Peter Soulsby, Rory Palmer, Vi Dempster, Ted Cassidy, Manjula Sood, Piara Clair, Sarah Russell and Mohammed Dawood

Former cabinet member: “This was the most closely-guarded secret in city politics.”

ALSO: Labour group elected internal positions on Saturday morning. Patrick Kitterick becomes chair; Rita Patel is deputy; Steve Corrall is group secretary, and Barbara Potter remains as chief whip.

Leicester City Council cabinet – Monday, 1pm

Awkward fidgeting. Eyes darting around. “He’s coming,” they whispered, “Peter’s here,” they cooed in the council chamber.

I’d met him outside already. Sir Peter Soulsby strode across town hall square towards the town hall entrance for Monday’s cabinet meeting. ”I need to remind myself how these things work,” he chuckled.

If all goes to plan he’ll be running the authority in eight weeks.

He sauntered into the council chamber just before 1pm as councillors and senior officers prepared for the fortnightly rubber-stamping of key decisions.

At the top of the cabinet table sat glum-faced Veejay Patel – thwarted by Soulsby just 48 hours earlier – with Vi Dempster, his running mate, to his right.

To his left sat Sheila Lock. Word is that Peter wants an overhaul of senior management. And she’s the most senior manager. Gulp.

As Sir Peter walked in she kept a poker face and appeared to stare straight ahead. So did Veejay. So did Vi. The trio sat for a ten seconds, all motion suspended. It wasn’t a calculated snub, it was a moment of awkwardness.

One cabinet member – a known supporter of Veejay – rolled their eyes in the direction of Peter before mouthing something towards me.

Peter took a seat to the left-hand side of the action which is actually Parmjit Gill’s usual full council seat. It’s the second seat he’s taken from Mr Gill in five years.

Union man Gary Garner – backer of Soulsby – sat on the opposite side of the chamber. His attendance at cabinet is occasional. Last time he was seen in the council chamber was last month, bellowing from the public gallery at Ross Grant. This time he was on his best behaviour.

The meeting itself was uneventful in terms of substance, but it was the subtleties that made this fascinating.

An item on strip clubs presented by Sarah Russell couldn’t divert my attention from the occasional awkward glance between Veejay and Peter. A city centre parking policy was no match for the way Veejay supporters emphasised the word leader when addressing him a little more than usual.

The final item on the agenda was to be held in private session. Only elected council politicos and officers were to stay. The press and public were told to scarper.

It felt strange, but that included Peter.

None of the councillor would have looked twice if he’d stayed, their minds have already turned to May 6.

On his list of useful telephone numbers the UK Border Agency is misspelled as the UK Boarding Agency.

I thought nothing more of it until a a photoshopped photograph landed in my inbox yesterday, from the supporter of a rival campaign, with the subject line:

Who ya gonna call? The UK Boarding Agency!

Photo credit: “Snack Capital”

City council budget briefing day on Wednesday. Glum faces. Chief executive and head of finance did the detail while Veejay Patel, Vi Dempster and Mohammed Dawood did the politics. Press man Mark Bentley looked on.

On the subject of controversial changes to staff contracts Veejay used his gravest of tones. “This is not something we would have chosen to do.” Among the changes was the removal of free parking spaces for some staff. All part of sharing the burden of the cuts, the councillors nodded.

Then time for my zinger: “You know the car park for councillors underneath New Walk Centre? Will you be charging for that?”

An uncomfortable mumble from some of those present. One officer grinned.

Dawood: “Sorry I missed the question.”

Veejay responded: “Er, no.”

“But is it at least under consideration?” I pressed.

“We can look at that yes,” Veejay said, quickly scribbling down the suggestion.

Don’t hold your breath on that one, folks. The full council would have to vote it through, and turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

Some say conferences are an expensive luxury, other say they’re a value-for-money necessity. Either way, the city council could surely do a better job of saving some cash.

Labour’s Vi Dempster, Tory Michael Johnson and Lib Dem Hussein Suleman joined Rachel Dickinson for the trip over to Manchester between Tuesday and Friday last week.

According to an email response, travel cost £58.50 each for a return ticket – yet a quick scan of thetrainline.com shows an open return available for just £38.

The Midland Hotel on Peter Street, Manchester cost £417 per stay for each of the four. The Lansdowne Hotel in the city may only be two star, but they could have got the same length stay for just £140 each.

Nothing, unfortunately, can be done to reduce the cost of the conference at nearly £500 each.

Despite this, the total cost of this trip – £3,823 – could have been reduced to £2,654. That’s a saving of £1,169. Every little helps, as they say.

At this time of cuts, it’s always worth bearing in mind the amount of fat that still hangs from parts of the public sector.

Angry that an election pledge of providing netbook access for schoolchildren looks to have been thrown further into doubt by chief whip Barbara Potter – “I thought that our whip was supposed to uphold policy not publicly dump it?” - he fired off an email to education supremo Vi Dempster. In response she claimed the Mercury report was incorrect, and urged him not to believe everything he read in the Press.

Don’t forget that the current proposed scheme has already been watered down from a bold pledge to provide netbook access to every school pupil in the city – to giving a bundle of netbooks to pupils at just ten schools. Plans are now on the table to reduce that even further to just five schools.

So next time Vi urges you not to believe everything you read in the papers, ask when you can start believing all of the headline pledges that appear in her party’s election literature.

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Update: Spotted the following comment from Labour’s Patrick Kitterick amongst the website comments on our story:

Tory Cllr Michael Johnson is being utterly hypocritical. He is currently at a Children’s Conference in Manchester staying a the Midland Hotel. The Total Cost to Leicester Citizens of this is £1000. So it’s Jollies for Tory Councillors but no internet access for some of the most deprived children in Leicester? “All in it together” not for Cllr Johnson in his cushy hotel.

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.