Leicester Mercury political correspondent
Leicester City Council
Colin Hall scoops them all…
Mar 15th
Labour leadership night in Leicester, and what a serene affair it was too.
With a clever system of self-nomination, and a closing date well in advance of the meeting, you avoid nasty surprise challenges come party polling day.
Done and dusted in 60 minutes. I barely had time to finish a late night scotch egg and cup of coffee in the office before the Labour councillors were filing out.
I spoke to some councillors for their reaction, but we already had the results, of course, courtesy of Colin Hall‘s Twitter account. Keep on going like that and we’ll be out of a job…
Three contenders. Veejay Patel – front runner, Mary Draycott – the challenger, and Manish Sood – throwing his hat into the ring. In the end he got one vote. What on earth was he up to? I still can’t figure it out. Veejay won the day, and Mary put in a fairly respectable showing. There were two spoilt ballot papers. Wonder who.
Other party positions were dished out which have little relevance to those outside the party, but are interesting nonetheless.
Barbara Potter was nominated as chief whip. One councillor gave me a call after the meeting and growled: “One of the most outspoken critics of the council on issues like market policy and road conditions is suddenly in charge of maintaining order in the party and a united front. I can’t decide whether it’s genius or madness.”
Piara Singh Clair had dropped out of the chief whip race at the last minute. “Must have been offered a cabinet position,” winked one wag on leaving the meeting. We’ll wait and see. The cabinet will be selected on March 23.
One other point, it was confidently predicted by those closest to Coun Patel last month that he had 27 cast-iron votes in the bag. He ended up with 24.
So who are the trio that deserted him at the final hurdle, and why?
Veejay and Vi
Mar 10th
It’s five days until Leicester’s Labour councillors select a new leader.
Veejay Patel is still the apparent front runner. He has, after all, got current deputy Vi Dempster by his side, he was first out of the traps to launch his bid for the leadership, and he also wants a transparent vote to show the party how much support he has.
Normally during a leadership election political reporters are inundated with calls from potential candidates hoping to boost their profile in the run-up to a vote. But not this time.
Is the match-up between Vi and Veejay too powerful to contend with? Would challenging them be a political kamikaze act? Is it still, as one member was quoted in the Mercury as saying, the Dream Ticket?
We’ll know by Monday.
Rory’s Battle of Bosworth
Mar 4th
City cabinet member Rory Palmer took part in the Obama campaign over in America back in 2008, so he’s got experience of working for one of the slickest campaigns of modern times. His Parliamentary campaign is currently ticking all the right boxes too.
He’s taking his election fight to the doorsteps of Bosworth in the run-up to the general election, “it’s where it’ll be won and lost,” he says. Many of his tweets are tagged with #LabourDoorstep too, as part of his online Twitter movement.
Winning an election on the doorstep is better than winning an election on the back of a horse, a stunt that once briefly ran through his mind.
“We’ve dubbed this election campaign The Battle of Bosworth, and I had visions of me riding on a horse through Bosworth in a suit of armour. Now that would have been the election stunt to end all election stunts.”
Quite. Luckily his Obama-campaign pedigree got the better of him.
He’s sticking to knocking on doors for the foreseeable future.
Cash squeeze at the Curve
Mar 4th
Flagship Leicester theatre The Curve went epically over budget, with costs rising from an initial estimate of £26.5m to more than £60m.
Times are tough and costs, of course, must be kept under control. But little did anyone realise how bad things had become there. As I sat with a contact over a cup of coffee this afternoon, it was the music choices rather than the innovative building which left the biggest impression.
A compilation album of ‘hits’ from the 80s and 90s was on loop throughout. Worse than that, my companion observed, they were cover versions. You can pick up these CDs for 99p in Morrisons.
Someone buy them an iTunes gift card…
Transition team
Mar 1st
It’s not easy, changing council leader.
Far from being a case of sitting back and waiting to find out who Labour group chooses on the Ides of March, town hall officers are already hard at work – more than three weeks before the planned handover.
This week, they’re phoning councils that have recently had a leadership change in similar circumstances, and asking them if they can talk about how they managed the transition. “What was your blueprint,” corporate governance teams around Britain are being asked.
It’s hardly the Obama transition team, but every little helps.
The perils of caffeine
Feb 28th
With the leadership of Leicester City Council up for grabs, I’ve been doing my best to catch up with the runners and riders and I’ve had coffee with three of the contenders so far.
One meet-up went a bit pear-shaped. A day earlier we’d struck upon a time to meet up. I was bang on time, as ever, and ordered a latte with an extra shot of espresso and waited. And waited. And waited. I had an Americano to pass the time. Then a double espresso.
I left a stern voicemail on their phone: “You’re half an hour late. If you’re not here in five minutes I’m off.”
As I got up to leave the politico called me back. “I missed your call, what’s up? Do you want to meet up early or something. I’m due in half an hour.” I checked my notebook. I wasn’t bang on time, I was a whole hour early.
But, by the time they arrived it was no use. I was almost incapable due to the caffeine overload. I was shuffling about in my chair, gnawing on a giant cookie and scratching at the walls like an addict without his fix. My shorthand notes looked like earthquake tremor lines, my brow was damp, and I had a pounding headache.
Lesson learned for the future. Stick to decaff.
Out of sorts
Feb 25th
Ross Grant made a decent fist of his budget amendment presentation this week – he even did a bit of a web-launch – but I was more concerned with his performance after he’d spoken at full council on Wednesday.
