Evans – Did The Croydon Casher-In Jump Before It All Came Out?

Labour’ General Secretary David Evans decided to step down recently just after the party reached government - away from any allegations he has been involved in tampering with and abusing Labour’s ‘selection process’?

Hoping, rumour has it, to quietly tootle off to the House of Lords as his covertly-built house of cards collapses behind him?

But while his sudden departure surprised many, Evans’ decision to jump may have been in his mind as far back as 2023 – which is when his business ‘The Campaign Company’ began a steady slide into what looks like inevitable oblivion.

The company, which describes its work as ‘unique, politically aware, insight-driven practice’, was founded by Evans in 2001, and went great guns since, advising clients across the political and public sector - and with a finger in many Croydon pies.

These pies included the Fairness Commission Report, which ‘recommended’ the ill-fated ‘FairBnB’ – supposedly a project to help link the homeless with people willing to rent them room in their homes or houses, but in reality a project which seemingly achieved precisely nothing, apart from costing Croydon Council £200,000.

Funnily enough, David Evans was listed as a director of FairBnB – he resigned in July 2020, just after becoming ‘Labour’ General Secretary and shortly after stepping down from the Campaign Company. FairBnB’s sole remaining director, Nic Pecorelli, was also employed by the Campaign Company. Fancy that!

Having gained hundreds of thousands from the now-bankrupted Croydon Council, the Campaign Company is now facing the third bid in just 18 months by Companies House to strike it off the register.

Third time lucky, one would hope…

The Campaign Company, now nominally ‘owned’ by Evans’ wife Aline (who often chooses to use her maiden name, Delawa), has apparently done very little since May 2023 – certainly its activities haven’t included preparing or submitting accounts to Companies House; these are now nine months overdue.

Ms Delawa, incidentally, worked for the Labour party for some 7 years during the Blair years, and was Labour’s Head of Compliance until 2002 - this is what Wikispooks had to say about her potential conflicts of interest; the ‘investigation’ seems to have mysteriously disappeared under the carpet…

The Campaign Company’s last accounts submitted go up to December 2021, and do not make for happy reading; TCC owed more than it had, with net ‘assets’ at minus £178,045 and just £571 in the bank, the accounts show massive losses, and leave one wondering how on earth the firm managed to pay its eight declared employees that year, or since.

The company has not released its weekly newsletter ‘The Weekly’ since October 2023 - the same time it last posted on social media, LinkedIn, or its Medium blog. Is this a symptom of a business slipping deeper into trouble – or has the outfit simply outlived its usefulness; ‘done its job’?

Since it previously enjoyed the benefits of working for councils including Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Harlow, Staffordshire and Greater Manchester Combined Authority – and of course Croydon - as well as a contract with the NHS CCG of Bassetlaw (of all places, imagine!) among other work listed on its website, it seems strange that after 21 years in business, all these previous clients have suddenly departed, with no new ones coming to take their place?

Croydon went bankrupt, ‘Labour’ almost went bankrupt after 2020, at least three or four businesses have gone or are going down the drain – all connected to Evans.

However, the failures of these various businesses can be put down to simple misfortune. Businesses go bust, that’s just how it is – but it does give rise to serious questions about shady activities and ‘something rotten in the state of Croydon’.

And quite possibly ‘something rotten in the state of Labour’ – Evans has been around in various party roles since at least the 90s.

Much darker than historical behind-the-scenes shenanigans, though, are the allegations that Evans was involved in the concerted rigging of Labour’s ‘selection process’ – at the centre of a spider-web of saboteurs determined to impose their chosen folk on (the remaining) members of the ‘Labour’ Party.

Were these the ‘agile ceremonies’ we heard so much about a while back?

Upon becoming ‘Labour’ General Secretary, Evans promptly set about making sure his Croydon pals shared in his good fortune; he wasted no time in awarding Labour’s contract for the ‘Anonyvoter’ online voting system to his chums the Hensons (not, sadly, the ones who created The Muppets – although there are similarities)

Evans (right) posing with Anonyvoter pals Mark and Maddie Henson

The contract was awarded – without tender – to Croydon councillors Mark and Maddie Henson’s ‘Henson IT Services’, a company which at the time had only been trading 4 years and which still describes itself as a ‘micro company’. Indeed, with barely £12,000 to its name, it could scarcely do otherwise.

The Muppets’ – sorry, the Hensons’ – Anonyvoter system was widely condemned by CLPs and reported to have major defects and the potential to be used for vote-rigging. Nevertheless, Evans blithely rolled it out across the UK.

The award of the contract was criticised at the time, and recently, the use of Anonyvoter in Labour’s ‘selection’ process has been questioned by CLPS, trade unions, and the UK independent media.

Commentator Damien Willey of the brilliant #DamoRants, had a lot to say about Anonyvoter in November 2023.

By March 2024 it was feared that as many as 40 ‘selections’ may have been rigged, and thousands of ‘Labour’ members signed a petition demanding an independent investigation into Anonyvoter.

The Morning Star wrote in March:

“Concerns about Anonyvoter suggest it is open to manipulation in various ways by whoever is operating the system.

