Did Labour rig Anonyvoter system to deselect a trade unionist in favour of a slum landlord?

Jas Athwal, the Labour Party MP for Ilford South, is also a landlord. He’s renting out 15 flats that tenants are saying have slum conditions of mould and ant infestations.

An example of the ‘quality Labour candidates’ Keir Starmer has been going for, no doubt. But there are huge questions about how Labour selected him as a candidate and its use of the online Anonyvoter system.

Jas Athwal: let in by Anonyvoter?

Sam Tarry, a trade unionist who helped set up Momentum, lost the selection process in favour of Jas Athwal in October 2022.

Starmer had previously removed Tarry as shadow transport minister for joining striking rail workers on a picket line.

Earlier in 2024, the Telegraph revealed that, in the selection process, Tarry won 57% of in-person votes but just 35% of Anonyvoter ballots. Athwal, meanwhile, won 43% of in-person votes, but 65% of Anonyvoter ballots, plus a small number of postal votes.

The results chime with other possible irregularities in Labour’s use of the Anonyvoter ballots. In one selection, a ‘centrist’ candidate won 10% of the in-person vote, but 62% of the Anonyvoter ballots.

And, for the Croydon East selection process, police cyber-crime specialists are investigating allegations of electoral fraud and tampering of membership lists. Labour used Anonyvoter here too.

Independent tellers aren’t reviewing the Anonyvoter process, meaning there’s no outside observation of the online system. By contrast, in-person votes are opened and counted in front of campaign teams.

A left-wing Labour source told the Telegraph:

It is a black box. There aren’t really checks and balances. There is an easy way of doing this, which is independent tellers. But those suggestions have been rebuffed. The only check and balance we have is the supposed integrity of the regional staff

Another concern is the software’s generation of codes to enable members’ voting could be open to electoral fraud through the generation of additional codes.

“Voter fraud”

Lawyers acting on behalf of Tarry have addressed Labour:

Mr Tarry believes there is evidence of voter fraud pertaining to the use of the Anonyvoter system, and specifically, that votes were improperly generated using Anonyvoter in a manner that was unfavourable to our client and favourable to his opponent.

Another former Labour MP, Beth Winter, has also been exchanging legal letters with the party over alleged Anonyvoter misuse. Both Winter and Tarry were members of the Socialist Campaign Group when they were in parliament.

Winter faced Gerald Jones in the selection process. She won 56% of postal votes but 47% of Anonyvoter ballots. Jones won 43% of postal votes but 53% of Anonyvoter ballots. There were no in-person votes.

Lawyers acting for Winter sent letters to Labour officials before and after the June 2023 selection. One sent before the selection reads:

As you are aware from previous trigger ballots and selections, there is serious disquiet among some parliamentarians and party members that online processes have produced and will continue to produce undemocratic results which lack fairness and transparency

Four Labour-affiliated unions have also expressed “grave doubts” about the online Anonyvoter system in a letter to the party’s general secretary, David Evans. Could it be that Jas Athwal got in off the back of this?

Featured image via Sky News – YouTube and Redbridge Council – YouTube