A political crisis enveloped Southwark Council in July, with the ruling Labour group churning through three leaders in the space of a week amid allegations of procedural impropriety and interference by the central party.
It was a political drama that gripped the attention of local political observers, with each day in early July seeming to yield a fresh development in the saga.
Councillor James McAsh was crowned the leader of Southwark Labour after a leadership contest triggered by the resignation of Kieron Williams, but a week later the party had to re-run the ballot under the orders of Labour’s high command.
It emerged that concerns around the use of proxy voting in the original ballot had been communicated to London Labour, including by MP Neil Coyle.
Coyle repeatedly insisted that he sought only to ensure that the local party followed its own rules governing voting procedure, rather than secure a different outcome.
Irrespective of his motives, a second ballot held online a week later on July 7 resulted in the victory of Sarah King who narrowly lost out to McAsh in the first round.
In a interview with the News in September, King revealed that both she and McAsh jointly wrote to Labour high command to ask for the run-off vote to be held in person. The suggestion seemed to be that she wanted to preclude any allegations of a possible stitch-up, rather than because she had any doubts about the authenticity of the online voting system.
She said: “The key thing for me was that it was difficult already, and therefore having a meeting that people felt familiar with and comfortable with was, in my view, the way it should be organised.”
Yet the party brushed aside their concerns, pushing ahead with the online ballot. King said neither she nor McAsh received communication from the party’s high command explaining why a different system had been chosen for the run-off.
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The contest exposed bitter fissures in Southwark Labour, triggering a spate of councillor resignations starting with party chair Kath Whittam, followed by Laura Johnson, and more recently Sam Foster and Ketzia Harper.
Both Whittam and Foster, after initially quitting Labour to sit as independents, have since thrown their lot in with the Greens meaning the party now has two councillors in Southwark.
King’s political woes did not end there. In November she lost her Cabinet Member for Housing Michael Situ after he was found to have committed the same landlord licensing blunder as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.
Situ had not applied for a £945 license to let out his properties in Peckham, weeks after Reeves was criticised for the same error in Dulwich.
Rather than weather out at the storm, he admirably chose to resign, with King praising his integrity and said he had been let down by the ‘incompetency’ of his letting agent who had not applied on his behalf.
It has certainly been a tumultuous year for Southwark Council – but the year that lies ahead will certainly be one of more political upheaval, as residents are due to head to the polls in May.
Nominally local elections are an opportunity for residents to deliver their verdict on their local administration, but in practice, they are often interpreted as referendums on incumbent governments. Given the mixed performance of Labour nationally, it could be a grim set of results for the party.
