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The Throston Question
Before the May 2008 local elections the Throston Ward had three Labour Councillors: Peter Jackson, Steve Wallace and Harry Clouth. It was Harry Clouth's seat that was up for election but Harry had decided to retire due to ill health. So there would be a new labour candidate, Hayley Yull. Standing against Ms Yull would be just one other candidate, Christopher McKenna, representing the Conservative Party.
In a straight choice, Labour or Conservative, it was the Conservative candidate, Chris McKenna, who won the seat by 713 votes to 581, Throston voters had made it clear that they did not want a Labour councillor or a labour council - they wanted change.
It must have come as a surprise to the newly elected Cllr McKenna to learn that his first task as councillor was to support the party of the candidate that he had just defeated and help prolong Labour's dominance of Council Committees. That support meant giving Labour 75% of the available positions of Committee Chairmen even though Labour now had only 49% of council seats and 32% of the popular vote.
He would not have been quite as surprised as the people who voted for him though who, having made the decision to support a Conservative candidate in a traditionally Labour ward, now find they may as well not bothered.
The question Cllr McKenna and his Conservative colleagues must ask is: if he now asked all 713 of the people who had voted for him whether or not he should help maintain labour's dominance of the committees - what would they say?
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A Case of What You Vote For . . .
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| Arthur Preece | Bob Flintoff | Caroline Barker | Chris McKenna | Reuben Atkinson | Edna Wright |
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| Bob Young | Frances London | George Morris | John Coward | Pauline Laffey |
. . . Isn't Always What You Get
When each of the above Councillors last stood for election they all had a labour opponent. It was easy for voters to vote labour if that's who they wanted to support. But in every case, the majority of voters chose not to vote for the labour candidate but to vote Lib Dem or Conservative. We can assume, therefore, that those same voters did not want either a labour Councillor or a labour dominated Council; if they had they could have simply voted labour.
In the recent local elections, labour lost a seat and hence its single seat majority of councillors. Some 6,054 people voted Labour. More than twice as many, 13,094, voted for someone else. This equates to 64.8%, nearly two-thirds, of voters.
That figure is significant because, although labour lost its majority by losing only one seat, the scale of the 64.8% anti-labour vote gives the loss of that majority full backing. It was a clear indication that people didn't want the previous labour domination of the Council to continue - they wanted something else; they wanted a change.
The loss of that slim majority also meant that, for the first time in a number of years, the Lib Dems, Independents, Conservatives and UKIP could now out-number labour in the allocation of the 17 available positions of Chair and Vice-Chair of the Council and Chairs of the various committees - and why wouldn't they. Labour had after all, previously used its slender majority to usurp nearly all of these positions for itself in a way totally disproportionate to either the number of seats it held or to its share of the vote.
Following the local elections, if the allocation of the Chairs of Committees was based fairly and in proportion to the number of seats held the distribution of posts would be as follows:
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Labour |
Independents |
Lib Dems |
Conservatives |
UKIP |
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Appointments by Fair % |
8 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
The Admin Group, which consists of a loose alliance of 8 Independent Councillors and 2 UKIP, suggested an allocation which was slightly more generous to the Labour and Conservative groups relative to the number of seats that they held. It was particularly generous to the Lib-Dems as it included the position of Chair of the Council. The Admin Group recognised that, now that labour no longer held a majority of council seats. it was particularly important that the position of Chair of the Council was held by someone who was not a labour councillor.
The Admin Group Suggestion
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Labour |
Independents |
Lib Dems |
Conservatives |
UKIP |
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No. of Seats |
23 |
11 |
6 |
5 |
2 |
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Appointments by Fair % |
8.3 |
4.0 |
2.2 |
1.8 |
0.7 |
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Suggested by Admin Group |
9 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
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Actual Appointments |
12 |
0 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
The Labour Group adopted what could best be described as ‘the Mugabe Approach’ and simply announced that they wanted 12 of the available 17 positions and refused even to discuss the suggestion put forward by the Admin Group. Labour offered the same number of Chairs to both the Conservative and Lib Dem groups but refused to concede the Chair of the Council. With a minority of Councillors and only 32% of the vote, there could be no moral justification for Labour to claim 70% of the positions available. In fact, from the Lib Dem point of view, the chance of gaining the Chair of the Council position would suggest that the Admin Group’s suggestion was a far better deal.
At this point, the issue should have been left in abeyance with the polite suggestion that Labour recessed for a cup of tea and a reality check - but no - that's not what happened. Instead the Lib Dems and Tories simply melted and decided to go along with Labour's own tit-bit offer. They would settle for 3 Chairs for the Lib-Dems and 2 Chairs for the Tories in return for perpetuating Labour's dominance.
Quite why the Lib-Dems agreed to this is anyone's guess. That they should turn down such a gift suggests either an alarming degree of stupidity or an inappropriate fear of any real influence.
What is certain is that the action of the Lib-Dems and Conservatives has been a betrayal of the very people who voted for them. It has ensured that a party with only 31% of voter's support will continue to dominate the Council - exactly what the people who voted for them didn't want.
Steve Latimer