Times forced to retract election period smears

The Redbridge Independent group of left-wing councillors and candidates has forced the Murdoch Times into a humiliating retraction of disgraceful smears made during the local election period.

Voters go to the polls tomorrow. In Redbridge, the backyard of weaselly would-be next Labour leader Wes Streeting, they may or may not be aware of the rag’s admission that its false claims were defamatory.

The Independents posted news of their resounding victory to their social media, asking supporters to share widely to maximise awareness:

SUCCESS: The Times withdraws the defamatory statement and apologises.

Our statement – please share widely.@thetimes https://t.co/etoqEV0XsL pic.twitter.com/cepmVn131v

— Redbridge Independents (@RedbridgeIndys) May 5, 2026

Times — the smear

The Times had accused the Redbridge Independents of fielding a candidate who had attributed a string of antisemitic social media posts to his struggles with back pain. But the candidate was not a Redbridge Independent — he was a Labour councillor, who had quit the party and had not been accepted into the independents. In a lesson Green leader Zack Polanski would do well to note, the Independents set their lawyers straight onto the smearers:

DEFAMATION: Our lawyers have written to The Times Newspaper to demand a correction and an apology for the false allegations they made against our party.

Watch.. pic.twitter.com/KBnV1RNPS4

— Redbridge Independents (@RedbridgeIndys) May 2, 2026

The Independents said that the Times had:

taken Labour’s dirty laundry and dumped it on us. That’s not journalism – that’s a cover-up.

The rag’s apology, naturally, is hidden deep in a separate ‘corrections’ section — a stark contrast to the prominence of the smears. So readers are asked to amplify it urgently.

Starmer’s Labour, in its terror of the Greens and various independent groups has been trying to muddy the waters, even fielding fake ‘independent’ candidates to divide the opposition vote. Voters in Redbridge are entitled to ask how closely Streeting’s local party was involved in setting the Times up to make the false allegations.

Streeting, for all his ambitions to oust his current boss after the local election results are in, is himself on borrowed time. In 2024, even a scurrilous Labour campaign against Independent candidate Leanne Mohamad couldn’t prevent Mohamad coming just 518 votes short of ousting him. Labour’s — and therefore his — popularity have only plummeted since then.

This looks set to be even more pronounced tomorrow. Redbridge Independents leader Vaseem Ahmed told the Canary that:

The doors that I knock, the majority want Labour out. We are local people that will work our absolute socks off if we do take over.

We just want to offer people a real alternative. This is about hope versus austerity. And it’s about how can we create a scenario where people in the east end of London have hope again, not just for themselves, but their kids and their kids

‘Toast’

He added that Streeting, Labour’s other MP in the area and their woeful hangers-on are sweating about the outcome:

I think [Streeting] is worried on two fronts. One is that, obviously, that was really close, and I was at the count, and you could see – I think somebody overheard him saying, ‘wow, just got through by the skin of my teeth’.

Then subsequently, with all these WhatsApp leaks with him and [Peter] Mandelson, I think he said in that as well, ‘that was one of our safest seats in Redbridge-Mayfield in the by-election year, which we lost, and now me and [Ilford South MP] Jas Athwal will be toast at the next general election’, which was kind of foreboding and perhaps a prediction.

Our job is to make that prediction come true

And then, obviously, he is really concerned because, if you look at what’s happening right now in Redbridge, he’s fully fronting their campaign. He keeps coming out and sending letters to residents, and on social media, making videos and TikToks and all sorts, really directly aimed at us, the independents. Which is a badge of honor for us, really.

To be honest, it’s given us free publicity, which we’re happy with. And also, it’s re-emphasising the fact that we’re their main competition in Redbridge for these elections. So he understands the threat…

Share widely to maximise Streeting and co’s — and their boss’s — deserved humiliation tomorrow.

Featured image via Twitter