Morally bankrupt Labour, Unite and Respect rally round fraudster Lutfur Rahman

The Unite union, the Labour Party and Respect Party are rallying round convicted election fraudster, Lutfur Rahman.

Rahman was removed from the office of Mayor of Tower Hamlets and banned from seeking re-election by a special elections court last month after being convicted of 7 charges of vote rigging, lying about his rivals, bribery and exerting spiritual influence. The prosecution called 100 witnesses, including council staff who were told to illegally collect postal votes to avoid being sacked and pictures and videos were widely published on the internet showing Rahman's supporters intimidating voters outside polling stations and even accompanying voters inside. He was caught bang to rights.

Unite's chief of staff delivered a personal message of support for Rahman from Len McCluskey, the leader of the union, saying that "Unite is proud to associate ourselves with Lutfur Rahman". George Galloway also sent a message of support describing the judgement "an anti-democratic, anti-Islamic and racist coup". Labour's Christine Shawcross, a member of the party's National Executive Council, is trustee of his legal defence fund and describes the ability of judges to remove politicians from office when they have got into office by breaking the law as "a disturbing precedent" whilst former Labour mayor of London, Ken Livingston, described it as "politically motivated".

The police are considering bringing criminal charges against Lutfur Rahman who has been landed with a legal bill of £250k which could rise to as much as £1m once costs hearings have been held.

Leicester UKIPper joins extremist Respect Party

The Secretary of UKIP's Leicester branch has resigned and joined the Respect Party, claiming it is because of a racist party member.

Ismail Patel, who joined UKIP a year ago, said that he received racist messages on Facebook from someone who he believed to be a UKIP member. He claims that the party didn't do anything about it so he joined Respect.

UKIP's national press officer, Gawain Towler, said that he had offered to go to Leicester so that Patel could show him the messages as he had blocked the sender and the party was unable to identify the sender. Patel left the party instead of co-operating.

Patel said that he bit his tongue about "a bit of petty racism" he encountered when he joined the party because he "agreed with a lot of the things UKIP stands for". One has to wonder what it was he agreed with having left a right of centre, eurosceptic, monocultural party for an extreme left wing, europhile, Islamic party. Anyone would think there was an alternative agenda at play here ...

Respect candidate has electoral fraud conviction

The Respect Party have been accused of hypocrisy for condemning ballot-rigging whilst putting up a candidate who has a conviction for electoral fraud.

Arshad Ali, who stepped down as chairman of the party in 2012 when his conviction became public knowledge, spent 6 weeks in prison in 1997 for his part in fiddling Labour's landslide election victory.

The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems on Bradford City Council have called for a change to the law that would ban anyone convicted of electoral fraud from standing for public office for life.