The usual cut-and-thrust of full council means partisan attacks are bandied back and forth, but digs at Ross (example – “there are lots of interesting and useful things on the internet, then there’s Ross Grant’s blog”) didn’t seem to stir the Conservative leader this time round. He barely raised his eyebrow at the blog attack.
Had Ross Grant discovered Buddhism? Perhaps he’d signed up as a Quaker.
“I’ve gone about three days without sleep,” he admitted after the meeting, with a bleary-eyed expression presumably last seen in the excesses of his student days. All down to his work, it seems, which can involve a lot of travel and uncomfortable hotels.
All good experience for when he become a father later this year…
Leadership observations
Feb 25th
For a leadership contender, Manish Sood is awfully quiet. He didn’t say a word at full council on Wednesday. Another contender, Mary Draycott, didn’t say anything on the budget and instead got into a fair old flap with the opposition over the Walkers Stadium Market. I don’t know who came off worse, to be honest.
Veejay Patel, as expected, spoke quite a lot. He’s the finance lead, after all, so he had to deliver the budget. Plenty of little jibes at the opposition, gearing up for the possibility of becoming leader. Give the troops what they want.
But did anyone step forward to rally the troops? Perhaps with a little bit of opposition-bashing to throw some meat to party faithful? Yes indeed. Step forward, Stephen Corrall. “It’s getting like a leadership beauty contest, this,” announced Lib Dem leader Pete Coley with a smile after Stephen had a right old pop at the Tory and Lib Dem benches.
But a partisan tubthumper until the last, Ross Willmott delivered some of the most withering put-downs of the night.
He scolded Hussein Suleman for an “empty-headed rant”, said he never expected to see the day the Conservative group put forward a council tax rise which was higher than Labour, and even corrected a claim that he had “four minutes left” in his post as the meeting drew to a close.
Wagging a finger he said: “I’m council Labour leader until the 15th, actually.” He’s a stickler for the details, that Ross.
11am UPDATE: The comment by Ross in the comments section is, of course, correct. The positions of leader of the Labour group and leader of the council are two separate things. Happy to clarify that he will be leader of the group until March 15, but leader of the council until March 25. Complicated this, isn’t it readers?
City council sub-plots
Feb 23rd
Typical. You wait days for a half-decent council meeting then two come along at once.
Both the City and County councils hold their budget-setting council meetings today. I’ll be up at County Hall for 2pm, then zooming back to the town hall for the City’s meet-up at 5pm.
Both budgets are likely to be approved as a formality so it’s worth keeping an eye on some sub-plots instead.
It’s Ross Willmott’s last full-council meeting as leader and it’ll be his likely replacement, finance lead Veejay Patel, who’ll deliver the budget.
Will opposition criticism be directed at the outgoing leader, or will the focus turn to the man many think will replace him?
Two rivals have already emerged as leadership contenders – Mary Draycott and Manish Sood. If they speak to the proposals, their comments will be scrutinised for hints on how they plan to sell their candidacy to fellow Labour members. Could they even try to put some clear blue water between themselves and the front runner by giving some gentle “constructive criticism” on his budget proposals? Unlikely but worth keeping an eye on.
Elsewhere Patrick Kitterick, seen as part of Team Willmott, has been remarkably coy over his leadership ambitions. He was “considering his options” last time the Mercury spoke to him. If he speaks to the proposals, will it include full-throated praise of Willmott’s leadership of the council, or will he attempt to distance himself as he looks to his political future?
With the meeting being effectively a rubber-stamping exercise, the most interesting tidbits will be discovered in the corridors of power before and after the meeting. As ever, if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.
Anatomy of a leadership race
Feb 18th
I’m relishing covering the twists and turns of the race to become Labour leader of Leicester City Council. Leadership elections are catnip to political correspondents. I’ve penned a couple of stories in the Mercury on it so far, and there are more to come.
In every political leadership race there are usually two or three front runners, but that doesn’t stop others – with little or no chance of winning – throwing their hat into the ring.
There are four main types of outsider candidates that I reckon you’ll find in every race. It’s these candidates in a leadership race that can tell you so much more about the state of a party than who gets elected as leader. Keep an eye out for their equivalents in the city over the coming weeks.
1 – The Horse Trader
They’ve got no chance of winning but every chance of splitting the vote or disrupting a coronation. They’ll aim for the top so they can cut a deal for a senior position in return for rowing back from their stated leadership ambitions.
2 – The Vanity Candidate
Usually either a has-been or a could-be-one-day. This person will feel that the leadership of the party has wrongly eluded them. They’ll put themselves in the frame with every belief they’ll win it, only to find little or no support among their party’s ranks.
3 – The Principled Politico
Knows they won’t win, but stands on a point of principle anyway. Often covering their move with claims that they want to hold a ‘debate’ about the party’s direction or key policies, they’re largely ignored while the real race continues.
4 – The Vengeance Candidate
Not in it to win it, but not in it to start a debate either. In fact, they’re not in it for any other reason other than to voice their opposition to one of the front runners. Good sense and reason is ignored in favour of the opportunity to have a very public dig at the leader-elect.
Do let me know in the comments if I’ve missed any out.
Et tu, Brute?
Feb 17th
Outgoing City council leader Ross Willmott will give up the hotseat on March 15. The runners and riders are already making their moves for his chair. The significance of his departure date wasn’t really noticed at the time, but his reign ends on the Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar was bumped-off by fellow politicians – including his close friend Brutus.
