LATEST: Labour selections for Brent Council elections 2018

Former councillor James Powney failed in his 'come back' selection bid for Harlesden ward last night. Joshua Mitchell Murry, claiming he'd 'put residents first' was selected along with Lloyd McLeish and Mili Patel. Fryent selected Shama Tatler, George Crane and Vincent Lo.

On Tuesday Kensal Green and Barn Hill will select. In Barn Hill it is a formality with Shafique Choudhary, Sarah Marquis and Michael Pavey re-selected without  opposition. Wednesday Update: Matt Kelcher and Jumbo Chan were re-selected in Kensal Green and Claudia Hector won the third position.

Welsh Harp (Amer Agha, Harbi Farah and Roxanne Mashari), Queens Park (James Denselow, Neil Nerva, Ella Southwood) and Tokyngton (Muhammed Butt, Orleen Hylton and Ketan Shah) will all confirm the re-selection of current councillors.

Thursday's meeting in Alperton will confirm the re-selection of James Allie and Bhagwani Chohan with a contest for third place between Nushan Nazemi and Trupti Sangani.

Meanwhile more is emerging about the de-selection of John Duffy in Kilburn which was a surprise to many of the public given his record of robustly challenging the Cabinet and officers.

In an email to Kilburn ward members, following up on an email he sent listing his achievements as a councillor, Duffy said:

Normally I would ignore stupidity like this, but I have had to sit in meetings where the tone has been unacceptable some member calling Hillary Benn “a Fascist”.

At the meetings members often wearing pictures of Jeremy Corbyn these members are normally in their 50’s and 60’s its very odd. If you dare raise the fact working people are turning their backs on the Labour Party they say its not important that the Labour Party win elections. Some times I feel I am at a Moonies convention, without the humour or big wedding at the end.

Like most Labour party members, I am dismayed at our electoral position. So I ignore them and push on trying to deliver socialist answers to problem facing the residents of Kilburn because of the unbalanced Tory austerity attack on hard working families and people who are need support.

These members have apparently decided at Wednesday night selection meeting that local issues and local residents will more or less be ignored and the main issue at the meeting will be about how much you support Jeremy Corbyn.

In an earlier email he accused Momentum members of using the 'pernicious Tory tactic of blacklisting' (regarding Brent Momentum's Facebook listing councillors who supported Owen Smith's leadership bid) and said that his wife would not attend the selection meeting for fear of intimidation.

 A Kilburn Labour Party member reacted with this statement:

This is John Duffy's version of alternative facts. Not a different interpretation of facts, but a "different truth". The idea that members are all in their 50s or 60s, sit around in Corbyn T-shirts and ignore local issues is about as far from the truth as you can get. That and the idea that the main issue at the selection meeting was Corbyn.

The member went on to say that despite Duffy not being at the selection meeting his candidature had been tabled and he did receive some votes. Duffy did not have an automatic right to be short-listed and this had also been the case with Cllr Rita Conneely. He rejected claims that local issues were not discussed citing a recent special meeting on South Kilburn Regeneration and said no one else had noticed an atmosphere of intimidation.

There was a recognition that Duffy had made life difficult for the Council leadership and forced them to retreat on a number of issues but it was also felt that he was not a team player able to work co-operatively with other councillors and campaigners.

Listing councillors who had supported Owen Smith's leadership bid was an attempt to provide political information for Labour Party members to consider when making their selections. In fact most of the councillors named had been re-selected.  It was not comparable to blacklisting by employers to stop militant trade unionists from gaining employment.

The Kilburn member denied that the de-selection of Duffy could be interpreted as a victory for Muhammed Butt and the Labour leadership but instead was about the above issues and a reaction to Duffy's email claims.