Managing the Needs of Drunk and Incapable People in Scotland
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inlogovINSTITUTE OF LOCALGOVERNMENT STUDIES
Hanging in there: What happened to the NOC councils after May 2014?
INLOGOV Briefing Paper - June 2014Chris Game, Honorary Senior Lecturer
Front cover image, copyright Wikipedia user Nilfanion
Image used under Creative Commons licensing
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Elections are a big deal: we’re entitled to results and outcomes, quickly
As we saw in 2010, even our wildly disproportional ‘First-Past-The-Post’ or plurality electoral
system doesn’t always achieve its principal objective of conjuring legislature majorities out of
minority votes. During those famous ‘Five Days in May’ we had stacks of election results, but,
until the Downing Street Rose Garden, no election outcome.
In our local elections it happens every year. For usually between a fifth and a third of all councils
– ‘hung councils’ as they tend to be labelled in the local government world – the ‘results’ of their
elections are reported as NOC (No Overall Control) and, as far as the reporters are concerned,
that’s how they stay, in perpetuity.
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Some of the national media produce results maps – like that on the cover of this Briefing Paper
– that leave NOC councils as literal black holes. Others, like the BBC, use tables of councils and
seats won and lost by the various parties: Labour 82 (6 net gains), Conservatives 41 (11 net
losses), Liberal Democrats 6 (2 net losses)1. Then right at the bottom of the table, after UKIP,
the Greens, the BNP, Independents, and, for some reason, the council-less, member-less
Socialists, we have No Overall Control 32 (8 net gains).
It’s not an expression used in a parliamentary context – not that ‘hung parliament’ is any more
informative – and, encountered for the first time, it seems designed at least to bewilder and at
worst alarm, bringing to mind images of packs of out-of-control, newly elected councillors
roaming the streets of their towns and cities wreaking who knows what kind of havoc, for
apparently the next four years.
The misleading nature of the NOC designation is regularly pointed out – most recently by
Democratic Audit (DA), the excellent blog run by the LSE’s Public Policy Group2. As DA notes,
NOC gives no hint that a perfectly conventional ruling administration will be formed, probably
within days, but signifies only that no single party has a majority of council seats. It’s misleading
too, DA suggests, in excluding from the lists of councils gained and lost those in which a party
has the largest, but minority, share of councillors. It distorts the parties’ true performances – this
year at the expense of the Conservatives and Lib Dems, whose councils ‘won’ would increase
respectively by a third (41 to 58) and a half (6 to 9), compared to Labour’s barely 10% increase
(82 to 91).
But DA’s greater concerns are with the bigger democratic picture, and it sees the NOC label as
one of a whole catalogue of ways in which all of us – and particularly the civically disengaged
young people politicians claim to be so concerned about – are kept lamentably under-informed
about all aspects of local elections3.
And here’s the difference between national and local government. Given the amount of pre-
election scaremongering in 2010 about the dire consequences of a hung parliament – a run on
1 The figures for net gains and losses can vary slightly from one set of reported results to another, according to whether the baseline for previous control is taken as the eve of the election or an earlier date – e.g. immediately following last year’s elections. 2 http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=5602. 3 http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=3494.
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the £, sterling crisis, economic meltdown, IMF intervention, the end of civilisation – there was a
huge pressure on the leading players to come up with something that could be sold to us as at
least short- and optimistically medium-term ‘Control’. We were therefore informed of this
outcome, the Coalition Agreement, almost literally within an hour of its settlement.
In local government, all too often, we’re not told – not even the residents and electors of the
NOC councils themselves – as was highlighted this time round not just by DA, but also by Nick
Golding, editor of the Local Government Chronicle4. In the course of its local elections
coverage, LGC monitored the websites of both individual councils and local newspapers – with
not just disparate and depressing, but often downright ‘incomprehensible’, results:
“It might be considered disappointing that some newspapers buried their coverage or failed to work out how individual results could change the political complexion of an authority – although in an era in which the local press is starved of expertise and resources, perhaps this was unsurprising.
“What was incomprehensible was the failure of many authorities to highlight their polls. Many council homepages made no reference to the elections and hid elections news in obscure corners; many seemed incapable of promptly posting the results for each ward or revealing how their chamber’s political make-up was changing as a result. Others seemed to think it was the job of someone else to tweet results.”
Of all the defining characteristics of local authorities, the one that most differentiates them from
the other local bodies with whom they increasingly work, and that gives them their unique
legitimacy, authority and accountability, is surely their direct election. As Golding exhorts:
“Local elections are therefore a big deal. Councils should do everything in their power both to generate excitement about the poll and ensure people know their representatives’ identity.
Such tasks are not gimmicks – they are essential components of serving as place leaders. If councils cannot show an interest in their own elections, it is hard to see why their residents should.”
‘Everything in their power’! Even with a Friday count, the results of Thursday local elections –
overall, with party totals, gains and losses, as well as by ward – ought to be available at least by
the weekend, within a clearly signposted click from the home page of the council’s website. If
one party has an overall majority of seats and will form a one-party administration, this too
should be indicated, together with the date of the Annual Council Meeting at which this will be
4 ‘LGC view: Failure to highlight elections hampers legitimacy’, 28 May, 2014 - http://www.lgcplus.com/opinion/lgc-view-failure-to-highlight-elections-hampers-legitimacy/5071293.article.
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formally confirmed. In the case of the NOC councils considered here, there should be at least
some brief explanation of the implications of no one party having a majority, and again an
indication of when the prevailing uncertainty will be resolved.
As ever with local government, some authorities are exemplary. One such was West
Lancashire BC, with its only two parties having exactly the same number of seats [why on
earth doesn’t the Boundary Commission require councils, as in many other countries, to have
odd numbers of seats?], and a three-week hiatus until its AGM. It produced, within days, a
model holding statement of the “next step for the Borough’s political management structure”,
explaining that the incumbent Conservative Mayor would have the casting vote at the Annual
Meeting, and that therefore the new Mayor would probably be another Conservative, who in turn
would have a casting vote in the determination of the Council Leader of a likely Conservative
minority administration.
