Dear readers — election week is almost upon us, and accusations are flying. In just one ward – St Peter’s in Ashton-under-Lyne – there’s been a squabble over a smashed-up bus stop, allegations of people being forced to fill out postal votes on the doorstep, and now this: That Tameside Labour has planted one white and one Muslim Independent candidate, in order to split the Labour-defector vote. Labour sort-of deny the allegations, though they haven’t exactly addressed them. But are they true? Alec Herron has investigated the matter very, very thoroughly. That’s after your briefing.
Join the garden party at RHS Bridgewater
Since opening its gates in 2021, RHS Bridgewater has become one of the North West's most loved attractions. In this time, the garden has flourished and so has its impact: over two million visitors have explored, planted, learnt, and relaxed in the beautiful 154-acre space.
To celebrate their milestone 5th birthday, they’re throwing all kinds of celebrations – from £5 entry to discounted membership, giveaways to live music performances. Head down to the garden in Worsley, on Monday 18th May to join in the celebrations, or click below to learn more.
Interested in sponsoring The Mill? Get in touch.
Your briefing
🔵 Remember Adam Mitula? During the Gorton and Denton by-election he was a key member of Matt Goodwin’s campaign team, serving as Reform UK’s interim campaign manager in Tameside. That is, until The Mill, using research from Hope not Hate, published Mitula’s past social media posts, including one tweet from July 2024 when he wrote that he “wouldn’t touch a Jewish woman”. He also disputed the number of deaths in the Holocaust, and suggested that “60-70%” of transgender people are paedophiles. After our article was published several groups – including the Campaign Against Antisemitism – criticised Mitula, and he confirmed he had been suspended by Reform pending investigation (Reform themselves did not comment). However, Mitula is now back. The Guardian have reported that he’s acting as an election agent for three Tameside candidates in the upcoming council elections. He’s also acting as promoter for Dan Bennett, Reform’s candidate in Denton West.
🏢 JLL, the giant real estate company, has found in a new report that Manchester still has the largest regional office market in the UK. Last year, 1.1 million sq ft of office space was taken up, renting at £45 per sq ft. What does any of this mean? It means more big companies continue to set up in Manchester. In fact, the largest single office deal outside London was Autotraders’ move into a 130,000 sq ft office on Oxford Rd.
⌚ And less ‘news’, more ‘reviews’: We went to Bolton Octagon last night to watch Waiting for Godot and we thought it was fantastic. We don’t think Godot showed up, but he might have made an appearance when we popped out for a drink half way through the first act (if you were there, sorry about that).
‘Bogus Independents’: Tameside Labour accused of planting its own Independent candidates
Late last summer, Angela Rayner – MP for Ashton-under-Lyne and then-Deputy Prime Minister – was hosting a barbecue in her garden. An email invitation shows she wanted to thank her guests, mostly Constituency Labour Party (CLP) members, for their continued campaigning outside of election time. “Bring a bottle of your favourite bevvy and let’s have some fun in the sun!” it read.
One of the attendees was Philip Wilson-Marks, then Vice-Chair of the Ashton-under-Lyne CLP, now of the Green Party. According to Wilson-Marks, it was common for Rayner to host such parties — though never rowdy or overly boozy, attendees often stayed over, and Rayner would cook breakfast in the morning. In this environment, Rayner and party members felt able to relax. The karaoke machine was often wheeled out.
Standing in the kitchen, Wilson-Marks began chatting informally to a fellow Labour Party member, Vimal Choksi MBE, a councillor in the Ashton Waterloo ward, each of them with a beer in hand. Choksi, he claims, had a tactic that he should consider: Labour should try to split opposition votes by putting forward its own ‘Independent’ candidates. This wasn’t the first time Choksi had suggested this. “This idea remained important to Vimal. It was central to his tactics,” Wilson-Marks claims. He tells me that he listened politely, but thought of Choksi’s suggestion as bizarre and dishonest. He did not move forward with it. I approached Choksi for comment on this matter, but he declined.
But now, just a week before local elections, Labour is being accused by its opponents of putting forward two faux-Independent candidates in the St Peter’s ward in Ashton-under-Lyne. Among the accusers are Conservative councillor Liam Billington, Independent councillor for St Peter’s Ward Kaleel Khan, and his nominee Ahmed Mehmood. These councillors and candidates claim that Labour is doing this to benefit their own candidate: Atta Ul-Rasool, a man described by party insiders as Angela Rayner’s protégé. But do these allegations stand up?
Meet the candidates
Muhammad Ali and Marie Fairhurst are the Independent candidates causing the flight of questions and serious accusations which, if true, would amount to electoral fraud.
It’s difficult to find any information about either of them. Neither has an online presence, and no one I speak to in the ward has seen them engaging in typical campaign activity, such as handing out flyers, door-knocking or putting up posters. There have been no social media posts or press engagements since their names were announced on April 10th. Neither appear to be active members of the community — nor does Fairhurst seem to live in it.
So how would they split the vote? To understand this, you need to first understand the ward.
St Peter’s, on the western flank of Ashton-under-Lyne, features top or near-top of the Tameside rankings for each characteristic a ward would hope to avoid: deprivation, unemployment and household overcrowding. It was until recently one of Labour’s safest seats in the borough. Facing such challenges, a constituent could reasonably assume that Fairhurst and Ali are just two local people throwing their hats into the ring, trying to improve one of Tameside’s most hardened wards.
But politics in St Peter’s is widely viewed through two lenses: The war in Gaza, and Tameside Labour’s recent scandals (among them, Angela Rayner’s resignation as Deputy PM, and the ‘Trigger me Timbers’ WhatsApp group). Both look unkindly on Labour, the borough’s governing party.
There are five candidates standing in St Peter’s: Ali and Fairhurst; Reform’s Gaynor Francis; a third Independent candidate, Ahmed Mehmood; and Labour’s Ul-Rasool, described by Labour insiders as the one-day heir to the Westminster seat now occupied by Rayner. Local sources from St Peter’s large and growing Muslim community tell me that voting is often decided along cultural lines. They explain that by putting forward two Independents, one with a Muslim name, the other with a white British name, voters turning away from Labour could be divided across sectarian lines.
These allegations claim that by taking undecided voters away from Mehmood, who would otherwise be standing as the sole Independent in the ward, Ul-Rasool hopes to pull on his strong community alliances and come through the middle victorious, gaining the first political position of his career. I decided to work out if this is true.
‘I have nothing at all to say’
You can help make great journalism happen.
At The Mill, we believe Manchester deserves high-quality journalism. By signing up as a member, you don’t just get the rest of this story — you get four great features delivered to your inbox every week, and the knowledge that you’re supporting a new model of local news, that puts quality and honesty first.
SubscribeAlready have an account? Sign In
