – Joel “Bodger” Bodmer – will be installed in the safe Labour seat and effectively handed a cushty job for life.
Officials cancelled the hustings and selection meeting that was due to be held on November 25 after reports of membership list tampering and manipulation of email addresses being used for the remote voting system, Anonyvoter.
Three of the four shortlisted candidates – thought to be Merton councillor Natasha Irons, former Southwark councillor Johnson Situ and Lambeth councillor Olga Fitzroy – had all filed complaints that they had been provided with membership lists for canvassing that contained errors and omissions.
On one list, 71 of more than 500 members had had their home address changed compared to a list from earlier in 2023; 26 had their phone number changed; 40 had been given new email addresses.
Because of the concerns raised, Labour has also “paused” its separate selection for the London Assembly candidate for Croydon and Sutton. Embarrassingly, there’s only two people who have put themselves forward for this role, and one of them is Maddie Hanson, or “Mrs Anonyvoter”, as she was described in the last edition of Private Eye.
Old friends: ‘Mrs Anonyvoter’, Maddie Hanson, with now former councillors Ollie Lewis (left) and Niro Sirisena
Hanson, a Labour councillor in Croydon since 2014, is the owner of Hanson IT Solutions, the company which supplied the Labour Party with the Anonyvoter system, a deal arranged by David Evans, the former Croydon business owner who is now the party’s all-powerful general secretary. There was no competitive tendering process.
As David White, a former secretary of the (now defunct) Croydon Central Constituency Labour Party, observed, “I believe Labour got Anonyvoter for free. It was worth every penny.”
Last weekend, The Times reported a Labour source as saying of Anonyvoter, “The system they’re using can be manipulated, and there are concerns about this system because people knew it could be manipulated in the past.”
Which makes it a little awkward for David Evans, because he was reported to have told a meeting of the party’s ruling National Executive Committee that any problems with membership lists, parliamentary candidate selection and Anonyvoter software were completely confined to his old home patch of Croydon East.
National coverage: how Private Eye covered the Anonyvoter scandal
Yet Evans ought to be very well aware that doubts have been raised about Anonyvoter after selections at local parties across the country, particularly where the results were close. According to veteran political reporter Michael Crick, these have included selections in Uxbridge, Thurrock, Bolsover, Merthyr Tydfil and Dover, “where the executive of the local party submitted a complaint about selection procedures, particularly the safety of electronic voting”.
So it is not, as Evans told the NEC, “just” a Croydon issue.
Indeed, Crick has reported some of the Labour selection counts as having “seen huge divergences between the online vote and those cast at meetings”.
Evans’ assurance that the Anonyvoter issue was limited to one selection was shown to be false once again the very next day after the NEC meeting, when John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, revealed that he’d been invited to vote in the Beckenham and Penge selection meeting, even though he’d spent the last 50 years living on the other side of London in his Hayes and Harlington constituency.
As Keir Starmer and Evans prepare for a General Election backed by a small army of right-thinking parliamentary candidates, it has been uncanny how the remote voting system has somehow tended to favour those on the right of the party, and especially family members of senior Labour figures.
That Beckenham and Penge meeting just over the borough boundary in Bromley last week saw Liam Conlon, the son of Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, selected by a margin of eight votes. Conlon was reported to have had a “strong lead on postal and online votes”. No shit, Sherlock!
Sources have suggested that around one-third of the votes cast in the Beckenham and Penge selection were done electronically.
It all has familiar echoes to other “close” results. In July, at the Lanark and Hamilton East selection, Imogen Walker (the former councillor in Lambeth who snagged herself a cushty job in Croydon, providing “crisis management” advice to the then council leader Hamida Ali), won narrowly against local contender, Gavin Keatt, by 62 votes to 55.
As Crick reported: “Keatt actually won strongly at the hustings meeting, but Walker took the nomination by winning decisively with online votes.”
Walker just happens to be the wife of Labour’s election campaign chief, Morgan McSweeney.
‘Selections have been fiddled and fixed by party officials’
There’s widespread suspicion that the Anonyvoter system can be exploited by unscrupulous officials, who are able to change a member’s email address without their consent or knowledge, and then allocate that member’s e-vote to a fake address and cast a vote from it. No proof of identity is required.
Party officials are also able to see who haven’t cast their online votes, “Meaning,” Crick says, “they could, hypothetically, then tip off a favoured candidate about whom they should target”.
Family affair: Liam Conlon, son of Sue Gray, got selected with a lot of online votes
Here in Croydon, party members who have spoken to iC relate similarly suspicious canvassing activities, perhaps based on membership lists where long-standing members’ details have been “removed”.
One senior Croydon Labour figure has also confided being at a party meeting in around 2021 – so after Starmer and Evans had taken over the running of Labour – where a well-known right-winger showed them a spreadsheet. Based on the supposedly confidential constituency membership lists, they claimed the sheet identified all the remaining “Corbynistas” or socialists in the party locally.
“They called it their ‘shit list’,” the source said, going on to suggest that these might be the names of previously dedicated activists, canvassers and even CLP officers, and alleging that they might have their details erased when it came time for significant votes or candidate selection.
In a strident piece of political reporting earlier this week, Crick wrote, “Having followed Labour’s processes since Starmer became leader, I am convinced that many selection contests have been fiddled and fixed by party officials.
“It is completely unsatisfactory that the investigation into Croydon East should be carried out by the London Labour Party, when there may have been wrongdoing within the London HQ itself.
“What’s more, it should be possible to carry out the investigation within hours — a simple examination of the digital history should determine who did what and when.
Strident: much-respected political journalist Michael Crick
“Yet in all probability, the inquiry will take weeks, if not months…
“Until the discrepancies in Croydon are resolved, Starmer should suspend such voting in Labour selections, as well as appoint an independent KC, together with an IT expert, to carry out a thorough investigation into all the concerns about online fraud.
“If necessary, selections should be re-run — even if that means dozens of re-runs. And a system of safeguards should be introduced for online votes to ensure future winners and losers are happy their results weren’t tainted by fraud, and the process can be properly observed by all parties.
“Above all, Labour needs to be totally honest if anything has gone wrong.”
But as is becoming increasingly clear, following last year’s Al Jazeera revelations, or the mishandling of the Forde Report into racism in the party, the chances of “total honesty” from today’s Labour Party is diminishingly small.
Read more: Labour cancels Croydon selection after voting fraud claims
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: The fix is in: Labour excludes members from Croydon selection
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
There’s a typo in that but about Liam Conlon. It should say “Sue Gray’s son shags Labour candidacy”
Taking a more serious look at the allegations, these concern deliberate multiple breaches of the General Data Protection Regulations requirements that data should be
“(a) processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’);
(d) accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay (‘accuracy’);
(f) processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures (‘integrity and confidentiality’).”
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office warn that
“Failure to comply with the principles may leave you open to substantial fines. Article 83(5)(a) states that infringements of the basic principles for processing personal data are subject to the highest tier of administrative fines. This could mean a fine of up to £17.5 million, or 4% of your total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
Labour party members concerned that they have been the victims of malpractice shouldn’t wait calmly for the party hacks to make a few noises but do nothing. They must complain to the ICO now, or forever have Bodger as their MP. One click is all it takes https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ to get things moving
Well data protection maybe but I can’t see any other legal reason why Labour can’t fiddle its selections. It’s a political party and these aren’t like US primaries.