It was informative without, as far as I could see, compromising even the most fastidious officer’s
political neutrality. It was also, though, at the ‘helpful’ end of a really rather a long scale – at the
other end of which were the councils who took up to a fortnight even to post their election
results and the many more who provided no information at all about even the date by which the
details of a new administration would be announced.
Of course, without these laggards, there would be no need for this Briefing Paper, whose more
or less sole purpose is to provide in a single place a record of the eventual outcomes of the
elections in this year’s 32 hung or NOC councils, and of how, in some of the more noteworthy
cases, these outcomes emerged. Which would be fine by me: it’s a mostly interesting and
sometimes amusing exercise, in some ways frustrating – not least because I know some of its
details will have changed before it even appears – but it’s one that local government would be
much the better for rendering redundant.
Are NOC councils increasing, and, if so, are we relaxed about it?
As shown in Table 1, the 32 NOC councils represented a net increase of 8. It took the number
of NOC councils in England to 70 and in Great Britain to 102 or 25% of the total, and followed a
similar increase in last year’s county council elections. Part of the explanation, of course, is
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UKIP. Its 331 councillors on English principal councils5 may still be less than a sixth of the
Liberal Democrats’ representation, but in both years its handfuls of seats have proved sufficient
to deprive all three bigger parties of overall control in one or more councils.
Even the 2012 total of 79 NOC/hung councils, though, represented one in every five. So I was
slightly taken aback by the LGC headline: One-party states ‘more worrying than no overall
control’, which made NOC sound like some local government vogue moderne that needed
explaining and defending, even at the cost of alienating those from beyond-the-pale ‘one-party
states’6. I was more surprised still that the Executive Director of the LGA, Michael Coughlin,
and the Chair of its Improvement and Innovation Board, Cllr Peter Fleming, should feel it
necessary to reassure LGC readers that they were “relaxed” about this latest NOC rise.
“Actually”, soothed Cllr Fleming, but sounding as if he meant ‘amazingly’, “there are some
places where it [NOC] has worked for a very long time”, adding that “NOC is not a new
phenomenon”.
Well, you’re certainly right there, Councillor. In fact, I recall some INLOGOV colleagues saying
the selfsame thing barely a quarter of a century ago7. In fairness, though, it’s quite likely no
reminder is needed. The LGA duo’s words did seem ill-chosen, but no doubt the explanation is
that they had Association goodies to promote, both to NOC authorities and more generally8.
Anyway, this is not the place for a NOC vs one-party states debate, with or without evidence. All
I propose doing is to add some statistics to Cllr Fleming’s ‘not a new phenomenon’ point.
5 House of Commons Library, ‘Local elections 2014’, Research Paper 14/33 (June 2014), p.8 - http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/RP14-33/local-elections-2014. 6 David Paine, ‘One-party states “more worrying than no overall control’, lgcplus, 9 June, 2014 - http://www.lgcplus.com/5071725.article. 7 Steve Leach and Chris Game, Conflict and Cooperative Politics in the Hung Counties, Common Voice, 1989; Steve Leach and John Stewart, The Politics of Hung Authorities (Macmillan, 1992) 8 See LGA, No overall control: Learning further lessons from councils without a majority administration (March 2014) - http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/5854661/No+overall+control/0d2fa381-187e-4dac-9d2f-7848d5b501ae; http://www.local.gov.uk/sector-led-improvement.
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Figure 1 plots the huge fluctuations we’ve seen since the reorganisation of local government in
the overall control of our councils – and also shows, incidentally, why there are today rather
fewer of those ‘forever one-party states’ than there were before the depths plumbed respectively
by the Conservatives in the 1990s and Labour in the 2000s. For present purposes, it shows
how, throughout that whole period, roughly one in every three GB councils was under NOC. In
fact, the last little peak in the NOC line is accounted for mainly by the 2007 change in Scotland’s
local electoral system from First-Past-The-Post to the more proportional Single Transferable
Vote (STV), which immediately increased the number of Scottish NOC councils from 6 to 27.
And the modest scale of the peak results from the Conservatives in those same 2007 elections
gaining majority control of no fewer than 36 previously NOC councils – the total of which in
England alone had numbered 124.
These figures provide a context for the last two years’ rise in English NOC councils about which
we’re encouraged – and can obviously afford – to be relaxed, since it has taken the number
from 48 to what by recent standards is still a not terribly worrisome 70. The almost complete
explanation of the previous precipitate drop in GB NOC councils from over 30% in 2009 to 20%
in 2012 can be detected in Figure 1, but is seen much more clearly in Figure 2: the collapse of
the Lib Dems in the even more brutal terms not of councils controlled but of councillor numbers.
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The now broken NOC line can be seen to follow closely the fortunes of the Lib Dems, the only
significant divergence coming in the past couple of years as their continued decline has been
accompanied by the rise of UKIP and the upturn again in the number of NOC councils.
Filling the black holes: the election outcomes in the 32 NOC councils
It was noted above (p.2) that one of Democratic Audit’s objections to the NOC designation was
that it excluded NOC authorities from the lists of councils gained and lost by the various parties
and thereby distorted the reporting of their true electoral performance. To attempt at least
partially to correct this distortion DA produced a running breakdown of NOC councils’ results as
they were announced, showing which and how many had been ‘won’ by each party9.
In some instances, particularly where one party has significantly more seats than all the others,
it does provide a kind of answer as to who ‘won’ the election. But, as DA itself readily
acknowledges, even with this information local residents are left with no definitive clue about
which party or combination of parties will eventually ‘run’ the council, or whether they will do it
through a minority, coalition, or less formal partnership administration. Certainly Portsmouth 9 See link from http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=5602.
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residents, to pick just one example, would have had no clue that the Conservatives, with just 12
councillors out of 42, and seven fewer than the ousted Lib Dems, would end up running the
council as a single-party minority administration, with the support of Labour and UKIP.
Single-party minorities are undoubtedly the current NOC administration of choice, outnumbering
by more than 2 to 1 two- or multi-party coalitions – the cause of the latter possibly having
suffered from events at Westminster – the Palace thereof, not the council. However, several
new and – how to put this – interesting-looking coalitions have been negotiated over the past
few weeks, and the impression one formed in 2010, that MPs could often learn a thing or two
from their local counterparts about managing these situations, has been generally reinforced.
