We must examine the independence of local bureaucrats, and whether they can be trusted to deal with imprisonable offences
It could have been a John Grisham novel set in the Chicago of yesteryear. Apsana Begum, Britain’s first hijab-wearing MP, was acquitted last week of three counts of housing fraud in a failed prosecution by her own Tower Hamlets council.
Nobody involved in pursuing this trial seems to have found it remotely odd that the complaint was made by the brother-in-law of Begum’s ex-husband – the ex-husband himself being a councillor in a position of political oversight. The jury found Begum not guilty of all charges; in the eyes of her detractors, Begum’s true crime may have been that she was a leftwing Muslim female MP.