Campaign Materials - Labour - Quoting Andrew Gilligan!

The man who claimed that New Labour had ‘sexed up’ the dossier on the threat possed to the United Kingdom by Sadam Hussain’s Iraq is being quoted by Yasmin Qureshi on her most recent campaign material.

Andrew Gilligan was writing in Friday 29th Evening Standard. I picked up the most recent flyer - literally, there were some floating around the platform at Kilburn, Jubilee Line - in the early evening on Friday. I must congratulate Team:Yasmin on the quick turnaround of producing materials using this story.

The story in the Lack Of Standards describes the campaign in Brent East as an “ideological purity contest about who can reject Labour party policy most effectively.”

He continues… “Ms Qureshi has enlisted the help of a Labour politician called Tony. Tony Benn, that is, not Tony Blair. The first Tony was the star of a campaign event in Queen’s Park. The second Tony appears only on Lib-Dem leaflets, standing next to George Bush and looking shifty.”

When I spoke with someone who was at the Team:Yasmin ‘meet ‘n’ greet’ in Queen’s Park on Wednesday the soundbite they relayed to me was the same quoted by Andrew: Yasmin promises to be a “thorn in the side” of the government. On the campaign flyer ‘Brent East Labour News’ Yasmin states that she will ensure that the Labour Party carries on its investment in public services in Brent East. She goes as far as so say that only a Labour MP for Brent East is best placed, assuming a Labour Government, to do this. I’m not sure that these two positions can be taken simultanously: being a ‘thorn in the side’ as well as securing ‘even more money from a Labour government’. Will being a gadfly help Yasmin secure the investment she reports to be able of securing?

Will her ‘Queen’s Park Pledge’ come back to haunt her if elected? We can all monitor the official record of correspondance, comment and critism thanks to the people at TheyWorkForYou Dot Com. If she is elected we will all have access to the public record of the business of the Houses of Parliament. In the same way that Yasmin promises to hold the government to account, we shall be able to hold her to account.