What follows, then – in a kind of companion piece to my elections preview Briefing Paper10 – is
an attempt to fill in the black holes left in the map on the cover: an account of the real results of
the May 22nd local elections, mainly – to save on an index – following the order in which councils
are listed in the accompanying table.
10 The 2014 Local Elections- a preview - http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-social-sciences/government-society/inlogov/briefing-papers/2014/2014-local-elections.pdf.
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NOC councils following the May 2014 elections – results and outcomes
Before and after elections
Post-election/most recent seats Outcome (NC = No change)
C L LD UKIP G Indep/ Other
LONDON BOROUGHS (2) – whole council elections
Havering NOC – NOC 22 1 - 7 - 19 Res’ Gp + 5 + 1 NC – Con minority
Tower Hamlets (Mayor) (Lab – NOC) 4 20 - - - 18 T H First + 3 vacs.
NC – Mayor Lutfur Rahman (Tower Hamlets First) re-elected
METROPOLITAN BOROUGHS (4) – one-third of council elected
Calderdale NOC – NOC 19 25 6 - - 1 NC – Lab minority Kirklees NOC – NOC 18 32 11 - 5 3 NC – Lab minority Stockport NOC – NOC 10 22 28 - - 3 NC – Lib Dem minority Walsall NOC – NOC 21 29 3 3 - 2 + 1 + vac NC – Con/LD coalition
UNITARY AUTHORITIES (7) – one-third of council elected, exc. Milton Keynes
Bristol (Mayor) (NOC--NOC) 15 31 16 1 6 1 NC – Mayor not up for election Milton Keynes (all-out) NOC – NOC 18 25 13 1 - - Lab minority replaces Con minority N E Lincolnshire Lab – NOC 10 21 3 8 - - Lab majority cut to technical minority Peterborough Con – NOC 28 12 4 3 - 7 + 3 Con minority replaces majority
Portsmouth LD – NOC 12 4 19 6 - 1 Con ultra-minority, with Lab & UKIP backing, replaces LDs
Southend-on-Sea Con – NOC 19 9 5 5 - 12 + 1 Ind/Lab/LD coalition replaces Cons Thurrock Lab – NOC 18 23 - 6 - 2 Lab minority replaces majority
NON-METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS (19) – one-third of council elected, exc. Hart
Basildon Con – NOC 17 10 1 12 - 2 Con minority (or Con/UKIP coalition?) replaces Con majority
Basingstoke & Deane NOC – NOC 29 17 8 2 - 4 NC - Con minority
Brentwood Con – NOC 18 3 11 - - 4 B’wood First + 1
Brentwood Accord (LD/Brentwood First/Lab/Ind) replaces Con majority
Castle Point Con – NOC 20 - - 5 - 16 Canvey Island Inds Con minority replaces majority
Colchester NOC – NOC 23 8 24 - - 4 + vac. NC – LD/Lab/Indep coalition Gloucester NOC – NOC 18 9 9 - - - NC – Con minority Great Yarmouth Lab – NOC 14 15 - 10 - - Lab minority replaces majority
Hart (all-out) NOC – NOC 14 - 9 - - 9 CC Hart + 1
Con/LD/CCH coalition replaces Con minority
Maidstone Con – NOC 24 2 19 4 - 5 + vac. Con minority replaces majority Mole Valley NOC – NOC 19 - 15 1 - 6 NC – Indep-led Con/Indep coalition Pendle NOC – NOC 19 18 11 - - 1 (BNP) NC – Con/LD ‘shared executive’ Purbeck Con – NOC 12 - 11 - - 1 Con minority replaces majority St Albans NOC – NOC 29 10 17 - 1 1 NC – Con minority Stroud NOC – NOC 21 20 3 - 6 1 NC – Lab/Green/LD alliance
West Lancashire Con – NOC 27 27 - - - - Con minority replaces majority; c’ttee decisions to rest on Chair’s casting vote
Weymouth & Portland NOC – NOC 11 15 7 1 - 2 Lab-led all-party administration replaces Con-led one
Winchester NOC – NOC 28 3 25 - - 1 NC – Con minority
Worcester NOC – NOC 17 15 1 - 1 1 Con minority replaces Lab/LD/Green coalition; ex-Lab Indep is Mayor
Wyre Forest NOC – NOC 15 9 - 5 - 7 + 4 + 2 NC – Con minority
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London boroughs
The headlines of the all-out London borough elections were that Labour increased its
domination to 20 of the 32 boroughs, winning Croydon and Hammersmith & Fulham from the
Conservatives, Redbridge – for the first time – from a Conservative/Lib Dem partnership
administration, and Merton, where it had previously had minority control. The Conservatives
took Kingston upon Thames from the Lib Dems, and now control nine boroughs, leaving the Lib
Dems with just Sutton. Two boroughs were left under NOC: Havering and, if you include
mayoral authorities, Tower Hamlets.
In Havering the Conservatives actually surrendered their nearly two terms of overall control a
month before the elections, when the incumbent Mayor and former council leader, Eric Munday,
and two former mayors crossed the floor and joined UKIP, in what was the second batch of
three such defections in well under a year. Munday in particular harboured numerous
grievances – immigration, NHS underfunding, shortage of schools and housing, immigration,
Cameron’s policy on Syria, his party’s whipping system – plus, no doubt, his own de-selection
(or non-selection) by his allegedly ‘Orwellian’ constituency association, with interference
(denied) by Romford MP Andrew Rosindell.
The borough’s political arithmetic has always been complicated and today, with both a large, 19-
member Residents’ Group (RG) and a separate, and warring, 5-member Independent
Residents’ Group having gained seats, it is even more so – though Labour, comfortably the
largest party as recently as 2002, has somewhat simplified things by downsizing to a group of
one. There was talk before the elections of UKIP making great advances, and afterwards of the
Conservatives and the RG reprising the partnership they had for a time in the 1980s. But neither
eventuality materialised – UKIP failing to add to its seven councillors, and the RG opting to back
a Conservative minority administration, rather than join it.
Tower Hamlets continues electorally to be an exception to almost everything. Its final local
results were declared just the 119 hours after the polls closed and were accompanied by
numerous allegations of malpractice and intimidation. At present, with one ward left vacant
following the death of a candidate, Labour slightly outnumbers Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Tower
Hamlets First party, but THF members will continue to hold all portfolios in the Mayor’s cabinet.
