WHEN is a done deal not a done deal? When it’s an undone deal which a Labour local authority needs to be done, and pronto. I will explain, I promise.
Question: Is Labour really facing the electorate wipe-out that every pollster and most media insiders are predicting as the days tick down to May 7? Maybe. Hopefully. If the desperate, unravelling Starmer hasn’t already gone by then, May 8 should see panicked Labour MPs erecting a scaffold at the end of Downing Street.
On second thoughts, they might struggle to find space, what with the parade of hearses lining up to collect the latest senior civil servant’s body that our death row Prime Minister has thrown under a London bus. It’s a wonder the hop-on, hop-off tourist buses don’t give Whitehall a wide berth.
Given the timescale and notwithstanding the Olly Robbins affair escalating by the hour, I expect Labour’s prime ministerial runners and riders to be holding their horses until Starmer’s coffin can have both the Robbins/Mandelson and local election corpses stuffed in with him. A ‘fresh’ start beckons.
One council that should theoretically be able to survive the looming meltdown is Wakefield in West Yorkshire, where Labour dominate overwhelmingly with 48 councillors against nine Independents, two Lib Dems and two Reform. Not a Tory in sight. So, a Labour ‘hold’? I wouldn’t bet against it, despite the fact that the presumably politically brain-dead locals ought to be marching on City Hall given the suspicious goings-on. Right now the Labour council doesn’t seem so confident however.
Here’s why. It all revolves around what feels like the sort of deal, even here in Yorkshire, where you’d wearily say ‘typical Labour!’ Wakefield city centre is dominated by a 1980s-built retail mall, The Ridings. It’s dying on its feet, literally and figuratively, which is why it’s at the centrepiece of Wakefield Council’s huge Cathedral Quarter regeneration project which was announced in 2022. That date’s important.
The council wants to demolish The Ridings and four nearby tower blocks to begin a ten-year city centre redevelopment with ‘green space and leisure facilities’ masking the real money-spinner – a huge new residential project. Around the time it was announced Labour’s council leader Denise Jeffery was reported as discussing its purchase with its previous investment group owners. The talks – which the council press office refuses to comment on – went nowhere.
Enter stage left, an interesting bit-part character. In November 2022 the owner of a small retail parade in even more run-down neighbouring Batley, one Zahid Iqbal, formed a new company, The Ridings 2023 Ltd, albeit he didn’t buy the centre until March 2023. Land Registry records show he paid £5.25million, whereas insiders suggest Councillor Jeffery had been offered the site for £7million and walked away. Iqbal’s 25 per cent discount presumably reflected its declining occupancy and uncertain future.
A rubbish piece of business, you might think, the 25 per cent discount notwithstanding? Well, not when you consider that until this week Wakefield’s Labour council was frantically trying to rush through The Ridings purchase for a widely quoted price of £13.5million! A nice little £8.25million payday for the Iqbal family (who have since moved its ownership into yet another new company, for some reason). All clearly above board. Ahem.
Heaven forfend that I should suggest financial impropriety at play, although Wakefield does have form, with former leader Colin Croxall (Labour) having to resign in disgrace while under police investigation over non-tendered contracts. However this past Monday I published an online blog laying out all of these details – and figures – which the council had steadfastedly refused to confirm or deny.
Within hours, literally, council Chief Executive Simon Reeves announced that the deal was off. ‘Due diligence’ had suddenly deflated Zahid Iqbal’s inspirational quids-in opportunity. For good measure Reeves threw a timely hand-grenade down the emptying aisles of The Ridings – a threat to acquire it through compulsory purchase.
The financial trail I excavated suggested Iqbal’s various companies, new and old alike, were living mostly on borrowed cash if not quite borrowed time. Nothing untoward, but not much financial substance to speak of either. Result? Within 24 hours of Reeves’s poker-style call that the deal was off, hands had been shaken and contracts were about to be exchanged, no doubt before Labour’s looming D-Day of May 7.
The council swiftly blustered about ‘future certainty for the residents and businesses of central Wakefield’ with, naturally, no mention of the price agreed for what at very best was a £5.25million white elephant. One with a big streak of red, I’d suggest.
I’m somewhat puzzled by the street politics at play, because I’d been trying to feed Wakefield’s Reform UK group with this ammunition for weeks, without success, hence my blowing it up on Monday. No one else is going to capsize Labour in such districts, that’s for sure. In fairness, most Reform activists are understandably wet behind the ears in many regards, be it campaigning, media matters or (he said suspiciously) dipping their greedy snouts in the lavish trough of public expenditure. I guess we’ll discover soon enough.
The Ridings matter now presumably settled, and no doubt to be signed off before May 7, just in case I inquired of Wakefield’s press office regarding the deal. The voters deserve to know, surely? ‘A fair and reasonable offer has been agreed. The price is commercially sensitive at this stage,’ came the reply. I’ll bet it is.
