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?

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