The Mayor himself was comfortably re-elected with a 3,250 majority over Labour’s John Biggs
on the second count, and on a nearly 46% turnout – over 6% higher than in any of the other four
mayoral contests. Again the declaration was immediately followed by allegations of unlawful or
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corrupt practice, and at the time of writing a High Court petition has been filed, naming both the
Mayor and the returning officer and seeking to have the election declared void.
Metropolitan boroughs
Labour went into these elections controlling 29 of the 32 metropolitan boroughs, and came out
controlling 30 – the latest addition being Bradford. As anticipated, particularly since last
October’s resignation of the five Galloway-following Respect members to sit as one of three
groups of Independents (did you hear that, Havering?), Labour regained an overall majority for
the first time since 2000, though only by the narrow margin of a 56-vote majority over the Lib
Dems in Bradford Moor.
The Bradford result reduced West Yorkshire’s long-term NOC trio to just Kirklees and
Calderdale. Arithmetically, Kirklees is the more resolutely hung of the two, and confirmed as
much this time, with not a single seat changing hands, including the five held by the Lib Dems.
Calderdale, though, was a very different story. Labour, in a kind of payback for its narrow
victory in Bradford, failed by just 17 Luddendenfoot votes to win its first overall majority this
century. Labour and the Conservatives gained four and two seats respectively, largely at the
expense of the Lib Dems, who lost five of the six they were attempting to defend. Labour
therefore stays in minority control, but in a stronger numerical position than earlier this year,
when it was forced to amend its budget following a lost vote to a Lib Dem-coordinated
opposition.
Moving across to Greater Manchester, in 2010, when Nick Clegg led his party into a national
coalition, the Lib Dems held 33 of Manchester City Council’s 96 seats. Today, following three
disastrous rounds of local elections, they have lost the lot – this time, all nine that they were
defending. In Tameside, for the third year running, the party failed to field a single candidate.
Local politics, however, are what it says on the tin – local – and in neighbouring Stockport the
Lib Dems remained comfortably the largest party, escaped with just one net loss, and even saw
their former leader, Dave Goddard, regain a seat in the Offerton ward in which he had lost in
2012 – albeit aided by the incumbent Lib Dem-turned-Tory member standing down. They will
continue, therefore, in minority control, but arithmetically slightly weakened. No longer can their
informal voting pact with the Heald Green Independent Ratepayers defeat the full joint forces of
Labour and the Conservatives, although the chances are the situation won’t arise.
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If, as an academic, you succumb to invitations to share with the media your supposed insights
into local politics, you obviously deserve whatever credit or embarrassment result from your
presumption. For me, this year’s (principal) mortification was Walsall.
Walsall was a Labour-dominated council right up to the turn of the century, but since then has
been predominantly Conservative. In recent years Labour has been close to regaining an
overall majority and in 2012 became the largest party, although in opposition to the
Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. This time it was one of Ed Miliband’s ‘must win’ authorities, and
I too thought that, particularly with the increased impact of UKIP (who have been fielding
candidates in Walsall for 14 years now), Labour would probably make it over the line. Rashly, I
suggested (not predicted!) as much in my pre-elections Briefing Paper (p.9).
That was Mistake No.1. The Conservatives (3) and Lib Dems (2) both lost seats and Labour
gained 2. But UKIP gained 3, leaving Labour with 30 of the council’s 60 seats. In the
circumstances, though, the Labour deputy leader, Sean Coughlan, felt confident enough to
announce on election night that “It puts us in a position where we can form an administration”.
Sadly, though, the reason it was he making the announcement was that the pancreatic cancer
with which the group leader, Tim Oliver, had long suffered was even more advanced than many
realised, and on the Saturday following the elections he died. He was a popular local figure and
a genuinely respected politician, and his death inevitably cast a long shadow over ensuing
events.
The basic arithmetic had obviously changed, and Conservative leader Mike Bird has a deserved
reputation as a persuasive negotiator, but the motley nature of the minority groups – 3 Lib
Dems, 3 UKIP, 2 Independents, 1 ex-Labour and ex-Democratic Labour – made it seem unlikely
that even he could get every one of them singing from the same proverbial hymn sheet.
Mistake No.2. At the AGM Pete Smith, the last-mentioned in the above list, was elected Mayor,
and Labour’s 29 votes for its motion to replace Mike Bird with Sean Coughlan as Leader of the
Council were matched by 29 against, so it failed. The Conservative/Lib Dem coalition and the
6/1composition of the cabinet remain intact and in control, although for how long, with a July by-
election pending, remains to be seen.
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Unitary authorities
In Bristol the Lib Dems are going through something of a Manchester experience but in slow
motion. In 2009 they won majority control for the first time, and on General Election day 2010
they strengthened it. Then came the fall-out, and the loss of 5 seats in 2011, 10 in 2012, and a
further 7 this year – variously to Labour (3), the Greens (2), UKIP and the Conservatives (1
apiece). Mayor George Ferguson’s 6-member cabinet, though, is more rainbow than rigorously
proportional, and, while Victor d’Hondt might squirm in his grave, the Lib Dems retain their two
seats, along with Labour, with the Conservatives and Greens having one each.
Milton Keynes is one of those quite rare authorities to have been run in the relatively recent
past by all three major parties: first Labour, then the Lib Dems, and in the last years of the ‘old’
council by a minority Conservative administration. Numbers on that outgoing council were
Conservatives 19, Labour 16, Lib Dems 15, UKIP 1. On the enlarged 57-member council
Labour achieved its best result since the 1990s, and it was quickly accepted that it would take
minority control, the new council leader, Peter Marland, appointing what he suggests is one of
the youngest cabinets in the country.
Last May UKIP won 11 seats on Lincolnshire County Council and nearly became the official
opposition. This year, in Labour-controlled N E Lincolnshire, it was again the chief mover and
shaker, taking seats from both Labour (4) and the Conservatives (1) and depriving the former of
its overall majority. With exactly half the council seats, its minority control was not seriously in
question (unlike in Walsall), and prompted probably fewer headlines than the projection that, if
UKIP achieved the same ward-by-ward results next year, it would win the Great Grimsby
parliamentary seat that longstanding Labour MP, Austin Mitchell, had recently announced he
would not be defending.
