Cumbria County Council bans opposition councillors from meetings

Most councils operate a Cabinet system. The councillors who are Cabinet members have long briefing meeting with council officers in private to discuss what decisions to take. Then the formal Cabinet meetings are in public. These offer a chance for the public and opposition councillors to challenge proposals, or raise points of detail, before final decisions are taken.

Some parts of these meetings are held in private when there are items of commercial sensitivity being discussed - for instance awarding contracts. The usual form here is that the press and public are excluded for these items, but that opposition councillors are able to attend.

However at Cumbria County Council, now Labour led, the Conservative opposition councillors have been excluded from an item concerning a new council headquarters.

Two Labour councillors suspended over paying subs for new members

The Northern Echo reports that two Labour councillors in Middlesbrough have been suspended after paying the subscriptions of new members. Cllr Pervaz Khan, who represents the Middlehaven Ward, and Derek Loughborough, from the North Ormesby and Brambles Farm Ward, are the councillors involved. They are now being investigated by  the Labour North Regional Office.

In a statement the pair said:

“We have no comment to make at this point as it is an internal matter for the Labour Party to investigate.”

The report adds:

"An insider from the Middlesbrough Labour group said the councillors had been working hard in their communities to recruit new members by offering to help them to pay their first annual subscription, but neither had broken any party rules." 

Unite union official chosen as Labour candidate for Deptford

With all this talk about Falkirk, what about Deptford? That is the constituency where Cllr Vicky Foxcroft has been chosen to succeed Dame Joan Ruddock as the Labour candidate. This is just one seat where the horse has already bolted. Unite, the union, has already got their candidate in place.

Cllr Foxcroft works full time for Unite. Indeed, so far as I can work out she has never had a proper job. She started out as a student union sabbatical - as "Chair" of Labour Students and a member of the National Union of Students. Her CV proceeds as follows:

June 2002 – August 2005

Research Officer. AEEU.

August 2005 – February 2009

Political Officer. Amicus the Union

February 2009 – Present 

Finance Sector Officer / Unite the Union

  Certainly her views are left wing. She opposes welfare reform - even the £26,000 limit to Housing Benefit. Indeed she opposes any spending cuts - imagining that however many billions are needed can be effortlessly raised through a Financial Transactions Tax. This opposition to cuts does not seem to apply to Lewisham Council - where she voted in favour of them. She also supported a 1.75% Council Tax rise. But why not a huge Council tax rise, secured by referendum, which would have avoided any cuts?

Labour councillor's class war attack on shadow minister

Labour is always vulnerable attacking Tory politicians for having been educated at independent schools - due to the simple point that many Labour MPs were too. Cllr Jake Morrison, a Labour councillor on Liverpool City Council, has sent a complaint to Ed Miliband about Luciana Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree and Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change, which makes such a swipe.

Cllr Morrison says:

As Leader you have made it very clear that you would like to see a more representative parliament. Here we have in Luciana, a privately educated MP from London, who has came to Liverpool and made my life unbearable. At every opportunity Luciana has undermined me, rather than supported. This is in contrast to other MPs, most supportively Maria Eagle, who even offered me a post in her constituency office working part-time, which was perfect.

Luciana Berger's arrival to this City was not a comfortable one. It was covered in questions and claims of parachuting in candidates from London. And do you know what – I still campaigned every single day during the long campaign in the Wavertree constituency.

Attacking someone for where they went to school is pretty unreasonable. However Mr Miliband is not well placed to deprecate such attacks.

Anyway, what had Miss Berger done to make Cllr Morrison's life "unbearable"? She had demanded he attend a training session with Arnie Graf, a former advisor to Barack Obama.

Labour failing the One Nation test in Barking and Dagenham

Cllr Ralph Baldwin, of Barking and Dagenham Council, says his council is aloof from those it is supposed to serve

As I sit here I read an excellent letter by a very experienced Conservative Member, Terry Justice.  An appropriate name in the circumstances.  Terry is angry and attempting to do something he never thought he would have to do in the years following the last out break of a World War, he is defending the Fundamental Rights, Freedoms and Conventions that millions gave up their lives for in defence of One Nation, a very special Nation that led by example, has been a place of sanctuary and safety as well as a defender of identity and Nationhood across the globe in the face of tyranny and expansionism.  

We were never perfect but we learned many lessons. Recently at a Council Meeting local people raised petitions to question some dubious rules being forced upon them by Barking and Dagenham, a local authority that is supposed to represent them.  

During the debate a concerned citizen asked a question of the (potentially future Leader of the Council) Deputy Leader, he asked if the Deputy Leader currently lived in the locality the petition was raised. A simple question, not complicated and without any serious consequences either way, the Deputy Leader simply froze, he had no briefing to read from, he had no prior instructions on how to cope with something as complex as a conversation, even with simple closed questions.

Matthew Barrett: Lord Heseltine's most worthwhile recommendation was the creation of more unitary authorities

By Matthew Barrett
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Lord Heseltine's recent report ("No Stone Unturned") into growth was correctly welcomed from a distance. That is to say that Lord Heseltine was given a wide remit to examine many different areas of government as he saw fit. His report wasn't merely a proxy for a Minister or Secretary of State's views. Lord Heseltine is his own man.

