A LABOUR candidate admitted to helping the Tory campaign at the last election in a bid to defeat the SNP, The National can reveal.
The stunning admission was captured on footage caught by a Ring doorbell, when Labour’s Tauqeer Malik told a voter the party secretly supported the Tories in Aberdeen South in 2019.
The voter, who said he would back the Conservatives’ John Wheeler, was told that Labour deliberately fumbled their 2019 campaign when the party was led by Jeremy Corbyn so as to give the Tory bid a boost.
Malik also fondly reminisced about working with Wheeler while they were in coalition with the Tories on Aberdeen City Council. That arrangement led to the then-Scottish Labour leader suspending Malik along with other colleagues dubbed the Aberdeen Nine.
In the footage, Malik called the Conservative candidate Wheeler “my friend” but urged the voter to back him to stop the SNP winning the seat.
He said: “If you like to get rid of SNP, then please vote for me, although John is my good friend, we had a wonderful relationship when working together, I was hoping that he can win it because when we were coalition partner we had brilliant times, especially myself and Douglas Lumsden.
“But think about it because the reason is we want to get rid of SNP.”
Lumsden (above) - the Tory candidate in 2019 - came second and was later elected as a Tory MSP for the North East region.
In the video, Malik added: “When Douglas was candidate, Douglas Lumsden, in 2019 we did not bother, Labour did not bother at all, we were hoping that Douglas would make it.
“That’s why Labour had only 3000, because we did not do anything.”
The revelation will fuel SNP attacks on Labour that they are indistinguishable from the Conservatives and casts further doubt on the party’s approach to the 2019 election under Corbyn.
Keir Starmer (above) has struggled to answer questions about what his position was at the last election, in which he backed Corbyn.
He has since claimed that he did not believe the party would win in 2019 and attacked the party’s manifesto.
But Starmer caused further confusion earlier this month when he told a TV debate that he believed Corbyn would have been a better prime minister than Boris Johnson, who won a thumping majority at the last election.
Scottish Labour were approached for comment.