Cambridgeshire had been an even more productive UKIP hunting ground, and this year the
party made its presence felt in Peterborough, chiefly at the Conservatives’ expense. It
unseated three of their councillors, ending the overall control they had held since 2002. Their
leader for the past five years has been the entrepreneurial Marco Cereste, whose high profile
(allegedly ‘vanity’) projects – a huge new renewable energy park, a transformed city centre,
fountains in Cathedral Square, a Gigabit City – alongside cuts in more mundane services like
children’s centres have earned both positive and negative publicity – plus, from the city’s
(Conservative) MP, Stewart Jackson, a comparison with the Supreme Leader of North Korea,
Kim Jong-un. Re-elected unopposed as group leader, Cereste made it clear he was not
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interested in pacts or alliances, and he easily survived an Independent bid at the AGM to
remove him. Peterborians, though, seem to have something of a fixation about power, for, no
sooner had he been elected than the new Mayor decided to introduce a rule limiting all
speeches to five minutes, and promptly invoked it to silence Celeste while in the middle of
naming the members of his cabinet. The proposer of a motion on the council’s constitution was
rather snappier, and allowed enough time for all political groups to agree that a working party be
set up to consider a move to a committee system.
In Portsmouth too UKIP was the main agent in overthrowing an established majority
administration, in this case the Lib Dems. In 2012 they not only survived but increased their
majority. Not this time: they lost five seats to UKIP – including that of Portsmouth South MP,
Mike Hancock – their overall control, and subsequently, through resignation, their leader, Gerald
Vernon Jackson. They remained easily the largest group, but in the ensuing inter-party
discussions the other parties made most of the running. The Conservative leader, Donna Jones,
admitted she favoured a coalition with Labour, but Labour, though more inclined to do business
with the Conservatives than with the Lib Dems, was set against coalitions, as was UKIP. Both
parties, however, agreed to back a Conservative ultra-minority administration – though exactly
what that backing covers and whether it extends, for instance, to the budget, seems at present
unclear.
UKIP’s successes across South Essex will be a recurring theme in the remainder of this
Briefing, starting with Southend-on-Sea BC. The town has had a generally majority
Conservative council since 2000, but by 2012 that majority had become knife-edge and had
twice had to be regained, first through a defection from the Independent group and more
recently through a narrow by-election victory over the Lib Dems. These elections saw it
disappear decisively. 11 of the 17 contested seats changed hands, with UKIP (5) and Labour (3)
the gainers, and the Conservatives (7) and Lib Dems (4) the losers.
The neatest arithmetic may have suggested a Conservative/Independent coalition, but there
were several obstacles – including personality clashes and an alleged, though denied,
Independent-UKIP electoral non-aggression pact. In the event, although the Conservatives were
still much the largest party, most serious discussion focused on an anti-Conservative, non-UKIP
coalition. What materialised was an annually renewable Independent/Labour/Lib Dem
‘confidence and supply’ agreement, brokered and led by the Independent, Ron Woodward, and
resting on the narrowest of overall majorities. Unusually for such arrangements, this Joint
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Administration Agreement has a published and downloadable document underpinning it11 –
including broad aims, allocation of cabinet posts (3 Independents, 3 Labour, I Lib Dem), a set of
specific policy commitments (several reversing controversial Conservative policies), and a
pledge that the council should be able to consider “further constitutional change, including the
cabinet and committee systems” – the last of which at least should appeal to the UKIP
members, excluded from the Agreement, but the cause of its very existence.
Of the four councils Labour lost to NOC – Great Yarmouth, N E Lincolnshire, Thurrock, Tower
Hamlets – it was probably Thurrock which brought it the most media grief. In 2010 Labour had
ended six years of Conservative rule. In 2011 it became the largest party, and in 2012 took
majority control – evidence, claimed Ed Miliband, that the Opposition was “winning back trust,
gaining ground”. Unfortunately, by the time he paid his recent post-election visit to what is also
Labour’s No.2 parliamentary target seat, the ground had been occupied by UKIP, who took
seats also from the Conservatives (3) and Labour (2), deprived Labour of its majority, and
grabbed the balance of power.
Early post-election talk was of an unspecified ‘grand coalition’ between Labour and the
Conservatives, and an ‘insider’ confided to the Thurrock Gazette that s/he would “lay my
money” on such an outcome – but then rather quickly disappeared. Back in the real world, with
the Conservatives ruling out any pact with UKIP, a Labour minority administration came to look
most likely - though if at the AGM the 6 UKIP members had voted with the Conservatives and
the 2 Independents, they could, if they’d wanted, have secured a Conservative Mayor and
probably a sharing of committee chairs. They chose, however, to abstain on almost all key
votes, with the result that Labour members now hold all the posts they would have had with an
overall majority: Mayor, Deputy Mayor, plus overview and scrutiny chairs and the chairs of
licensing and planning.
11 Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, Jojnt Administration Agreement (June 2014) - http://www.southend.gov.uk/downloads/file/2702/joint_administration_agreement_on_behalf_of_the_independents_labour_and_liberal_democrat_groups.
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Non-metropolitan districts
Staying in South Essex, immediately north-east of Thurrock is Basildon BC, setting for another
of UKIP’s epic entrées into the world of local government. The Conservatives had run the
council since 2002, had seen the UKIP challenge grow, and had seen it off. This year UKIP
again fought all 15 seats, won 11 of them – 7 from the Conservatives, including that of their
leader, Tony Ball – and propelled itself immediately into the status of the council’s official
opposition. Or so it was thought, the general assumption being that the Conservatives would
form a minority administration. UKIP members were quoted as rejecting any coalition with the
Conservatives – “if we’d wanted to do that, we’d have stood as Conservatives”; “we’d prefer to
become the official opposition; we’ve got to learn to crawl before we can run”.
Then came the AGM – and confirmation that rumours of at least an agreement between the two
parties were well-founded. Basildon, unusually, has an apparently permanent Mayor –
Conservative Cllr Mo Larkin holding the post since Basildon achieved Borough status in 2010.
