Lindsey To Demand Recount?

Jump to Comments

From our London Correspondent:

Having had nearly a week to mull over the mayoral contest, I think it’s about time that Lindsey German followed the example of the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai in the recent Zimbabwe elections and formally challenged the result.  After all, there has clearly been some tampering somewhere in the system. How else to explain Lindsey’s final total of just 0.68 percent of the vote  (16,796 votes in all), despite a televised election broadcast and a slot in the official mail-out?

The SWP, standing as the ‘Left List’, made much of the fact that without the encumberance of George Galloway and his ‘communalist’ supporters in the Muslim community, they were now free to ditch the limitations imposed by their engagement in Respect and offer voters a full agenda of socialist policies. They also made much of the ‘mood of anger’ that existed in London about Livingstone’s shift to the right - hence their decision to focus most of their fire on him rather than on his Tory opponent Boris Johnson.

So something just doesn’t feel right about that derisory 0.68% if you ask me. There are two possibilities. One is that the establishment has conspired to rig the ballot, in which case the left should drop their sectarian differences with the SWP and encourage Lindsey to demand a public enquiry.  The other possibility is that the SWP leadership has committed a series of ill-judged blunders - fomenting the split in Respect, refusing to negotiate with their erstwhile comrades, creating the lacklustre ‘Left List’, attacking Livingstone rather than Johnson and so on.

Personally I would opt for the conspiracy rather than the cock-up theory. After all, the SWP Central Committee has a proud record of promptly owning up to its mistakes; moreover the party’s membership would be quick to hold it to account for wasting over £40,000 of their hard-earned cash on a risible vanity project. 

So I’d like to be the first to offer Lindsey my support if she does decide to question the way the count was handled. As the charismatic leader of the anti-war movement she’s already a household name - if she were to mount a challenge, most working-class Londoners would quickly line up behind her.

2 Comments

Filed under Politics