DISGRACED former Labour mayor Philip Glanville was pictured last week meeting and greeting guests to a £2,000-a-table Labour business gala dinner where party leader Sir Keir Starmer gave a speech.
Deputy leader Angela Rayner, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and Labour’s general secretary David Evans were also pictured at SME4Labour’s London shmooze-up, which saw up to 200 pro-Palestine demonstrators accuse the party’s leadership of being “genocide facilitators” on Tuesday.
Mr Glanville resigned as elected mayor after the Morning Star published pictures showing him partying with his councillor flatmate Tom Dewey after being informed of his arrest for possession of indecent child images.
He admitted lying in public in August after previously claiming that he had no communications with now-convicted Dewey after learning of the allegations against him.
In September, Hackney Council gave in to repeated demands for an independent investigation into who in the authority’s leadership team knew what and when during the period between of Dewey being elected a Hackney councillor and his arrest in May 2022.
Local activists were kept in the dark over the nature of the allegations for more than a year until he was charged with criminal offences.
Mr Glanville has now been spotted hobnobbing at the event, which was also attended by the council’s deputy mayor Antoinette Bramble, leading to fears of a conflict of interest over the investigation.
Coral Jones, Hackney Labour activist and local GP of more than 30 years, told the Morning Star that the situation was “disgusting … Labour are prepared to sweep the fact that they have misled members under the rug and that certain people are allowed to engage in outrageous behaviour.”
She added that it was “amazing” that Sir Keir’s Constituency Labour Party in Holborn was named CLP of the year at the gala despite it having conducted “democracy by webinar” during its pandemic-era meetings.
Labour, Hackney Council and SME4Labour were contacted for comment.
