RAYNER'S LOVER DESELECTED

The hard left MP for Ilford South has been deselected as the Labour candidate for the next general election.  Sam Tarry has only been an MP since 2019, after being selected to succeed Mike Gapes, who had quit Labour to co-found Change UK.  Tarry was selected in controversial circumstances, with his closest rival having been conveniently suspended from the party the day before the vote.  The suspended candidate was Jas Athwal, the leader of Redbridge Council.  He was later cleared of wrongdoing and went up against Tarry for a rerun in Monday's reselection battle.  Athwal defeated Tarry 499 votes to 361, despite a spirited campaign by the incumbent.

Tarry, who is the lover of Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner, was supported by several MPs from the Socialist Campaign Group including Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Jon Trickett and Apsana Begum.  The latter is also facing a reselection contest, although the process was delayed after she signed off sick for three months.

Sam Tarry pictured centre alongside fellow MP Apsana Begum, who is also facing
reselection.  Bell Ribeiro-Addy can be see on the far left of the picture.

Ilford South is a sought-after seat for prospective Labour MPs as it has been a safe seat since 1997 and the party's majority has only dipped below 10,000 once in that time (2005).

The issue of trigger ballots - the process by which Labour MPs face reselection - has been a controversial issue in recent years.  Neil Kinnock introduced them in 1990, but the required threshold was reduced under Jeremy Corbyn in 2018.  Labour members voted overwhelmingly in favour of reducing the threshold from 50 per cent to 33 per cent.  Therein lies the irony in Tarry's deselection.

In 2018 Labour moderates had feared that the lowering of the threshold would lead to a purge by the hard left.  The following year Labour's Socialist Campaign Group more than doubled its number of MPs, with newcomers such as Zarah Sultana, Claudia Webbe, Nadia Whittome and Tarry himself.  However, no MPs were deselected for that election - the sitting MPs either won the reselection vote or stood down.  This makes Sam Tarry the first Labour MP to be deselected since Anne Moffatt in 2010.  His hard left comrade Apsana Begum could follow suit, meaning that a process purportedly intended to purge moderates ends up claiming two members of the Socialist Campaign Group!

Tarry was one of the few Corbyn loyalists to serve on Keir Starmer's front bench, but was sacked after he appeared on a picket line in July this year.  The reselection process was triggered the following month.  Tarry's response to the news was to accuse the party of a witch-hunt, alleging 'voter fraud' in the trigger ballot.  He stopped short of repeating those allegations in a statement released on Tuesday, but he did question the 'integrity' of Monday's reselection vote and said it 'did not reflect the feeling on the ground'.

Tarry's full statement can be seen below.

LABOUR'S PAKISTANI LOVE-IN

75 years ago the end of the British Raj triggered the independence of both India and Pakistan.  While some Labour politicians were largely silent about the former, many of them wallowed in the celebration of the latter.  Sadiq Khan tweeted or retweeted about Pakistan no less than ten times on Sunday.  No great surprise there really, but it was Starmer's tweet that was seen as a slap in the face for a generation of British girls.  "Britain's a far richer country for the contribution of the British Pakistani community" he crowed.  Thousands of victims of Pakistani grooming gangs up and down the country may beg to differ about their 'contribution'...

Needless to say, Starmer's tweet was not well received.  "How exactly has Britain grown richer from the Pakistani diaspora to the UK?" asked Mark Cropper, "I see people who remain separate, who reject British culture and adhere to the depraved morals of the Third World."  Alan Quinn wrote: "Rape gangs, hordes of thugs, honour killings in their own families, female genital mutilation, animal cruelty, Sharia law, disrespect for British laws, forcing cinemas to close, no women's rights?"

The Labour leader did not mention the independence of India on his Twitter timeline.

Starmer may be prepared to stand in front of a Union flag these days, but make no mistake - he and his party are no friends of Britain.

KEIR SACKS ANGIE'S LOVER

Sam Tarry (far right) on the RMT picket line on Wednesday

Keir Starmer has sacked a member of his frontbench after he appeared on the RMT picket line on Wednesday morning.  Ilford South MP Sam Tarry was a shadow transport minister until this afternoon when the Labour leader swung into action.  To further complicate the strained relationship between Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner, Tarry just happens to be the lover of the latter.  Both are married, but their relationship has been common knowledge since January.

