ISLINGTON

INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS ASSOCIATION

MP engulfed in housing scandal

22nd November 2007

As New Labour MP buys her fourth property, for £570,000, husband works with discredited housing association to evict remaining tenant from street.

Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South & Finsbury and self-styled ‘affordable housing crusader' is engulfed in a housing scandal which began in late August this year when the IWCA broke the story that her High Court Judge husband had bought a former Ujima Housing Association property in Rawstorne Street, Clerkenwell, for more than £570,000.

On 8th August Emily Thornberry had written: "In my constituency, we have a stark and urgent need for more social rented housing. We have a crisis with 13,000 families on the waiting list for housing; families living in temporary or overcrowded accommodation, in desperate need of re-housing. The problem is so huge."

While many of us are now used to politicians saying one thing and then doing another, it was still incredible to discover that less than five months before writing these words about ‘her constituency' the Thornberrys had been busy in the world of property speculation, buying-up a three storey Georgian house in her own constituency which had formerly been home to housing association tenants.

But it wasn't like the Thornberrys were without a roof over their own heads. They already own a £2 million home in Islington where, with the Blairs and former council leader Margaret Hodge as neighbours they had become part of the New Labour ‘Barnsbury set'.

All this from someone who says she has been: "campaigning for several years for more affordable housing in Islington".

Thornberry claimed she and her husband were merely "providing cheap and cheerful accommodation for some young people". It then emerged that they were in fact renting the property to Barnsbury Labour councillor James Murray and Thornberry's parliamentary assistant John Greenshields!

The scandal continued to unravel when shortly after the house purchase revelation, the IWCA discovered that Thornberry's husband, His Honour Christopher Nugee, was to give evidence in a possession hearing against the last remaining housing association tenant of a neighbouring property, one that Ujima also wanted to sell on the open market.

The housing association that the Thornberry's purchased their property from and with whom they appear to have developed a relationship, have also found themselves heavily under the spotlight, with takeover by another housing association now almost certain. Supervision of Ujima by the Housing Corporation was imposed in November, senior staff have been suspended and serious financial problems uncovered.

Few will have benefited from this ongoing saga other than the Thornberrys and their cronies now resident in Rawstorne Street.

05 August 2008 07:12