It has taken six years for the slow-grinding wheels of justice to catch up with a Tory plot to steal the election in Bradford West, but last week it finally happened. Four Conservatives are now facing jail sentences for their part in a conspiracy to unseat Labour MP Marsha Singh in the 2005 poll.
Described by prosecuting counsel as “a well-organised attempt to subvert the democratic process”, the plot was designed to elect British Airways executive Haroon Rashid as Tory MP for the constituency, which has a substantial Asian population.
It was uncovered by a painstaking police investigation, Operation Talmine, and four men – Mohammed Sultan, 52, Mohammed Rafiq, 70, Jamshed Khan, 64, and his son Reis, 30 – were unanimously found guilty by a jury at Leeds Crown Court of conspiring to defraud the Electoral Registration Officers of Bradford City Council by causing and permitting falsely completed applications for postal votes to be submitted.
Bailing the quartet for reports before sentence, Judge Robert Barfield told them: “I have to tell all of you, you must expect a sentence of imprisonment when you return to court.” A fifth man –Alyas Khan, 51, who pleaded guilty at an earlier trial – had been a finance officer of the local Conservatives. The father and son Khans had been Tory councillors.
It sounds like a master conspiracy, but in fact it was more Baldrick than Baldwin. The scam had its roots in a Blairite innovation after the 2001 general election, when electoral law was changed to allow everyone to choose to vote by post. Anyone on the electoral register could simply ask for and get a postal ballot sent to his or her address. The system was clearly wide open to abuse – and it was duly abused, and not just in Bradford.
The Tory plot up ’ere involved applications for 1,600 postal votes at more than 100 properties, some of them empty and derelict, across the city. Many of the wannabe voters did not exist. Others had no idea their names were being used and some had their ballot papers redirected to addresses controlled by the plotters.
“By whatever means they could, they utilised the system dishonestly”, said Gordon Cole QC, prosecuting. “They all played their parts in this determined attempt to subvert the integrity of the postal voting system, which goes to the heart of a democratic voting system like ours.”
But the conspiracy was so amateurish that it failed utterly. The plotters were rumbled before the illicit votes could be cast, leading to a prosecution of conspiracy to defraud. Marsha Singh was returned with a majority of 3,206 and retained his seat at the election in May this year. In retrospect, the postal voting system was a naive farce. Only gullible Blairite “modernisers” with no experience of how politics works on the ground, particularly in some of the inner cities, could have put such a simple-headed law on the statute book. Something tells me it will be changed, if it hasn’t already been – another brick of Chateau Tony being dismantled.
