Such was Millbank's consternation at the prospect of Paul Foot, the radical campaigning journalist, standing for election in east London that it turned to Mo Mowlam to become the Labour candidate. But the former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, who believes that her ministerial career was ended by the party's spin machine, had little hesitation in declining.

Mr Foot, nephew of the former Labour leader Michael Foot, has been nominated by the left-wing umbrella group the Socialist Alliance – which includes the Socialist Workers' Party and the Revolutionary Democratic Group – on a platform of investment in education and health, and bringing privatised services back into public ownership.

The Millbank approach to Ms Mowlam, who recently moved to Hackney with her husband, John, was made at a senior level, possibly without the local party being aware, according to sources.

However, the former MP is said to have pointed out that she had turned down New Labour's request to run against Ken Livingstone for the post of London mayor, and had no wish to re-enter full-time politics. She was embarking on a new career in broadcasting, and was also involved in drug rehabilitation work.

Ms Mowlam could have allowed herself a smile. She has always privately maintained that one of Millbank's triggers for the disinformation campaign against her was precisely because she had refused to run against Mr Livingstone.

Nowadays, the woman who was once regarded as the most popular minister in the Government has other commitments too. She is being touted as a future star presenter by the BBC, and is to host a documentary on Winston Churchill as part of a series on the 10 greatest Britons in history.

Indeed, she is understood to have been approached by Sian Kevill, the head of the BBC's New Politics Initiatives unit, who is reviewing the corporation's political coverage. One idea under discussion is a political version of the popular Back to the Floor strand, in which senior business leaders spend time as junior staff members in their own companies.

As well as Ms Mowlam, Michael Portillo, the former Tory cabinet minister, is also being groomed as a potential BBC presenter.

Ms Mowlam's snub means that in Hackney, New Labour has turned to the current council leader, Jules Pipe, a 37-year-old who is also a journalist, with a sub-editing post on a national Sunday newspaper. His supporters say they are confident and point out that the party holds 45 out of 57 seats in the council.

However, before the local elections in May the Labour majority was a rather leaner two wards; before that it was a hung council.

Hackney has also built up an unenviable reputation as Britain's worst-run local council and a byword for inefficiency which had to be bailed out earlier this year with a £25m government grant.

The widespread and growing public antipathy to the council and the maverick voting pattern established so far in the mayoral elections may mean, local observers believe, that Mr Foot will do far better than could be expected as a candidate outside the mainstream.

Mr Foot, 64, stood as a candidate in the Clissold ward at the last local elections. He polled 497 votes, just under half of his Labour rival and 100 fewer than the Green party candidate.

If he does become the mayor of Hackney he may have to give up much of his journalistic work, which includes writing in Private Eye as well as national newspapers. The mayoral salary will be fixed by an independent panel after the election, but the Socialist Alliance commits Mr Foot to accepting no more than the average wage for the east London borough.

Directly elected mayors are said to be very much a personal initiative of Tony Blair, but so far New Labour has won only three of the contests.

Some of the losses have been in ultra-safe Labour areas. Stuart Drummond, who won Hartlepool as H'Angus the Monkey, the local football club's mascot, and Ray Mallon, the former police chief controversially suspended before running for mayor at Middlesbrough, were both independents.

Perhaps even more exotic was the victory of Chris Morgan, a Conservative, in North Tyneside.

After the highly publicised defeats, ministers were forced to deny claims that plans for elected mayors in Bradford and Birmingham had been shelved because of fears that candidates for the British National Party might do uncomfortably well.

"It is highly ironic the way the whole thing has developed, isn't it?" Mr Foot said yesterday. "It was essentially meant to create a whole load of cronies and glove puppets who Tony Blair would have been comfortable with. Instead, they have had a series of highly embarrassing results and all the signs are that these will continue.

"We are certainly not being over-confident about what we can achieve, but there is a lot of disenchantment with the way a whole range of issues have been handled by the council. We had a hundred people turn up at one of our first meetings.

"If Mo Mowlam was approached it just shows how nervous the Labour Party has become about the whole thing."

The Socialist Alliance says it has received support from a number of trade unionists, and Mark Serwotka of the PCS, the Civil Service union, may speak on behalf of Mr Foot. But most of the other unions, of course, remain affiliated to the Labour party.

Mr Foot, whose investigative journalism has won him a number of awards over the years, is a long-term resident of Hackney along with his wife, Clare, and their 16-year-old daughter. He says he will be campaigning on a mixture of local and wider political issues.

"We need to have investment in education. There is a need for two new coeducational and multi-religious schools to make up for one which was closed down," he said. "There has been a whole series of privatisations which have been disastrous and they need to be brought back into public ownership. Overall, much more needs to be done on public services here.

"I shall also be campaigning against this drive to start a war against Iraq. There are a lot of Muslims living in Hackney and there is no doubt that they are extremely angry and upset at the way Tony Blair is blindly backing Bush's line. A lot of people are very, very disillusioned with Labour."

Labour's Mr Pipe is on holiday. "One of the last ones he will have for a while because of his busy job as mayor," according to a party spokeswoman. But Jessica Crowe, the deputy leader, insisted that nothing was being taken for granted.

"Not so long ago this was a hung council, so we are certainly not being over-confident and we shall be campaigning hard", she said.

"Paul Foot put himself before the electorate in the local elections and he did not win. We don't think there will be shock result at Hackney."