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.

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!

Election summary for Constituencies

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.

WBTimes report that “Floella Benjamin ditched the teddy bear props” when she joined Lib Dem candidate for Brent Central, Sarah Teather this week. Floella joined Sarah on Harlesden High Street to collect signatures in Harlesden, to sign up residents to a petition urging the government to reform air passenger duty.

Sarah Teather and Floella Benjamin

Air Passenger Duty (APD) is an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a United Kingdom airport. The levy takes distance into account, making long distance flying significantly more expensive. The charges rose on November 1, 2009 and will rise again on November 1, 2010.

The APD hits Brent residents with family overseas, especially those with family outside of the Eurozone. Sarah Teather is campaigning for a reform of the APD and will no doubt continue this work to reform the structure in an incoming Lib Dem government.

Sarah Teather and Floella Benjamin

According to the WBTimes, “Mrs Benjamin also revealed she considered running as the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor in 2007 – but decided not to after her mother warned her about the pitfalls of a career in politics.”

YouElect is a non-profit and independent British Muslim grassroots initiative aimed at promoting voter registration and political engagement. I’ve just looked up Brent Central where Sarah Teather is the Community Choice Candidate, commended by both the British Muslim Initiative and  salaam.co.uk.

Dawn Butler and Sachin Rajput are also profiled on the YouElect site.

From WB Times today. Sarah Teather smeared by member of Dawn Butlers team in fictitious expenses complaint.

AN INVESTIGATION into the expenses of one of the borough’s MPs has been abandoned after it was found that a letter of complaint was fictitious.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards said an objection claiming that Brent East MP Lib Dem Sarah Teather sublet her constituency office in Willesden to her party while the taxpayer picked up the bill was not genuine.

A follow up letter from the complainant included a returning address that was almost identical to that of an employee of Labour MP for Brent South, Dawn Butler, who is also Minister for Young Citizens and Youth Engagement.

The commissioner also said he discontinued the inquiry because he had no grounds for believing that claims Ms Teather made from parliamentary funds for her office provided support to the cost of the Lib Dem party.

A letter to Ms Teather from the commissioner said: “I have been in contact with the person who purportedly made the complaint. I have satisfied myself as to his identity. He has stated that he did not make a complaint against you.”

As the complaint was made, Ms Teather, who was famed for not claiming a penny during the expenses scandal, strenuously denied the allegations.

Brent Liberal Democrats said the party contributed over and above its usage of the office, as approved by the Commons, calculated by a surveyor and agreed with a solicitor.

Chris Leaman, Brent councillor and the Lib Dem London campaign manager, said: “Its seems a strange coincidence that the first letter was written by someone who now says they have never made a complaint about Sarah Teather and did not write the original letter. Many people will be wondering why the second letter is written from an address that does not exist, while a similar address with an identical post code has one person registered at it and that person works for Dawn Butler.

“Dawn Butler must take immediate action and reveal the full facts if any person employed by her has been involved in this smear campaign against Sarah.

In a recent letter to residents of the Mapesbury ward of Brent Central, Labours’ candidate Angela Griggs slings a little mud on expenses. Apparently complains have been made to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about Sarah Teathers’ expenses in relation to her constituency office.

Now we know Sarah’s expenses are squeaky clean – check TWFY.com and compare the ACL to Dawn Butler and her £66,000….

Not awake at 415am? Shame as you missed Sarah’s victory speech! If you want to watch it you can thanks to the BBC.

Paul Palmer of the Evening Standard, who was having terrible trouble with his laptop when trying to submit his story, writes about the Brent East result. He focuses on Yasmin loosing rather than Sarah winning.

More later, when google news advises me of it!

I’ve woken up and eaten – needed to do that before posting anything. NK and I left the count after Sarah Teather had been returned as the MP for Brent East, but not before posting to sarah teather is my MP. I’ve still got the ‘wild eyes’ I had yesterday, although that’s now from lack of sleep. This politics junkie had quite an Election Day.

As I posted yesterday, I’d been out and about in Mapesbury and Willesden with June Thomas from Slate Magazine. You can hear a dispatch from June made before the election on NPR. After giving June a whistle-stop tour of Willesden, I had an afternoon of revision to do before going to the count in the evening.

And what a night. I want to thank Shahrar Ali and Rowan Langley from the Green Party for inviting me to join their party at count. That was probably one of the best ‘lock ins’ I’ve ever been too. It was a night of tension and drama with the Brent East result called last after stacking and restacking of bundles of ballots. And at the end of it all Sarah Teather is STILL my MP.