Peter Soulsby has once again been re-elected as Labour’s Mayor of Leicester with a vote share of 39.3%. Rita Patel, the former Labour councillor who stood as an independent against him, came fourth on 8.9%. Patel was one of several councillors who organised a plot to oust Soulsby at a special meeting of Leicester City Council, only to fail and lose the whip. Now she’s lost again…
This will be yet another blow for Keith Vaz, who is alleged to have backed the anti-Soulsby campaign by encouraging Patel to stand. Her candidacy was dubbed by locals as the launch of “the Keith Vaz Independent Party“. All part of Vaz’s ongoing personal feud with Soulsby…
Unfortunately for Keith, it failed. The party’s over…
A turf war has broken out over in Leicester ahead of the local elections, with Keith Vaz once again accused of leading the charge. The row is focused on the city’s mayoral election, with Labour incumbent Sir Peter Soulsby standing again after surviving an attempted plot to scrap the role entirely last month. The plot was led by then-Labour councillor Rita Patel, who backed a motion to ditch the mayoralty at a special meeting of Leicester City Council. She and several other rebellious Labour councillors were accused of trying to “embarrass the party” and subsequently lost the whip. Now Patel herself is standing as an independent against Soulsby… just to scrap the job if she wins.
Where’s Keith Vaz in all of this? Locals are accusing the former Labour MP of orchestrating the rebellion and throwing his weight behind “protégé” Patel’s campaign, owing to a longstanding personal grudge he holds against Soulsby. One source tells Guido they’re now known as The Keith Vaz Party…
“Rita is now leading a bunch of Labour rejects who are calling themselves the independent party, but locally they are known as the ‘Keith Vaz Party’ and their slogan is “let’s get the party started”.
Another leaflet doing the rounds this week accuses Labour of “removing all Hindu councillors” and being an “anti-Indian Party”…
Vaz’s feud with Soulsby goes back decades, with Soulsby telling the Standards Committee in 2000 the pair had “a long history of quite a difficult relationship“, and later even that they had “a different attitude as to what is true“:
“…We have a very different view about what is proper in public life, and how one ought to behave, and a different attitude as to what is true and what is not. That has inevitably led to us falling out a number of times over the years. That is not a vendetta; that is a difference in personality and attitude.”
An ally of Rita Patel told Guido “Keith has been involved in local politics for a while“, although they refused to comment on his more recent machinations. There ain’t no party like a Keith Vaz party…
Co-conspirators will recall a Leicester City Council candidate resting heavily on the endorsement of Keith “call me Jim” Vaz. In news that will shock few, Keith’s endorsement didn’t go down well with voters. Labour lost the previously safe seat of North Evington by a stonking 27% margin, with the winning Conservative candidate seeing a 32% gain in vote share. Considering the national context, that’s quite the result for the Tories…
An awkward and little reported dimension to the vote is that some on the ground say that Hindu voters are increasingly leaning Tory as the Muslim vote goes to Labour. What’s more, Keith didn’t just endorse the candidate; he took an active role in the campaign. A local source tells Guido that Vaz was out on the doorstep regularly, adding “his influence is shot to ribbons”. Neighbouring MP Andrew Bridgen was quick to reach a similar conclusion, saying the result showed the people of Leicester East had “finally had enough” of Keith. Better late than never…
Jim- sorry Keith, Vaz can’t seem to keep himself out of the political limelight. Following Guido’s prior reporting that Vaz was plotting a Westminster return, he’s now been wheeled out by Leicester Labour to promote a city council candidate. Vaz has been featured on a number of leaflets, emphasising his credentials as the “longest serving Asian origin MP”. The class-A hypocrite is probably not someone the community should be proud of…
Vaz is quoted on the leaflets saying local candidate Rajul Tejura will “fight hard” for Leicester residents. Not as hard as… well you know the rest. The fact that Vaz’s endorsement would help any candidate surprises Guido. Though maybe it shouldn’t considering the calibre of his replacement…
Co-conspirators may remember Vaz-Pants – an ex-Labour councillor who once boasted of having Keith Vaz “in his right pocket”, and who resigned from his council seat shortly after losing his taxi driver licence amid allegations he’d “sat outside a swimming pool in his pants”. A close ally in the venerable Vaz chumocracy…
Guido hears things haven’t improved much for Vaz-Pants (real name Gurpal Atwal) in the years since his resignation. Apparently he’s now being charged with 11 criminal offences, including fraud, relating to his 2017 bankruptcy. Investigators found he’d transferred transferred £600,000 worth of land he owned in India to family members, against the instructions of his bankruptcy order. He also once threatened to kill the father of his ex-business partner.
Guido’s sources say he’ll appear in Leicester Magistrates’ Court for a hearing on 7th September at 10am. Will he drag Vaz down with him?
Keith Vaz was back on the campaign trail over the weekend for Leicester East, doing his bit to elect Labour candidate Shahid Ullah Khan as the new councillor for Evington. As the photo above shows, Vaz and his team provoked a strong reaction from some of the locals.
Guido also hears Vaz has allegedly now reached a deal with Leicester East Labour to step aside in the inevitable by-election to replace Claudia Webbe. As part of that deal, the party has agreed to try and find a job for Vaz’s daughter – although not as the candidate for Leicester East, as Keith had reportedly hoped. Instead, it’s assumed she’ll stand in a Labour safe seat at the next general election, so don’t expect Vaz to go away again any time soon.
