LABOUR SELECTION SCANDAL: The interim chair of a new CLP will not be presiding over an important meeting to be held next month, members have been informed, as the party is accused of vote-rigging ‘on an industrial scale’. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Labour has refused to deny local speculation that Carole Bonner, one of the officials at the centre of vote-rigging allegations in the new Croydon East constituency, has been suspended by the party while the Metropolitan Police continues its investigation into allegations of computer misuse.
Inside Croydon reported last month that Labour in Croydon is subject to a criminal investigation by Scotland Yard’s cyber crime unit, which was looking into the party’s dodgy Croydon East selection.
The selection process was halted last November when complaints were made that the Constituency Labour Party’s membership lists had been tampered with. Bonner had been installed a month earlier, by Labour’s London region, as the CLP’s interim chair.
In Croydon East, it was discovered that 120 out of around 500 members in the CLP had had their details – address, phone number or email – changed on the local party’s membership database without their knowledge or consent.
Happy days: Simon Hall has been suspended by Labour. The party has refused to deny that Carole Bonner, too, has been suspended
And at least 30 “postal” votes had been cast by email without the members’ knowledge.
Bonner, a former councillor in Croydon, was one of three officials imposed on the CLP last October, ostensibly until there could be a general meeting of members to elect their own officials. No such meeting has yet taken place.
Bonner later took to describing herself in correspondence to grassroots members as “selections secretary”.
Bonner was also the secretary of the Woodside ward Labour branch, where a ward by-election is to take place on May 2. Woodside members were denied a candidate selection meeting, with London region deciding that Jess Hammersley-Rich should be on the ballot paper for what should be a safe Labour ward.
Members in Woodside and Croydon East have heard nothing directly from Bonner since last November – apart from having their access curtailed to the CLP’s Facebook group. Bonner has remained a member of campaign WhatsApp groups, but has not been participating actively, according to multiple sources.
Now CLP members in Croydon East have been told that they will finally get to have an annual meeting in May – nearly nine months later than expected.
But they have also been told that Bonner will not be chairing that meeting, as might have been expected.
Omerta: former Labour councillor Carole Bonner has not been saying much in public, although she has shown an interest in data misuse allegations…
Bonner was also a notable absentee last month when Croydon East was finally allowed to stage a selection meeting for its prospective parliamentary candidate – with officials from London region running the voting process.
Inside Croydon and other media outlets have sought comment from London Labour and from Bonner about her status within the party, inviting them to deny that there has been a suspension.
Neither Labour nor Bonner have responded to the multiple requests.
And yesterday, the latest issue of Private Eye reported that they had asked London Labour “to confirm or deny that the interim chair of Croydon East constituency Labour Party, Carole Bonner, has been suspended by the party in connection with the investigation into alleged improper use of personal data re the parliamentary selection process”.
Lord Gnome added, darkly, “Answer came there none.”
If Bonner has been suspended, it will represent an unwanted hat-trick for Croydon Labour and the old mates of the party’s General Secretary, David Evans.
In 2021, following the financial collapse of Croydon Council, two of Bonner’s closest colleagues when she was a councillor, Tony Newman and Simon Hall, were both suspended by the party. Hall was Bonner’s co-councillor for Fieldway ward when they were on the council, where Newman was the power-crazed leader.
Three years on, and the Labour Party refuses to comment on Newman and Hall’s suspensions as well.
The stink of scandal could prove difficult for Labour in Croydon to disinfect, if a report published today by the left-wing publication, Tribune, is anything to go by.
Happy days: for Carole Bonner, it’s all gone a bit Alan Partridge for her and her old mates
Martin Abrams is a councillor in Streatham.
The Labour Party had no problem with publicly announcing that he was suspended from the party – Abrams, who is Jewish, voted at Brixton Town Hall in favour of a Gaza ceasefire.
Abrams has written for Tribune that, “Anonyvoter may have been abused on an industrial scale to rig internal Labour contests”.
Anonyvoter is the online voting software used by local Labour Party branches to choose candidates. It was developed by a business run by Croydon husband and wife Mark and Maddie Henson.
Maddie Henson is a Croydon councillor who was recently announced as being selected as Labour’s candidate in the London Assembly elections on May 2 for Croydon and Sutton. The selection of “Mrs Anonyvoter” was conducted entirely using Anonyvoter. No voting results were ever announced.
IT company owner Mark Henson – “Mr Anonyvoter” – is, like Carole Bonner, an “interim” official in Croydon East, where the police are investigating … checks notes… allegations of computer misuse.
Abrams reports how Anonyvoter is now subject to formal complaints, including by Sam Tarry, the MP for Ilford South, over concerns that the system was misused in his deselection.
According to Abrams, it would be astonishingly easy to rig selections using Anonyvoter. “Poll administrators could theoretically add votes during the contests or vote on behalf of members without them knowing. They can also see who has and hasn’t voted. Meanwhile, the safeguards that should be in place aren’t — while Anonyvoter allows independent ‘tellers’ to verify counts, Labour hasn’t allowed them for its parliamentary selections,” Abrams explains.
‘An antidemocratic coup’: Streatham councillor Martin Abrams has written critically of the vote-rigging scandal
Abrams also points out that, as Inside Croydon first reported three years ago, Mr and Mrs Anonyvoter were awarded the contract to provide their software by their pal from Croydon Labour, David Evans, without any competitive tendering.
“With Tory support collapsing, the number of Labour MPs could double at the next election. But Labour’s trajectory suggests it would see Parliament stacked with nodding dogs at the expense of politicians prepared to act of their own volition when it’s in the public interest,” Abrams writes.
He calls the ongoing vote-fixing scandal a “slow-burning, antidemocratic coup”.
Abrams writes, “The goal at every turn has been to suppress popular interests, marginalise ordinary members and empower big business.”
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: Labour admits serious breach of private data in Croydon East
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“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”
Keir Starmer? Close. Josef Stalin.
One reason why Labour might not have revealed the number of votes cast or allowed them to be independently verified is because the results might not have tallied, not just with the real winner versus their preferred candidate, but also the usual turnout and the number of eligible voters
As with Tory Susan Hall and her lie machine, seeing how Labour’s leadership lie to their own members to fix elections, think how bad they’d be in office
I was amazed to read this story. Partly because I recognised the name Simon Hall. He lives with his partner Rob Eliot quite near to me. They arrived here in Bishop Auckland about 2 years ago. Rob is now CLP treasurer. They have no connections to County Durham and I wondered why they came here. Rob never answers the question when I asked. Rob looked like a rabbit in the headlights when I asked him if he knew a person I know in Croydon. Rob and Simon arrived at the same time as three others from out of the area. A woman from Redcar, and a man who lives in Stevenage but has a holiday home in Teesdale. In September 2022 all three were elected onto the CLP executive and have changed the local party. It is a shadow of its former self.