Police cyber-crime specialists are investigating claims of membership-list tampering and fraudulent voting in the selection procedure in Croydon East, where the system was also used.

In Ilford it is understood that there is overwhelming evidence of manipulation of the outcome in this selection.

Mr Tarry claims to have won 57 per cent of the in-person votes but just 35 per cent of the Anonyvoter votes, an unusually large discrepancy.

A Labour spokesman said: “We have full confidence in the integrity of both selection processes and the use of Anonyvoter”

At the same time, representatives of four trade unions demanded Anonyvoter be ditched by ‘Labour’ unless proof of its integrity could be provided - Mick Whelan of ASLEF, Dave Ward of the CWU, Matt Wrack, of the FBU and Maryam Eslamdoust, of the TSSA wrote to Evans about their concerns.

They asked:

“What assurances are there around the accuracy and integrity of the data which is uploaded to the Anonyvoter system? Are there any procedures guiding the handling of this data? Please share these procedures with us.

“What access is given to candidates in a selection to verify the accuracy of Anonyvoter voting, so they can be assured of the fairness of any result, similar to the extensive verification processes for postal and in-person voting?”

Answer from Evans, as far as we are aware, came there none…

Questions about its use in Labour’s ‘selection process’ have also been raised by former MPs Beth Winter and Sam Tarry – both of whom ‘lost’ selections carried out under the suspect system.

Tarry, who ‘lost’ the candidacy to now-disgraced slumlord MP Jas Athwal in 2022, tweeted in March this year:

 “Since October 2022 I have stayed silent, seeking to right the wrong done to me and the people of Ilford. I want to be absolutely clear - the Anonyvoter system was used to deselect me, rigged to change the result against the wishes of my local Labour Party” 

Even the Telegraph – by no means ‘leftwing’ – cast doubt on the system in a damning expose about its alleged use in vote-rigging - also in March 2024:

‘Since becoming Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer has widely been seen to have sidelined Left-wing figures. His party is now facing allegations that information generated by the Anonyvoter system is being used at times to help get moderates selected as election candidates.

In one selection, a moderate candidate (who was the favoured choice of the Labour leadership)won just 10 per cent of the in-person vote but 62 per cent of the Anonyvoter online vote, according to a breakdown shared by local party figures.

There is no suggestion the Anonyvoter system is inherently flawed or faulty, but the lack of transparency has raised concerns that it is open to abuse’

In what was surely a totally unconnected event, Maddie Henson herself became a beneficiary of Anonyvoter in March 2024 when it ‘selected’ her as candidate for May’s Greater London Assembly elections (in the eventual GLA election, conducted without Anonyvoter, she lost)

As reported by the excellent Inside Croydon blog, the ‘selection’ of Ms Henson was announced a suspiciously short time after online voting ended. Labour has refused to publish the voting figures.

The new MP for Crawley, Peter Lamb, was luckier. The odious Lamb, who recently suggested it was ‘pensioners’ choice’ whether to heat their homes, was a senior consultant for the Campaign Company before his ‘selection’ as candidate.

Morgan McSweeney, described by the Sunday Times as ‘the real power behind Starmer’, used to work at the Campaign Company – his wife Imogen Walker (no, us neither) was ‘selected’ as candidate and is now a ‘Labour’ MP.

Also at the Campaign Company (my, aren’t the ‘coincidences just piling up?) was Ruth Bannister, who allegedly passed stolen data from the Labour-critical Inside Croydon website to Croydon Labour officials. It was not suggested that Bannister actually carried out the hack itself – to do that you’d need to have connections to someone IT-savvy! Maybe someone who runs an IT company? Like the Hensons…

As noted in Al Jazeera’s ‘The Labour Files’ documentary, the Labour Party also failed to notify Steven Downes, owner of Inside Croydon, that his email account had been hacked.

Even Aaron Bastani of Novara Media had something to say about Anonyvoter – in March, though it has to be said that he’s been notably silent on the subject since.

Is Starmer’s ‘Labour’ just hoping it will all go away if they all just pretend it never existed, and David Evans is quietly shuffled off to the House of Lords? If they create enough ‘stories’ to bury the allegations that they have effectively interfered in the UK electoral process?

Surely they must see that this is unlikely, with an ongoing criminal investigation by the Met Police underway – unless of course they can make that ‘go away’ in much the same way that the ‘Labour’ internal investigation into the Anonyvoter system did?

While ‘Labour’ did say an investigation into abuse of members’ data in Croydon was happening, the party is still tight-lipped as to whether anyone has been suspended or punished, or indeed faced any consequences, as a result of their own findings. If there were any…

As is widely known, there are a number of ways in which systems can be abused to influence the outcome of an internal vote; some of these were detailed in the Another Angry Voice blog earlier this year.

These include the altering of members’ personal information like email addresses, so that ballot links are sent to the new email and real members never receive them – that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the massive ‘Labour’ data breach, or the fact,  admitted by the party, that ‘someone’ in Croydon had tampered with 1 in 4 members’ personal details in, now could it?

It's famously said that ‘the sun also rises’, but so, importantly, does the scum – worth remembering against the background of Evans’ probable ascension to the House of Lords.

So farewell, then, David Evans. For now…