And here we are, in the Conservative Group Room at City Hall (yes, there is one) debating the big issues of the day, with fois gras, plastic bags and webcasting council meetings all on the agenda.
Although I’m afriad that the public don’t seem to share the importance of tonight’s full council agenda. When I told my colleagues at work, they just laughed and said that my attendance tonight was an indication of how tragic my life has become.
I then shared it with another friend whom I met in the City, who just responded with a sign and asked why we couldn’t talk about something important – like fixing the pavement outside of her house.
Do the public share the priorities of their council? Hardly, but let’s hope the agenda gets a little more relevant in future.
I am thrilled to be informed that my good friend and council colleague Cllr Rupert Read now has a . Regular readers will note how much I respect Rupert and find his contributions to the council fascinating.
I, however, do not fear his challenge to my domination of the Norwich City Council blogging because it appears he is focusing more on his place as a Euro parliamentary candidate and is slightly more high brow than my mix of gossip, political backbiting and general political rudeness. Rupert’s deep and meaningful philosophical entries will contrast well with my grassroots approach to campaigning. Good on you, Rupert!
When Cameron first became Tory Leader I said time and time again that polls will come and go but the trend is more important. I said that after leaving the 31-33 box, and then the 37-40 box, Cameron would have to hit 42% with a 10% lead consistently to really be in cruise control.
The Com Res poll today gives Cameron 41% and an 8% lead. We’ll have to wait to see if the other pollsters fall into line.
I have read today in the Evening News (not online) that the first district councillor has quit over the possible unitary future for the county. One of the Conservatives on Great Yarmouth District Council says that the whole issue has been a Labour stitch-up and Unitary would be a disaster.
Now I’m not quite sure how resigning helps this situation but I do feel, cynic that I am, that somewhere in a Westminster bunker some Labour strategist is smuggly grinning to himself because this unitary move might be seen as a way of destroying the strong Conservative activist base in Norfolk. One down, how many more to go? Why, by quitting, are we allowing Labour to get away with this? We as a party must stick together and fight this all the way.
Poor LibDem candidate April Pond must be fuming, with all this negative publicity blowing her NHS Survey out of the water. All that money and glossy paper wasted on a survey nobody will bother looking at. Mind you, no LibDem survey is ever really taken seriously!
Anyway, the serious point is this. The survey has the phrase “SOS for the NHS” emblazened across the top. I find this a serious miscalculation. The parties may disagree on health policies but this headline suggests that the NHS is in imminent danger of collapse. How many people will be scared by this ridiculous over exaggeration? If I were an elderly person or somebody totally dependent on the NHS it would concern me. All parties have the right to have their say on the health service but shouldn’t we ought to campaign responsibly and with the impact on local people at the forefront of our minds? This headline is just irresponsible from Mrs Pond and serves as a good reason why she isn’t fit to be one of our Norfolk MPs.
And besides which, should she be worrying about breathing life back into her own party rather than scaremongering over the NHS? SOS for the LibDems would be a more accurate headline…
Sir Ming Campbell wasn’t up to the job and wasn’t right as LibDem Leader. I blogged throughout the last LibDem leadership contest that the LibDems would put off the difficult SDP versus Orange Bookers decision and lance the boil of the right-left discourse in the party and elect somebody who can chart the middle course, avoid making decisions and won’t rock the boat. And true to form they elected Sir Ming who was totally incapable of leadership but didn’t upset anybody and would hold together the wings of the party.
Now the LibDems still have to make that choice – do they chase Tory votes with a right-leaning Orange Booker like Clegg or do they challenge for Labour votes with an SDP left leaner like Webb? They will have to decide because their party will remain an unelectable political hyrbid until they do.
They could have made this decision 19 months ago. But being wet LibDems they didn’t, put off the decision and landed themselves with a leader who lost them hundreds of council seats and plunged them to 11% in the polls.
I hope all those who voted and supported Sir Ming are happy with what they’ve done to their party. They were warned about this and they ignored it. However, once they get over this leadership crisis, the LibDems have a chance to rebuild their party. For what it’s worth – as a Tory – I don’t think it’ll be in time to save them come the next election.
My mole in the bowels of City Hall whispers to me that Labour have some dirt on the Greens so good that they are saving it up for election time … I wonder what it can be!
It would be churlish of me to bring on about the splits in the Norwich LibDems any longer, so I thought I’d turn my attention to their junior colleagues in the UEA LibDems.
I have posted below about the anger of one former committee member whose image was used on a leaflet to support their local PPC after he had quit the party in disgust. Now its the committee members themselves who have turned on one another.
At UEA SocMart (the one where the UEA Tories maintained their place as the largest party on campus and the LibDems failed to attract more than a handful of members) their Treasurer saw fit to hand out leaflets attacking “anti-student” councillor Bert Bremner, who just happens to represent University Ward. Labour reacted angrily to the charges against good ol’ Bert and complained very loudly. So loudly, in fact, that the UEA LibDem Chairman wrote a letter to the student newspaper Conceret, apologising for the act of his Treasurer and saying it had nothing to do with the LibDems.
Now the Chairman has stabbed the Treasurer in the back (the letter was written without his knowledge) the whole committee is falling in on itself.
Success breeds loyalty in any political party (just look at the Blairite big tent and currently Cameron’s Conservatives) and it seems like the political decline in the LibDems has created divisions … both locally and nationally.
So what will the Treasurer do now? In political life, if your leader publicly disowns you in the press for part of your political strategy you have to ask if you can remain in their team.
If you are the Chairman and the Treasurer does this behind your back, you have to ask if you can keep them on your team.
Either way, their very public spat this week – which included a big article on page 2 of Concrete as well as contradictory letters published next to each other – damages politics as much as themselves.
No wonder the two major parties on campus see the LibDems as so irrelevant and without support that they plan to have this years big political debate without them.
When David Cameron used the example of a student too hungover to attend his exams on time in his conference speech, it was obvious that Labour would head straight out to find the boy, the school and to dig any dirt they could.
Sure enough, within a few days one of the school govenors had a splash in the Mail saying that Cameron must have been making it up because she, as a governow, would have known about a pupil who had trashed a classroom and attacked a teacher. Cameron, she claimed, lied.
This leads me to conclude one of two things.
Either she fundamentally misunderstands the role of the governor within schools. The school governors at my school understand the strategic direction and high level management but don’t get bogged down in day-to-day life and behavioural disputes, short of those which come to govenors review committee. Why would she know about this incident just because she’s a governor? There is, however, a more likely explanation.
The govenor was just anti-Tory and was out for a hit on Cameron. Maybe put up by Labour, maybe not. But she certainly enjoyed her moment of attack even including a photo in the article. This was no behind the scenes briefing, it was a full frontal assult on the character of the Tory leader desperately hoping to knock him off course.
Now the Sunday Mail has CCTV evidence – including sound – that the conversation did take place and even includes quotes from the lad himself.
Will this governor aplogise? Don’t hold your breath – a political attack required the standard political response (running away and hiding).
Will this governor be sanctioned by her governing body? Of course not, but then as the Sunday Mail saw fit not to humiliate this political pundit gone wrong, why should the school she claims to serve?
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Posted by antonylittle 
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Posted by antonylittle 
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Posted by antonylittle 