Town Hall Blues

The turmoil within the Conservative Group on Tunbridge Wells Borough Council continues.  Details are spread across two pages of the local newspaper.  How much is hard fact is difficult to gauge.  It is reported that:

• The Group split down the middle on the vote on no confidence in the Leader.  The paper understands the majority was one.
• Ratification of the decision at a meeting of the Group next Monday is uncertain. There is a move to suspend a councillor from the Group for allegedly breaching Group rules by failing to support Tory policy and for leaking information.
• The Conservative Mayor is quoted as saying that in his twenty years on the council he has never known it to be so fractured.  The Liberal Democrat Group when it controlled the Council had its fair share of splits and factions, so if it worse than that it must be very bad indeed.
• Two councillors have indicated they will stand should the vote go against the Leader on Monday. One is Councillor Atwood who, as mentioned before in this blog, is ambitious and has a high regard for his own abilities.

This is a sorry mess.  Under the present constitution the Leader of the Council is decided by the members of the majority group. The Leader selects members of the Cabinet.  All this is done behind closed doors.

How much better if the people had a say in whom the leader should be.  Tunbridge Wells should have an elected mayor as leader, elected by the whole electorate.  The town's MP, Greg Clark, is a minister in the Local Government Department.  The Department is pushing a bill through Parliament for elected mayors in a number of cities.  The shambles in his own back yard should encourage him to put forward legislative proposals for directly elected mayors in all first and second tier local authorities.