Labour’s new Barking candidate confirmed bully who tried ‘undue influence’ on scrutiny chair

Nesil Caliskan bullied a fellow councillor and tried to manipulate chair of Enfield council scrutiny committee – and more…

Labour has announced that Enfield council leader Nesil Caliskan is imposed as the party’s candidate in Barking, the seat that has been vacated by right-winger Margaret Hodge’s retirement.

In 2019, Caliskan was found guilty of bullying a female fellow councillor – a decision upheld on appeal. Her claims that the allegations were racially-motivated smears was rejected. She was also found, in the same month, to have breached standards by attempting to unduly influence the chair of the council’s scrutiny committee, responsible for independent scrutiny of the council’s activities.

Those two, major issues, are far from the end of the issues surrounding Caliskan’s selection. She was the subject of a series of complaints and protests by local Labour members and councillors, as well as of action by the party’s Governance and Legal Unit (GLU), following a series of revelations by the SKWAWKBOX – which were picked up, without credit, by ‘mainstream’ media.

Caliskan was Labour’s local campaign forum (LCF) secretary when she oversaw an array of ‘irregular‘ selections of her allies, who promptly elected her leader of the council after last year’s local elections. The process also saw every BAME councillor in the borough deselected, to the outrage of local community groups.

As a result, half of Enfield’s cabinet demanded an investigation, while all the female Labour group officers resigned except for Caliskan herself in protest at bullying and intimidation.

The subsequent disciplinary process saw the Enfield Labour group placed into special measures – and the election process for a new cabinet delayed after Caliskan was rebuked for ignoring binding instructions issued by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC). When the election finally went ahead, many of the council’s cabinet members refused to stand, saying they could not work with her.

Caliskan – whose family is close to former right-wing Labour hardliner Joan Ryan and who refuses to take queries from the SKWAWKBOX – has responded by alleging that she is the subject of a racially-motivated smear campaign. She also claimed that Labour’s ‘special measures‘ were to protect her – a claim subsequently shown to be false – and originally told members that the party’s investigation into her had been abandoned, which was also untrue.

Now she has been imposed at the last minute by Labour’s national executive for a safe Labour seat – like her fellow national executive member Luke Akehurst, who has been forced on Labour members in North Durham despite his support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and his blocking of a Jewish would-be candidate because she had blown the whistle to protect vulnerable domestic violence victims from ‘sadistic’ abuse and exploitation by a Labour right-winger’s lover.

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