That being so, there was, as Andrew Lilico identified, a lot of corporatism. Lord Heseltine relies far too much on unelected representatives of the private sector (often from "trade associations") working with government bodies to produce favourable outcomes, and has too much faith in Local Enterprise Partnerships. He also recommends that civil servants should be tasked with picking how best to organise local economies. He also relies far too much on blurring the lines between private and public sector. For example, one of his 89 recommendations states that:

"At the earliest opportunity civil servants based across the country should be brigaded into Local Growth Teams, structured around clusters of LEPs, primarily tasked with joining up government and local partners in the areas of their responsibilities to facilitate, identify and realise economic opportunities."

There is also the amusingly sinister sounding Recommendation 30:

"Government departments should offer all major sectors of the economy the opportunity to form a relationship with government."

Excepting the corporatist approach of some recommendations, there are good ideas to be found - for example, on increasing private sector involvement in delivering public services (without attempting to merge the two), on getting the public sector to assess how much regulations cost the economy, and on increasing financial education in schools.

Harry Phibbs reviews The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling (Little, Brown. £20)

The moral certainty of a story with characters consisting of goodies and baddies works better in children's literature than in adult fiction. As far as JK Rowling is concerned the middle classes are the baddies. This has been clear since the first page of the first of her Harry Potter novels. Harry's uncle and aunt Mr and Mrs Dursley live at "Privet Drive" and read the Daily Mail. Their opposition to magic is typical of their mean spirited suburban bigotry. They make Harry sleep in a broom cupboard.  Well, that's Daily Mail readers for you.

After she has finished sneering at the Dursleys and using them to conflate Conservative opinions with unpleasant behaviour, Miss Rowling decides to dispatch Harry off to boarding school. All very New Labour.

Now Miss Rowling is keeping up the class war with her adult novel A Casual Vacancy. The middle class characters are prejudiced.   They are snobbish, homophobic and racist. The paradox of her crassly applying this negative stereotyping provides some unintentional humour.

Local democracy and morality

Cllr Ralph Baldwin, a Conservative councillor on Barking and Dagenham Council who had previously been in the Labour Group, says corruption undermines democracy, allowing extremists to exploit grievances

You know us Brits always shy away from dogma, from preaching, and from not being allowed to ask questions of those in religious, political, commercial and other high positions.  We do not like being told what to do when it comes to running our lives, except when it comes to a certain morality which does us all credit.  You can of course prevail on a moral course using arguments that are merely logical, and achieve your end by showing that the clear majority benefit, using true debate and reason.  

Our system at the moment is locked.  Corruption has placed all parties in a quagmire, my own experience with Labour showed that corruption was not only encouraged it was protected, nurtured along with a hatred of democracy and freedom, by the very Leadership itself.

Of course the Conservative Party has similar issues except both necessity and some courage have meant we have seen some changes enacted and to be enacted by David Cameron and the Conservative party. I am an ex-serviceman, was never an Officer, never took that road, am a science graduate, a practising Christian, and am totally devoted to democracy. 

There will always be a need for discipline in the political Parties it goes without saying, that when asked to vote we support our party on those issues that are advocated by the Membership and the Leadership.  Coalition makes this diluted and frustrating as well as bizarre occurrence due to the wide range of ideas generated by the Lib Dems who seem to go backwards instead of forwards due to their lack of understanding of the political reality as long as I have known them.

Liam Byrne wants to be Birmingham's Mayor

By Tim Montgomerie
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It hasn't been a great week for the Government but there is some good news to report. The Coalition's City Mayors initiative is really beginning to take off.

It's been leaked this evening that Liam-there-is-no-money-left-Byrne will leave the shadow cabinet if Birmingham chooses to have a directly-elected mayor. Mr Byrne will then stand to run England's second city if he can get the Labour nomination. Other possible Labour candidates include Gisela Stuart MP and former MP Sion Simon.

The likelihood of Birmingham getting a directly-elected mayor increased with the news that the current Tory leader of the council has overcome his scepticism and endorsed the idea. Writing for the Birmingham Post Cllr Mike Whitby explained his change of heart by declaring that "the Government is determined to devolve real power and access to funding to city mayors". Many city mayors referenda have failed to pass because local party machines - generally run by councillors - have often united to block a change that would reduce their powers.

Earlier this week at a reception to promote city mayors David Cameron promised to chair a six monthly cabinet where cities with mayors would meet with him. Cities minister Greg Clark explained the idea to the BBC:

"Mayors are a very good way of providing the strong, visible leadership that helps attract investment, and have enormous potential to drive a city's future prosperity. By coming together, sharing innovations and building relationships, city mayors will play an important role in ensuring their city lives up to its full potential."

Mayors and Elected Police Chiefs will be slow burn reforms but they will steadily call time on Britain's very centralised state. The most talented people won't all gravitate to the Houses of Parliament but will stay in their localities and develop diverse and locally attuned approaches to their own city's challenges. Business leaders and others who might not have been tempted with the powers available to councillors may well be tempted by the powers available to directly-elected mayors. Westminster and Whitehall will also be able to call on cities for talented executives and to learn from diverse models of policy innovation.

Video report: Michael Crick visits Liverpool as it prepares to elect a city-wide Mayor