Leicester Mercury Political correspondent
Posts tagged Barbara Potter
The city council fail whale
Mar 29th
I wrote a story in Saturday’s Mercury that Leicester City Council is considering banning Twitter in the council chamber.
It was sparked by a complaint from Labour chief whip Barbara Potter.
Councillor Potter, to her credit, didn’t shy away from defending her position when I called her late last week.
But my issue isn’t with Barbara; she’s the whip and it’s her job to keep members in line.
I want to know why Veejay Patel won’t rule it out and kill the issue stone dead as part of his era of openness.
At the very least it’s naive politics, because his vague response means the issue will run and run. Instead of playing down the influence of Twitter in city politics it elevates it.
What’s the betting that a record number of people – many of them Leicester Twitter users – tune into the next full council meeting?
I wonder if the council will release the web stats?
The sound of silence
Mar 23rd
Colin Hall is rarely lost for words – particularly on Twitter.
He raised a few eyebrows when he used his account to broadcast last week’s Labour AGM. But for the second round of selections he’s been carefully toeing the party line.
So what’s prompted him to turn over a new leaf? Could it be the recent installment of no-nonsense Barbara Potter as Labour chief whip, in place of laid-back Piara Singh Clair?
She’s a tough-talker, alright, and gave me the hairdryer treatment at Monday’s scrutiny meeting about a story in that day’s Mercury.
The fact that the story was entirely correct didn’t stop her trying to give me a stern dressing-down across the committee room.
Councillor Hall is right to be cautious…
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?
