Claire Kober will not seek re-election as Haringey council leader amid row over housing project

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Labour leader of Haringey council is to stand down citing “sexism and bullying” she has suffered during a long-running party feud over redevelopment plans for the borough.



Claire Kober has revealed she will not seek re-election because of a bitter row over a controversial £2bn housing project known as the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV).

Announcing on Twitter that she will step down in May she took a thinly veiled swipe at the pro-Corbyn campaign group, Momentum, whose members have been active in selection battles for the forthcoming council elections.

In a letter to her colleagues she paid tribute to an “outstanding team of councillors” before adding: “I am only sorry that many have been denied the opportunity to stand once again.”

The news followed a bitter dispute over how to tackle Haringey’s housing crisis, which has left the party divided.

A proposed joint venture between the local authority and private construction companies would have meant the creation of 6,400 new homes in the north London borough.

But the plans, which would have seen council assets and land sold off in a joint partnership with a private developer, came under criticism from the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and left-leaning party members.

Last week the party’s ruling body took the unusual step of ordering the council to call a halt the scheme.

While Kober and her supporters claimed the proposals were the only way to tackle Haringey’s housing shortage, critics claimed it overlooked targets on social housing and failed to provide assurances for those whose homes would be bulldozed to make way for developers.

The council’s own scrutiny committee published two reports calling for an immediate halt to the proposals.

Some who opposed the housing project have described it as “social cleansing”, while Kober, who has led the council since 2008, hit back at what she described as “ideological dogmas” and complained of underhand tactics.

She told the London Evening Standard: “The sexism, bullying, undemocratic behaviour and outright personal attacks on me as the most senior woman in Labour local government have left me disappointed and disillusioned.”

Kober said she believed that only practical solutions in partnership with other sectors offered a realistic chance of improving the housing shortage.

In an open resignation letter she wrote: “For too many years in Haringey, there simply wasn’t enough focus on providing better quality safe and secure housing for residents.

“These are not easy things to deliver and rarely come without controversy. Political issues are rarely binary; solutions are not simply good or bad.”

Labour former frontbencher Harriet Harman voiced her disappointment at the news. She told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One: “I just cannot speak too highly of Claire. I’m really disappointed that she is standing down.

“All that she says about the difficulty about being a woman in leadership I’m sure is absolutely true and is a challenge to all of us in the party, the Labour party, which is a party of women and equality after all.”

She added: “It’s a challenge for all of us. Yes, of course it’s a bigger responsibility on the leader, but actually it’s the Labour party that’s always strived to sort this out.

“The Labour party is going to have to publish its pay gap along with other political parties, and that is a good thing.”

Harman said she had “underestimated” Corbyn in the past, and he was “improving” the way he deals with the party’s MPs.

The Conservative party chairman, Brandon Lewis, said: “From Labour headquarters to Haringey council, Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-left supporters continue their takeover of the Labour party.

“And whether it’s calling for huge council tax hikes, supporting bin strikes or blocking local housebuilding, it’s working people who’ll pay the price.”