She was re-elected for a fifth term through a joint Conservative-UKIP vote, and a UKIP member
was elected Deputy Mayor, unopposed by the Conservatives. Cllr Phil Turner, Tony Ball’s
former deputy, was then elected as Council Leader, and proceeded to announce the
Conservative members of what is a slightly smaller cabinet, following the amalgamation of
certain portfolios. Following recent custom, two cabinet seats without portfolio were then offered
to the two main opposition groups, but, with Labour again declining theirs, both went to UKIP
members – and likewise, later in the meeting, the chair and vice-chair of the non-executive Audit
and Risk Committee.
Now here’s the thing. Labour claims these five posts constitute nearly half of the UKIP group
and give it same proportion of the council’s special responsibility places as the Lib Dems have
in the national Coalition. Even without direct responsibility for any council departments, the two
cabinet members will vote on key decisions and could even hold the balance of power if there
were a policy disagreement among the Conservative members. The arrangement, argues
Labour, should be acknowledged as the Conservative/UKIP coalition it actually is. Cllr Turner,
however, claims he leads a Conservative minority administration and that for it to be a coalition
the parties would have had formally to agree policies and strategies, which they haven’t.
Remind me, how is it the duck test goes: if it looks like a coalition, quacks like a coalition ...?
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The Conservatives had actually surrendered their majority control over Basingstoke and
Deane BC within months of the 2012 elections, one councillor resigning the party whip following
a High Court ruling that the Council had mishandled a land development case, and another
defecting to become UKIP’s candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner. In these elections
they lost a further seat to Labour, but, with UKIP making only one gain – by a candidate who
might or might not at the time have been suspended by the party for making seriously offensive
comments on Facebook – their continuing in office as a minority administration was never in
serious doubt.
Brentwood BC is immediately north of Thurrock, west of Basildon, and just up the Thames
Estuary from Southend and Castle Point. Geographically it may have seemed promising UKIP
territory, but Communities Secretary Eric Pickles’ principal local authority proved the South
Essex exception. Interesting things happened alright, but neither involving nor even catalysed
by UKIP. The party contested 9 of the 13 wards and achieved several second places, but the
Conservatives’ losses that ended their 10-year majority rule were to the Lib Dems (2) and
Labour (1). The Conservatives were still easily the largest party, but the others, aided perhaps
by not having to decide whether or not to do business with a bunch of UKIP newcomers, got
their act together quickly and within 48 hours had signed the ‘Brentwood Accord’ – a joint bid by
the Lib Dems, Brentwood First, Labour, and the single Independent to form a joint
administration.
As in Southend, the Accord Agreement was published online, but this was a much shorter and
less explicit document – clarifying that the four political groups would remain as ‘separate
entities’, but with no details, at this stage, of the shape of the administration or its policies12.
These soon started to emerge, though, in almost a torrent, starting with a 7.43 am posting from
the Lib Dems13, followed by the Accord’s own blog14.
To begin with, there will be a new committee structure, “returning to a model of [8] focused and
specialist committees” – their chairs split 5-3 between the Lib Dems and Brentwood First. Lib
Dem leader, Barry Aspinell, is council leader and chair of Finance & Resources; William Lloyd
(Brentwood First) is Deputy Leader and chair of the Environment committee; Roger Keeble, the
12 http://brentwoodaccord.co.uk/theaccordagreement.html. 13 http://brentwoodlibdems.org.uk/en/article/2014/850088/brentwood-accord-takes-control-tories-now-the-opposition-party. 14 http://brentwoodaccord.co.uk/blog/.
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single Independent, is Deputy Mayor; and Labour’s one key position is the vice-chair of
Overview & Scrutiny. Policies include undertaking a comprehensive audit of the whole council;
proposing a revised budget within 100 days; building more council housing; moving towards
whole-council elections; and bridging “the disconnect between officers, staff and members” –
through, inter alia, “insisting that the staff call us by our first names” – an announcement signed
aptly by “Barry, William, Mike [Le-Surf, Labour group leader] and Roger”.
Still in South Essex, Castle Point BC had since 2003 been run by the Conservatives, who had
been led throughout that time by Pam Challis. UKIP brought both to an abrupt end, taking five
seats from the Conservatives, including that of their leader – a better result perhaps even than it
sounds, given UKIP’s informal electoral pact with the Canvey Island Independents (CIIP) and its
agreement to contest only the 8 (of 14) ‘mainland’ wards. This may not have helped early post-
election discussions about a possible three-party coalition, but the numbers alone militated
against it: as coalition theorists will immediately note, a majority simply didn’t require three
parties. With CIIP also piqued by the Conservatives’ election of a twice-suspended councillor as
their deputy leader, the increasingly likely outcome was a Conservative minority administration
under their new leader, Colin Riley. CIIP and UKIP have announced that they are carrying
forward their strictly informal pact into a shadow cabinet.
When I was growing up in Leigh-on-Sea, reaching North Essex involved crossing the River
Crouch and to my carless parents and me was cognitively as distant as Kent, if not France.
Politically it’s still a different world from South Essex, as UKIP will testify.
The Lib Dems have been the largest party on Colchester BC for most of the past quarter-
century, and since 2008 have headed a Lib Dem/Labour/Independent coalition. This time,
although the Greens contested all 20 seats and UKIP 13, neither managed to win a seat, the
only movement being one Labour gain from the Lib Dems. There was, though, a further minor
change a few days later with a Lib Dem defection, on personal rather than policy grounds, to the
previously one-family Highwoods Independents. Gerard, Beverley and son Philip Oxford are
now, therefore, the Highwoods and Stanway Independent Group, but otherwise the coalition
rolls on for a seventh year, with a cabinet comprising 5 Lib Dems, 1 Labour and 1 Independent
member (Beverley).
Apart from a brief period of Labour control in the late 1990s, the Conservatives have generally
been the dominant party on Gloucester City Council. This time they were pleased to maintain
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their vote share, see off UKIP, and, with no seat changes at all, to continue for a third year their
minority administration.
