With Brent Council is proposing to “change the way residents experience libraries in the borough” let’s remember that libraries are More Than Books.
Friends of the libraries under threat of closure by Brent & Friend of Libraries NOT under threat are campaigning to change the Councils plans. Keep up with the campaign and volunteer your support, ideas, skills and stories at More Than Books.
Brent’s LibDem MP Sarah Teather has been appointed Minister of State for Children and Families at the Department of Education by David Cameron. Sarah will work under the new education secretary Michael Gove who had immediately renamed this department from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Top. Priority. A surprise appointment? Others had suggested housing…. A quick search shows that Sarah has taken an interest in this area in the past – she has asked around 50 questions of (what was) the DCSF and taken an interest in education issues within other Departments. Sarah was also the Lib Dems Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills in 2006.
Sarah joins the small group of women in David Cameron’s LibCon cabinet from the equally small group of women in the Lib Dems. Now this season of Britain’s Got Men In Suits has finished (watch out for the special Autumn edition folks!) we can see that Men In Suits is pretty much all we’ve got. The gender imbalance round Cameron’s cabinet table is lamentable.
Sarah in joined by Lynne Featherstone, appointed Under Secretary of State for Equalities. Congratulations to them both.
UPDATE – newly appointed Liberal Democrat minister has attacked the lack of women in the government saying she is “very disappointed” by the level of female representation in the coalition and said she has told David Cameron “we must do better”.
Public sector newswires with insufficient to talk about have been waiting for news on who the new Housing minister would be, with Grant Shapps and Sarah Teather the most likely candidates. Housing is an issue Sarah has spoken about often in the Commons.
Over on the Brent Greens Blog, Shahrar Ali has posted a write up the results for the candidates at the Local Elections. The Greens stood the maximum number of candiates in each of the 20 wards in Brent and many of the candidates clocked up, several hundred votes, even reaching 840 votes in Kilburn.
The Local Election results 08/05/2010 from Brent Council.
Brent Central is close. Just 1,345 votes separated Labour and the Lib Dems, around 3% or about 1.5 voters in every 50.
Would Brent Central Lib Dem voters punish Sarah Teather for a Lib/Con pact? In a briefing paper published today by the Fabian society, Brent Central is listed as a constituency likely to swing back to Labour at a second general election in 2010.
“As this table shows, there are 15 Lib Dem seats that would fall to Labour if just one-in-five of their voters switched to Labour. These would include all five gains that the Lib Dems made from Labour on Thursday night – Norwich South, Bradford East, Brent Central, Burnley and Redcar. Several Lib Dem MPs, including frontbenchers Sarah Teather and Jo Swinson, are even more vulnerable, falling if just one-in-ten Lib Dem voters defects to Labour in protest.”
I think the assessment is right. On the doorstep and in the cafe, liberal voters I’ve spoken to are both left/centre-left and tactical. A deal with Tories would most likely unseat Sarah Teather and return Brent to Labour. Perhaps Dawn Butler will rise after all.
I met this chap while out on the Unlock Democracy / Hang-em rally this afternoon.
Barry Gardiner’s £198,500 dwarfs Dawn Butler’s £66,000 expenses claims.
The voters of Brent have returned Lib Dem Sarah Teather with a majority of 1,345, a swing of 11% from Labour, and Labour’s Barry Gardiner with a majority of 8,028, loosing 2.5% of the vote to the Conservatives (+2.2%) and other parties. I was at the count on Thursday night tally marking for the Lib Dems and in-between boxes of ballot papers talking with candidates and journalists about the political economy of Brent as a borough. And still there at 11:30 on Friday morning when the results were announced! I didn’t have the stamina for the Local Election counts though!
| Constituencies | Elected Candidates | Elected Party or Parties |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Central | Sarah Teather |  Liberal Democrats |
| Brent North | Barry Gardiner |  Labour |
It was a long and tense night with some low drama at the first validation following the ballot paper mixup in Willesden Green and the re-routing of the Hampstead and Kilburn ballot boxes via Camden. The ballot counters of Brent Council worked really hard, first collating and validating the ballot papers, then counting the ballots cast. Tally Teams from Labour and the Lib Dems jostled politely for space to count the Brent Central ballots as they were sorted, while at the Brent North tables it was Labour and Conservative Teams that rubbed shoulders. By 530am, both Labour and the Lib Dems were looking tense, each thinking their candidate had just clinched victory. As the Harrow Observer report, ‘Labour [believed] Dawn Butler, the former MP for Brent South, [was] two per cent ahead in terms of number of votes, or just one ballot paper in every 50.‘
Brent North was announced first, with Barry Gardiner warning against Labour “starting a new love affair” with the Lib Dems so soon after being rejected by the electorate, saying he was “deeply distrustful” of the party.
In Sarah Teather’s victory speech she thanked the people of Brent for renewing their trust and faith in her, promising to continue her work as a constituency MP.
Dawn Butler quoted Maya Angelo in her valediction to the assembled: “You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
Does she not recall who was caught out spreading ‘bitter twisted lies’ to the electorate?
Shahrar Ali thanked the Green voters, saying that with the direction of travel for politics there will come more Brighton Pavilion victories in the future.
Click here for all my photos from the night.
Sarah Teather was returned to parliament by the voters of Brent Central.
| Election Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarah Teather |
Liberal Democrats | 20026 | 44% | Elected |
| Dawn Butler |
Labour | 18681 | 41% | Not elected |
 Sachin Rajput |
Conservative | 5067 | 11% | Not elected |
 Shahrar Ali |
Green Party | 668 | 1% | Not elected |
 Errol Williams |
Christian Party | 488 | 1% | Not elected |
 Abdi Duale |
Respect | 230 | 1% | Not elected |
 Dean McCastree |
Independent | 163 | 0% | Not elected |
Mapesbury returned Cllrs Leaman, Matthews and Hasmi. Full results posted by Ward over at the Brent Council website.
