A LABOUR MP who blew the whistle on vote riggers inside his constituency party is fighting a last-minute deselection battle in the face of a “vendetta” against him.

Roger Godsiff spoke out in the Commons shortly after Labour took first place in elections to Birmingham City Council through the alleged fraudulent use of postal votes.

The Labour Party has taken the unusual step of calling a membership ballot in Mr Godsiff’s constituency so late that, if he is rejected, local members will have no time to choose a replacement and the national party will select a candidate.

The same eleventh-hour procedure is being imposed on Khalid Mahmood, another controversial Birmingham MP, who upset local Muslims by failing to oppose the war in Iraq.

Mr Godsiff’s supporters say that he has endured a campaign by activists determined to replace him after he gave a description to Parliament about alleged cheating in his area.

The ballot to reconfirm Mr Godsiff as candidate takes place on Sunday. A day later a judge will announce whether to overthrow the election of six Labour councillors in the city and ban them from public life for five years. Three are from Bordesley Green in Mr Godsiff’s heavily Muslim Sparkbrook & Small Heath constituency. All deny any knowledge of, or consent to, fraud.

Days after the June elections, Mr Godsiff named their ward in Parliament, stating that registered postal voters there had increased from 691 to 8,488 in a matter of weeks.

“During campaigning in the ward, regular phone calls were made to the police by people complaining about the pressure that they were being put under,” he said. “A postman complained to his superiors that the brother of one of the candidates had offered him £500 for his sack of postal votes.”

He urged MPs: “We must revisit the whole issue of postal votes because we have to ensure that the electoral system is fair and seen to be fair.”

Mr Godsiff is understood to have privately asked ministers to change the system in time for the general election.

The Government has defended its reforms, which give everybody the right to a postal vote, pointing to higher turnouts and saying that there is no evidence of increased fraud.

Although he is not one of the “awkward squad” of rebel Labour MPs, Mr Godsiff has opposed the Iraq war, top-up fees, foundation hospitals and some anti-terrorist legislation.

His agent, Gulbahar Khan, said: “I’m confident that Roger will be reselected. It’s a democratic system. People have a right to say no. I’m expecting some people to say no.”

Mr Mahmood will face a ballot in his Perry Barr constituency tomorrow. Party sources blamed the delays on difficulties over confirming the accuracy of membership lists in inner-city Birmingham.

• The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged party leaders to avoid election campaigning that exploits people’s fears.

  In an open letter to party leaders, Dr Rowan Williams condemned negative campaigning over issues such as terrorism, immigration and crime. Such campaigning could put other, deeper interests at risk. “Because there are things that really should make us tremble — rootlessness and alienation among some of our urban youth, the degradation of the environment, the downward spin into chaos and violence of large parts of the poorer world. And these simply don’t lend themselves to defensive and short-term solutions.”

  BATTLEGROUND

  Birmingham Sparkbrook & Small Heath

  MP: Roger Godsiff, since 1992 Majority: 16,246 over Liberal Democrats

  Constituency profile: Huge Asian population, many from Kashmir

  MP profile: antiwar, occasional rebel

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