Housing minister’s attack against the Green Party leader may have back-fired, as the cabinet member flagged up reports linking him to the unlawful hacking of this website. By STEVEN DOWNES
The illegal hacking of this website in 2021 has been placed front and centre in the national news after Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North when he can be bothered), chose to question someone else’s morality on Christmas Day.
Blue Labour: Steve Reed spent Christmas promoting Inside Croydon’s reporting
Reed’s attack could have back-fired, as the cabinet minister reposted something on his Twitter account that included a link to this website and its coverage of his conduct in the investigative book The Fraud, by Paul Holden.
At the centre of Holden’s allegations – based on internal Labour Party documents and emails – is the matter of nearly £1million of political donations to a shadowy organisation set up by Reed and his mates which were never properly declared to the Electoral Commission – a matter reported by Inside Croydon at the time.
Steve Reed is the housing minister in Keir Starmer’s government, who in the past has been funded by millionaire supporters of the Israeli government and who has accepted hospitality from the water industry.
Reed’s remarks were aimed at Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party. The Greens have seen their membership increase by 55% in just a couple of months since Polanski’s election. Meanwhile, the Labour Party has been deserted by hundreds of thousands of members, disillusioned since Reed and his mates helped install Starmer as party leader.
“Reed being let loose as a Christmas Day attack dog shows how worried Labour have become about Polanski and the Green Party,” a Katharine Street source told Inside Croydon.
“We’re little more than four months out from local elections in Croydon, and while the local Tories look set to lose council seats to Reform, Labour could lose significant votes to the Greens.
Polling blues: Rowenna Davis, here with Reed at a fundraiser in November. Labour has refused to release its survey data in Croydon
“In Croydon, where Blue Labour figure Rowenna Davis is their mayoral candidate, they have conducted two rounds of polling with YouGov in the past six months. Yet they’ve refused to release the findings – you have to ask yourself why. It won’t be because their poll results are offering Davis good news.”
In one recent national poll by FindOutNow, the Greens are even ahead of Labour. That national poll put Reform on 31%, Conservatives 20%, Greens 18% and Labour 14%.
Allowing for usual margins of error, that 4% gap, with Starmer’s personal ratings making him the most unpopular Prime Minister ever, is a dark place for cabinet members such as Reed just 18 months into their government.
Reed is the government housing minister with the Trumpian slogan “Build, baby! Build!”, who wants to make it easier for property developers to make bigger profits by building on playing fields and Green Belt.
Red-faced: caninet member Reed managed to include a helpful link to Inside Croydon with this Boxing Day tweet
Given Reed’s well-deserved reputation over his years at Lambeth Council and then as MP for Croydon North from 2012, including using council officials to spy on his fellow Labour councillors’ emails, his decision to choose to attack someone else’s morality might also strike some as the act of a crass hypocrite.
In an interview given to the Huffington Post, Reed trotted out a tired old story about Polanski’s past: “You have to question the morality of an individual who used to make money by pretending he could hypnotise women to get them a bigger bra size,” Reed said.
“That is the action of a con artist, not a serious, caring individual.”
But Reed’s Christmas Day attack on the Green leader was based on a deliberate distortion. Polanski never did “make money by pretending he could hypnotise women to get them a bigger bra size”.
Polanski had once worked as a hypnotherapist, and was interviewed by The S*n in 2013 about the possibility of being able to enhance breast size. Ill-advisedly, he went along with the interview, but he maintains that he never claimed that his subject would get “a bigger bra size”, as Reed claimed.
Polanski duly reacted to the Reed attack, posting on Twitter, “So if he randomly wants to attack me on Christmas Day, let’s talk about Steve Reed…”.
Polanski’s response included a link to this website, and our publication of an extract from Paul Holden’s book, The Fraud, about the hacking of Inside Croydon’s emails and social media five years ago. Internal Labour correspondence showed that Reed was implicated in the unlawful handling of stolen data. Reed was Labour’s shadow justice minister at the time.
In another example of Labour bungling, Reed (51,000 followers on Twatter) doubled down on his remarks by responding to Polanski (147,000 Twatter followers): “These were my words and I stand by them.”
Reed decided it was a good idea to retweet the Polanski comments, along with the link to Inside Croydon’s Fraud extract. Whoops… Some poor political aide might be looking for a new job come the New Year.
Reed’s personal attack came as Polanski was releasing a Christmas Day message about the plight of migrants in Calais.
It makes for an interesting contrast when assessing individual politicians’ morality.
Read more: The billionaire ex-porn baron, the antisemitic trope and the MP
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