In 2012 it was the Conservatives on Great Yarmouth BC who had been the chief victims of
UKIP’s intervention, which contributed substantially to their loss of four seats to Labour and with
them, after 12 years, overall control of the council. For them, May 22, 2014 was Groundhog
Day, but now they were joined by Labour, both parties losing 5 seats to UKIP, leaving the
council comprehensively split three ways. There seemed no great enthusiasm for a coalition,
Labour being completely opposed and thereby increasing the prospects of its eventually forming
a minority administration. UKIP’s new leader, Kay Grey, said her party was prepared to listen to
offers, although the unlikelihood of these being forthcoming was shown when UKIP nominees to
several outside bodies were overlooked in an apparent share-out between the two main parties.
The political history of the ‘old’ 35-member Hart DC was of short periods of Conservative
majority control punctuating longer periods of various forms of minority party administration.
Even pre-UKIP, the steady growth of the Community Campaign Hart (CCH) reduced the
prospects of the first elections to the new 33-member council producing a decisive result, and
so it proved. UKIP’s 15% vote share didn’t win seats, but contributed to the former Conservative
minority administration losing theirs to both CCH (3) and in the village of Hook to an
Independent – the latter being one of several campaigns in these elections fought largely on the
issue of a controversial planned housing development. There had been talk after the 2012
elections of a three-party administration and this time it happened: a limited-spectrum rainbow
coalition between the Conservatives, Lib Dems and CCH, with cabinet seats shared 3-2-2.
For 25 years until 2008, no single party on Maidstone BC held an overall majority, and for a
time it was a genuinely three-party council. Since 2008, though, it had been in Conservative
hands until another UKIP intervention took 4 of their 20 seats and ended their overall control.
Council leader throughout that period was Chris Garland, whose first reaction to the results,
before stepping down from the party leadership, was that “now we will look to work in coalition
with another group” – a prospect that some felt might increase with the election as his
successor of Annabelle Blackmore, who had not been a leading cabinet member and was less
identified than Garland and colleagues with the controversial draft local plan. The reasoning
proved groundless, but Blackmore’s election did get reaction – a personally piqued colleague
resigning not just from the party but from the whole council, on learning that there would not be
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a leading place for him in her new minority administration. “I decided if I wasn’t going to be able
to contribute, I should resign”, he explained, and the by-election is pending.
Over the years, Mole Valley DC has tended to be the exception to the local elections night
axiom that: ‘Surrey is mostly boringly Conservative’. The Conservatives did have a four-year
period of majority control from 2006, but in 2010 went into coalition with the Ashtead
Independents – an arrangement that survived a Lib Dem by-election victory which made them
the largest party. In 2012 the Lib Dems reinforced this position, even after the defection of a
councillor “annoyed with Nick Clegg who has ignored two e-mails from me concerning closing
the tax avoidance loopholes”. They were outflanked, though, by the Conservatives and
Independents electing an Independent Chairman of the Council, who ended up selecting an
Executive of 3 Conservatives and 3 Ashtead Independents. Recalling the ‘Five Days in May’
reference in this Briefing’s opening paragraph, it’s worth noting that this Executive-selection
process took over two months – mostly spent, to the credit of the Chairman’s integrity if not his
decisiveness, failing to persuade the aggrieved Lib Dems to accept his offer of a tripartite
coalition.
Given that recent history, it is unsurprising that, with the Conservatives gaining two seats and
becoming once more the largest party, the Independent-led coalition continues – essentially
unchanged except for the addition of an extra Conservative to the Executive. Mole Valley,
incidentally, is one of the thankfully few authorities that still treat councillors’ party identifications
as if they were Official Secrets, refusing to divulge them until you go to their individual contact
details. The same is true for all committee memberships, including the Executive – the only
compensation being that, in going through this laborious process, you do pick up odd titbits of
news – like the council’s Wellbeing portfolio being reassuringly in the hands of one James
Friend.
Pendle DC’s largest-party hat has changed heads four times over the past 20 years: Lab-LD-
Lab-LD-Con. But in two of the years there was no largest party, most recently following the
2012 elections, when Conservatives and Labour held 18 seats each. Labour wasn’t able to do a
deal with the Lib Dems, but the Conservatives could. It was not, both parties insisted, a
coalition, but a ‘shared executive’ of 6 Conservatives and 4 Lib Dems, and, outside a list of 11
agreed objectives, the two parties retained the right to promote their own policies. With this
year’s elections producing a net change of only one seat – from the Lib Dems to Labour – this
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shared executive arrangement will continue unchanged, backed now by a published 12-point
plan15.
Purbeck DC has its local government excitements, but they come mostly between, rather than
at, elections. Last May, for example, there were no district elections, but the council’s single
Independent, Peter Wharf, decided to join the Conservatives, thereby transforming their minority
administration into a controlling majority. Then, in a council meeting last November, there was
the odd spectacle of Conservative council leader, Gary Suttle, calling successfully for all
members, including the Lib Dem opposition, to vote down his own proposal that Purbeck enter a
shared services partnership with the already merging East Dorset and Christchurch councils.
The business case, it seemed, had found that the savings would not be on quite the scale he
had fondly, or ideologically, hoped and the time had come to stop digging in this particular hole.
It was certainly unusual, but perhaps also prescient. Assisted by a substantial UKIP
intervention, the Lib Dems in this May’s elections – the last before Purbeck switches to whole-
council elections – took a ward from the Conservatives, so that Purbeck, unlike East Dorset and
Christchurch, is no longer under Conservative majority control, which would surely have made a
merger even more tricky. Cllr Suttle still leads his again minority administration, whose 6-
member Policy Group now accommodates the also prescient Cllr Wharf.
The recent political history of, to use its official name, St Albans City and District Council is of
the Lib Dems having majority control for a period, losing it, regaining it, losing it again, and so
on. They’re now, unsurprisingly, in a losing phase, with the Conservatives having held minority
control since 2011, but being stuck on 29 of the council’s 58 seats. They’re still stuck – another
case, surely, for councils having odd numbers of seats – but, with the Lib Dems losing a further
three seats to Labour and now reduced to 17, their minority control is that bit more secure.
