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?