Thursday 10 December 2009

Cabinet member steps aside after unpopular victory

Labour councillor Nargis Khan, cabinet member for community services, will not be standing in next year's local elections despite successfully recovering her political career earlier in the year.

Khan was deselected as a Labour representative for Dalston but then managed to get reselected as a candidate for Haggerston.

The casualty of Khan's move to Haggerston was Cllr Barry Buitekant who is more left leaning than many of his Labour party colleagues (http://www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/). His profile on Labour's website reads: "Barry Buitekant has lived in Hackney for most of his life and went to school locally. He has been a lifelong active trade unionist in the Post Office and BT unions serving as an official locally and nationally."

During the summer Buitekant wasn't keen to answer any questions on the situation.

The story is that the original Haggerston selection meeting was poorly attended and that Kahn's win would not have happened if Haggerston's Labour party members had thought there was a threat to Buitekant.

Now Khan has decided to take time out from politics all together.

News of these goings on originally came from a Conservative who speculated that Hackney's New Labour establishment had conspired to save one of their own at the expense of an old-school socialist.

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