Tower Hamlets: Ken Livingstone puts Labour on the spot

Yesterday, Ken Livingstone created a local sensation by joining Lutfur Rahman on the campaign trail. Ken, you may have heard, is Labour's candidate to be the Mayor of London. Rahman, as you may also have heard, is not the Labour candidate to be the Mayor of Tower Hamlets. He was until four weeks ago but was removed by Labour's National Executive Committee, which installed in his place the current Labour leader of Tower Hamlets council, Helal Abbas.

At last Thursday's press conference for Abbas in Bethnal Green's Old Ford Road a fellow journalist asked Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, if any action would be taken against Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed, who'd made a speech supporting Rahman following his decision to run as an independent. My understanding, and I think my fellow journalist's too, was that Rahman, along with eight Labour Councillors and some other local party members who'd previously appeared in a video in praise of Rahman, were to be automatically expelled for their apostasy, if indeed they hadn't been already. Harman's reply to my colleague's question was as follows:

There is nobody else that is a Labour candidate for Tower Hamlets, so basically people can either be supporting Abbas, which is what we want Labour supporters to do, and all of us in the Labour Party are doing, but if they are not supporting Councillor Abbas, if they are supporting somebody else, then they are opposing the Labour Party and you cannot be against a party and in it. So we think he's an excellent candidate. There must be no ambiguity about this. He is our candidate, and if you're a Labour Party member you cannot support a candidate from a different party.

Where does that leave Ken Livingstone? There can't be one rule for Rahman and his supporters and a different one for Ken (or, indeed, Lord Ahmed). Labour Party rules say:

A member of the party who...supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member.

That seems clear enough. So is Ken on his way out? Will he be removed from the party and Oona King (or someone else?) imposed as Labour's challenger to Boris Johnson? Harman's comment at the press conference and her party's own rule book suggest no alternative. Yet the BBC has reported that Labour has so far declined to say if it will take action against Ken, instead stating that he supports "all Labour candidates everywhere, including in Tower Hamlets."

Well, Ken's previous statement about the Tower Hamlet's election just about expressed support for Abbas, as well as doing the same for Rahman. But his remarks to Rahman in the BBC report disparaging the imposition of Abbas over John Biggs, who came second to Rahman in the local selection ballot, reinforce the distinct impression that that support is at the very best lukewarm.

To add to the jollity Ken has just been elected to the National Executive Committee, the body with the power to expel him - as has Oona King, incidentally. On top of all this there may still be uncertainty about the fate of local Labour members who've publicly backed Rahman since his de-selection. One of them is the borough party's erstwhile secretary Stephen Beckett. In a recent open letter to Tower Hamlets borough party members he wrote, "I have not yet received any notification from the Labour Party about my expulsion."

Suddenly, it's not so clear after all. "You cannot be against a party and in it," Harman said. How exactly was she defining "against"? How was she defining "in it"? There is, though, one thing we can all be sure of. It is that some very prominent Labour figures in Tower Hamlets would now like to throttle Ken even more than they did before. He enraged Poplar and Limehouse MP Jim Fitzpatrick earlier this year by posing for a photograph with George Galloway, the Respect Party's challenger for Fitzpatrick's seat. My hunch is that the NEC will fudge their way out of this one now that Ken's in the frame. What a mess.

Update, 18.35: Yes, Ken's in trouble. He's issued a retraction - sort of.