The late Frank Dobson

AN election commotion in Covent Garden!

In the big small world of local elections, Sue Vincent – a Labour councillor of 24 years – has caused a stir by writing to residents, advising them to vote Green.

This is on the Camden side of the borough boundaries, but Ms Vincent is well known as a former deputy leader of the council. Even before she was elected, way back in 2002, she had been a neighbourhood activist in Holborn.

The May 7 elections promise to be the most unpredictable in 20 years, since Labour lost control of a council it has run for 51 of the last 55 years.

Much of the intrigue surrounds how well the Greens will perform, amid surging poll ratings under their new leadership of Zack Polanski.

The Greens did not even field candidates in Holborn and Covent Garden four years ago, but are now trying to mount a fighting alternative to the decades of Labour domination in the neighbourhood.

Jim Monahan, the co-founder of the Covent Garden Community Association and another former Labour supporter, is standing as a candidate. He is joined by James White, also previously involved in Labour, and a third candidate, Hamza Chowdhury.

Enter Ms Vincent, who is stepping down from the council in four weeks. She has written a letter with an emphatic endorsement for these Green Party candidates.

This isn’t a mild parting shot. The bulletin to residents is full of fury for Labour’s leader in Camden, Richard Olszewski, transferring from Fortune Green ward in the north west of the borough to Holborn.

Fortune Green is under serious threat from the Lib Dems, while Holborn has always voted Labour.

She claims the Greens will be better as local representatives now because they live in the area and can see the problems with dumped Lime bikes, takeaway litter and out-of-scale new development first-hand.

Sue Vincent winning for Labour in Holborn and Covent Garden for Labour in 2018 – with Awale Olad and Julian Fulbrook

Mr Olszewski described the letter as a “sad ending” to Ms Vincent’s time on the council.

Labour campaigners are keen not to get into a public to-and-fro over her comments, but one passage triggered an extra scowl.

“James, Jim and myself were all former paid-up active members of the Labour Party,” Cllr Vincent said in her letter.

“Before the much-loved Frank Dobson MP died in 2019, he said to me that if he were starting out again in politics he would join the Green Party – and we all know how sensible our Frank was!”

Harrington is acutely aware of how popular he was in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency. He never lost an election, and usually his majority would go up.

There hasn’t really been a politician like him in Camden since – an avuncular but frank, small-f figure – and Sir Keir Starmer knew how important it was to secure his endorsement when he first showed interest in being his successor.

Mr Dobson had often appeared irritated by the unseemly queue of wannabes who were positioning themselves ahead of his retirement, and almost stayed on to spite them.

This was even funnier, given he held traditional Labour views – a critic of profiteering from public services – while those who wanted his seat were often more of a Blairite persuasion.

Sue Vincent’s letter

Dobbo, as he was known, had no love for the New Labour prime minister once he had been shafted in an ill-advised push from his treasured job as health secretary to a candidate for Mayor of London. He would no doubt have been a good leader of the city, but the politics of Ken Livingstone’s removal and run as an independent put paid to that.

And yet who can really say what Mr Dobson would have thought about where we are, whether his views on Sir Keir may have changed, or if he’d ever really have been attracted by the Green offer?

It is not too hard to see why somebody with Ms Vincent’s politics would have been changed by a government slow to scrap the two-child benefit cap, prepared to remove the winter fuel allowance, quick to bring in US companies to the NHS, vague on Gaza and, to stop the list short, content to end the right to a jury trial for some defendants.

But Mr Dobson is not here to give a view, and so it’s a spiky move to put words in his mouth.

Perhaps what’s most interesting is that six years after his death, the best endorsement anybody can have remains Mr Dobson.

It is a credit to his career as a popular politician – that’s a real rarity when you think about it – but it sums up how nobody impressive has followed since.

Maybe if more followed his example of knowing their area and listening to residents more than social media, they’d find it easier to win votes.