Sadiq and ‘brilliant’ Sarah

AS a leadership contest looms in Camden’s Labour group with the emergence last week of Sally Gimson as a potential challenger, what happy chance for the current leader, Sarah Hayward, to find an interview with mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan purring about her performance. ‘Good interview’, Sarah perhaps unsurprisingly tweets, as she directs punters to the article in which Khan raps about her “brilliant leadership” of the council.

“Last week I was in Camden, under the brilliant leadership of Sarah Hayward,” Khan explains to Progress, the New Labour think tank. “They had a piece of land [and rather than] sell that land to a developer – where you can bring in big money to provide essential services – Sarah said, “We’ve got a housing crisis in Camden, we’ll keep this land, and what we’ll do is work with a developer to have half of homes on this site affordable homes for Camden, the other half for market value.”

Not in quotes, the interviewers add for good measure: “It is impressive stuff”. One of the Progress site’s regular writers is Sally; she writes sketches of PMQs and comment pieces for them. Quelle surprise, she’s not the author on this one. The byline instead goes to Progress director Richard Angell and Camden Labour councillor Adam Harrison, a former whip in Sarah’s administration.