The Tories have gained their first seat on Islington Borough Council since 1994 after the UK’s first Hijab-wearing mayor defected to them from Labour over claims of racism and oppression from Corbyn’s own branch patch. Rakhia Ismail, who quit Labour in October threatening legal action against the party, today joined the Tories while simultaneously backing their mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey. In a campaign video, she criticises Sadiq Khan’s record on knife crime… 

Somalia-born Ismail had been a councillor in Islington for almost a decade before resigning in what she described as an “escape” from the “oppression” of fellow Labour councillors’ “discriminatory behaviour”. Quite a coup for the beleaguered London Tories…