Tarry was unrepentant following news of his dismissal and he earlier told Channel 4 that he was perfectly OK with it because he 'was on the right side of history'.  His lover has been publicly silent about his firing, so we can only speculate as to what's now going on behind closed doors at their London nest.  What we do know is that Sam's comrades in the Socialist Campaign Group have swung behind him with their support...

Starmer knows he should be capitalising on the current chaos in government, but his picket line in the sand is inviting division in his own political backyard.  A difficult summer lies ahead for Sir Squeaky.

LABOUR ON THE PICKET LINE

Keir Starmer is between a rock and a hard place at the moment.  He does not want to discuss the rail strikes - as he wants to remain firmly seated on the fence.  He neither wants to upset the trade unions that bankroll his party, or the millions of workers who will be adversely affected by the strikes.  As the strikes commenced on Tuesday his social media accounts fell silent.  24 hours earlier he banned his frontbenchers from joining the RMT picket lines.  He didn't slap a ban on his backbenchers, because he knew that would be pointless...

Labour backbenchers on the RMT picket line on Tuesday - Beth Winter, Kim Johnson,
Rachael Maskell, Richard Burgon, Zarah Sultana, Ian Byrne, Rebecca Long-Bailey,
Dan Carden and Paula Barker

Diane Abbott and several other MPs were on separate picket lines and the former shadow home secretary tweeted a defiant message to her party leader...

Other Labour MPs on the picket line included Tahir Ali, Ian Lavery, Andy McDonald, John McDonnell, Kate Osborne, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Mick Whitley and Nadia Whittome.  Sam Tarry was on the picket line with a loudspeaker on Tuesday, but his lover Angela Rayner was nowhere to be seen, clearly adhering to her leader's ban.  Clive Lewis hilariously tweeted apologies that he couldn't be on the picket line - as there were no trains running!

RAYNER'S PEAKY LOVER

Tabloid photos printed over the weekend suggest Angela Rayner has been doing the dirty with married MP colleague Sam Tarry.  Rayner was pictured leaving her London home alongside the former Momentum activist and now MP for Ilford South.  Labour's deputy leader looked like a ten bob prostitute from the waste down, but her hair was immaculate - as per usual.  Tarry opted for a Peaky Blinders look (see below).

Angela Rayner and Sam Tarry outside her London flat

According to The Sun, Tarry is separated from his wife and two children.  With a humorous headline of 'SCUM BACK TO MINE', the newspaper suggests that the affair has been going on for some time and accuses Rayner of hypocrisy after she previously lashed out at Matt Hancock over his extra-marital shenanigans.

Tarry is one of the few hard left MPs to sit on Starmer's front bench, in a shadow ministerial role for buses and local transport.  He was one of Corbyn's far left intake of 2019, having been selected for a safe London seat.  With Rayner's ongoing feud with Starmer and her apparent ambitions for his job, it will be interesting to see if she shifts further to the left under Tarry's influence.  Could we one day see Corbyn light running the Labour shit show?

BOARD ROW ESCALATES

A Labour meeting in east London on Monday night has been described by a prominent member as "the worst Labour party meeting" he had ever attended.  Hard left party activists had raised a motion condemning the Board of Deputies of British Jews.  The BoD had earlier released a ten point pledge to eradicate anti-Semitism and invited Labour leadership candidates to sign up.  The vice chairman of Ilford South Constituency Labour Party described the reaction of his local branch...

Ilford South's new MP Sam Tarry was drawn into the row after he failed to condemn the motion.  See below for the motion in full (click to enlarge).

Ironically, Tarry's campaign slogan in last month's election was "A fresh start for Ilford".  This was a clear reference to the saga of Mike Gapes - the incumbent Labour MP who quit the party last year and went on to co-found the disastrous Change UK.  One of the key reasons Gapes quit was the party's mishandling of anti-Semitism.  If this week's events in Ilford South prove anything - it's that Sam Tarry's election is far from a 'fresh start'!

Hard left anger over the BoD pledge is also what led to a Twitter spat between Ed Balls and Chris Williamson earlier this week.  The Morning Star also piled in with its front page this morning.

Whoever wins the Labour leadership contest will have their work cut out eradicating anti-Semitism from their own party, let alone wider society.