{"id":770194,"date":"2026-09-14T08:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T08:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/770194\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T08:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T08:58:12","slug":"why-luton-council-leader-may-lose-job-after-just-four-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/770194\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Luton council leader may lose job after just four months"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet two months later, Chowdhury was one of six Labour councillors <\/a>who chose to quit the party and sit as an independent, which left the authority under no overall control for the first time in 19 years.<\/p>\n

The departed councillors included Javed Hussain, the former deputy leader, and Tom Shaw, who had been a Labour councillor in Luton for 42 years.<\/p>\n

After the resignations, the councillors said: “Our opinion is that control of the Labour group is with the Eastern region Labour Party, so we have formed a group that will concentrate on the people of Luton and give back the democracy to them.”<\/p>\n

Rob Roche, one of the six councillors, later claimed he was driven to quit the party because Simmons had been “forced out” of her role as leader.<\/p>\n

Roche said Simmons “was informed she must stand down [in March] but must do a statement resigning her post” by the regional party leadership.<\/p>\n

“Members were offered a choice of two candidates for the position of leader and imposed only one candidate for deputy leader, despite applications from several group members for both positions including councillor Javed Hussain,” he said.<\/p>\n

Hussain had been Simmons’ deputy, but was replaced when Saleem took over, becoming the ceremonial mayor instead.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Labour East said: “While the Labour Party does not comment on internal processes, we can confirm there was a National Executive Committee led process earlier this year that was conducted in line with Labour Party policies and procedures.”<\/p>\n

The group of former Labour councillors formed an Independent Alliance with Khtija Malik (who left Labour in August 2025), boosting its numbers to seven on 18 August.<\/p>\n

To add to the political musical chairs, Liberal Democrat David Franks (who was leader of the authority from 2003-07) left the party in August after 43 years and is currently a non-aligned independent. <\/p>\n

Then on 1 September, Labour lost another councillor when Saima Hussain became a non-aligned independent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yet two months later, Chowdhury was one of six Labour councillors who chose to quit the party and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-770194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}