The Conservatives ran Stroud DC for 10 years, until in 2012 they lost 5 wards straight to
Labour and, with just 21 of the 52 council seats, were left well short of a majority. The other
parties had little interest in a coalition with the defeated Conservatives, and also wanted to
change the whole way the council worked – back to a committee system that would give
members more involvement in the decision-making process. The initial working agreement
between Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens was immediately labelled, like almost all multi-party
15 http://www.pendle.gov.uk/news/article/2031/shared_executive_to_run_pendle_council.
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power-sharing arrangements, a rainbow coalition, but their own preferred ‘Alliance’ was more
appropriate. During the transition back to a full committee system, the cabinet was replaced by
an 8-member executive and cabinet members by ‘policy leaders’ (on reduced Special
Responsibility Allowances) – the first cabinet comprising 4 Labour members, 2 Lib Dems and
1Green.
The main changes in this year’s elections took place among the Alliance parties – Labour (3)
and the Greens (1) making net gains and the Lib Dems 2 net losses. The structural transition
over, the key committee is Strategy and Resources, chaired by the Labour council leader,
Geoffrey Wheeler, and with proportional membership: 5 Labour, 5 Conservatives, 2 Lib Dems
and 1 Green. Four of the six main standing committees are chaired by Labour, one
(Environment) by a Green member, and Audit & Standards by an independent Conservative.
West Lancashire BC is a predominantly Conservative, overwhelmingly two-party council, on
which the Conservatives had majority control from 2002 until this May, when the loss of a single
seat to Labour left the two parties with 27 seats each. As noted on p.4 above, the council
provided a clear and timely explanation of the implications of this situation and anticipated that
the probable outcome would be a Conservative minority administration – and happily, come the
AGM, that is exactly what happened16.
Weymouth and Portland BC road-tested single-party majority government for a brief period in
the 1970s but evidently decided it wasn’t for them, as their unwavering election results ever
since have been NOC. At different times all three main parties have been the largest, but none
have managed to reach 19 of the 36 seats. Thanks partly to defections, the Conservatives
made it to 18 a few years ago, but they’ve slipped away and in this year’s elections Labour took
two seats from them and another from the Independents, making them the largest party. The Lib
Dem Mayor also lost his seat, to the council’s first UKIP member, one Francis Drake – although,
possibly to Nigel Farage’s relief, this one is a local café owner, rather than pirate and slave-
trader. Labour’s largest-party status gets them the chair of the key Management Committee,
comprising 10 members from all parties – 4 Labour, 3 Conservatives, 2 Lib Dems, I UKIP – and
the other committee chairs will continue to be shared across the parties.
16 http://www.westlancsdc.gov.uk/news/new-mayor-of-west-lancashire-and-new-leader-of-the-council-are-announced.aspx.
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Winchester City Council, for most of the 8-year post-Mark Oaten period, has been
Conservative-dominated, and following the 2012 elections the party was able to take overall
control. Its majority disappeared, though, several months before this year’s elections, with the
defection of two Conservative members to the Lib Dems, putting the two parties back where
they had been before 2012, on 27 seats each. But when a city’s main mention on election night
comes from a local parliamentary candidate calling for her leader’s resignation, it’s a fair guess
that that party hasn’t done terribly well. That certainly was Lib Dem candidate Jackie Porter’s
view of her party’s two lost seats, which restored the Conservatives’ position as the largest party
and more or less ensured a continuation of their minority administration.
Last May, as I’ve described briefly elsewhere17, Worcester City Council, who weren’t holding
elections, provided probably more political excitement than the County Council, who were. In
brief, an instant coalition of the 15 Labour members, the single Green, and 2 Lib Dems who until
then had been backing the Conservative minority administration, staged a dramatic and
successful power-grab. A few months later, by way of rubbing salt into the wound, Conservative
councillor, Jabba Riaz, suddenly – they like surprises in Worcester – announced he was joining
Labour: possibly because of his distress over the local impact of “David Cameron’s disastrous
policies”, but possibly also because of his failure the previous week to get selected for a safer
Conservative ward than his own.
In roughly the words of another cliché, though, if you come to power by the sword, you die by
the sword – and so it proved for Labour. It retained all its now 16 seats – Riaz quite comfortably
holding his marginal ward for Labour – but, with the Conservatives taking one from the Lib
Dems, they became again the largest party. The remaining Lib Dem and the Green were the
proverbial kingmakers, the latter especially making no secret of his being open to offers. But
then, two days before the council’s AGM – and a few days after losing his party’s nomination as
Deputy Mayor to none other than Cllr Riaz – Labour councillor Alan Amos announced his
resignation from the party, apparently out of frustration at not being more involved in its
leadership. The arithmetic was now nailbiting: the then unknown direction of Amos’ vote would
be decisive.
Seven minutes into the AGM, all was suddenly clear – as the Conservatives’ nominee for Mayor
proved to be, certainly to Labour’s surprise, Alan Amos. He was, of course, elected; Riaz lost
17 Chris Game, ‘Who’ll work with the Lib Dems?’ - http://inlogov.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/wholl-work-with-the-lib-dems/.
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out; a ‘no confidence’ motion in the Labour council leader, Adrian Gregson, was debated and
passed, and Conservative leader, Simon Geraghty, elected in his place – all by votes of 18 to
17. Worcester has, once more, a Conservative minority administration, led by the man with
already seven years’ experience in the role. Meanwhile, there is a public petition circulating
calling for the Mayor to resign, and the Mayor’s Chaplain – the fellow who says the prayers at
the start of council meetings – has warned, presumably Worcester’s councillors, that the public
"no longer regards public sparring as a sign of maturity, but looks for integrity and honesty in
public life." Absolutely – though you have to admit, the public sparring stuff can be entertaining.
Just up the M5, the Conservatives had lost their overall control of Wyre Forest DC in 2012 at
the same time as their colleagues in Worcester were losing theirs. In both authorities they
remained the largest party and formed minority administrations, the main difference being that
Wyre Forest’s minority parties, groups and sects are a more diverse and less unifiable bunch
than Worcester’s. It means ward elections have at least 4 and often 6 or 7 candidates, with
plenty of gains and losses. This time the Conservatives (3) and Independent Community &
Health Concern (the former Kidderminster Hospital campaigners) (2) were the main losers, and
UKIP (5) by far the biggest winners. The Conservatives, however, remain easily the largest
single party and will continue to run the council as a minority administration.
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