Hemming goes for the nuclear option

Round three kicked off yesterday when Ayoub Khan lodged 200 postal vote application forms and 150 voter registration forms with the council elections office 15 minutes before the deadline for registration expired. That led Labour's Sir Albert Bore to demand a police investigation into the provenance of such a large batch of forms being delivered so close to the cut off point.
Not that Khan has done anything illegal, you understand, but these things have to be checked out.
How, though, did Bore know about this?
It transpires that a lady in the elections office mistakenly telephoned Labour's West Midlands regional office in West Bromwich when she meant to contact the Liberal Democrat office in the Council House. She ended up checking the state of Khan's application forms with Keith Hanson, Labour's Birmingham organiser, who promptly alerted Sir Albert, who equally promptly alerted The Birmingham Post.
The lady in question has been "reprimanded" by her bosses for making an honest mistake.
But that didn't stop John Hemming, Lib Dem MP for Yardley, the brains behind the 2004 Aston petition, from accusing the council elections office of presiding over "pro-Labour bias" in polling stations and doing everything possible to help Labour at the expense of the other political parties.
Hemming has for the first time brought to public attention a matter that has been eating away at the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition since it took control of the council in June 2004. The new leadership was horrified at what it saw as open Labour sympathies among many high-ranking council officials, although this is perhaps not surprising since Labour had run Birmingham for 21 years - a period in which individuals with a left-leaning outlook would have felt perfectly at home as council employees.
Hemming is taking matters much further, however, by suggesting that the mini-army of council officials engaged to run polling stations is dominated by activists who openly flout election law by persuading people to vote Labour.
Allegations which, if they can be backed by evidence, ought to be brought to the attention of West Midlands Police. Perhaps both Hemming and Bore could be summoned to help with inquiries.