Kober

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Permalink Reply by Zena Brabazon on October 20, 2017 at 1:25

Michael's description is accurate, but I hope we backbenchers who have sat on the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Panel, scrutinising the HDV for a year, have demonstrated  - even with this very centralised system with formal power concentrated in the Leader and the Cabinet - that they can be challenged and be effectively held to account.  

As well as the scrutiny committees, we have asked question after question at the Cabinet, and made enquiry after enquiry in order to ensure there is accountability for decisions. The same legislation which brought in the Leader and Cabinet system also brought in the Scrutiny committees to provide a formal framework for accountability and checks and balances, and we have used that , as backbenchers, to hold the executive to account. 

Zena 

Zena Brabazon
Cllr, Harringay Ward

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Permalink Reply by DTW on October 18, 2017 at 16:13

Ok Michael and John other than an increase in members is there anything else?Most of these new members aren’t interested or motivated by local politics. I can’t see them turning out in the way people expect. In addition it’s wrong to think those members that aren’t blairite - it’s a useless term now but hey - are going to be motivated to change one council candidate for an incumbent other. This part of the world has always had a lot of members and I think they are likely to show loyalty to their existing councillors and friends

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on October 18, 2017 at 16:38

That’s not what it’s actually like DTW.
I’ve been in the Labour Party since Callaghan was PM and flares were cool and the last year or so has felt very different. You’re right of course that for many the motivation to join has been because of national changes but newer members also seem passionate about local issues. And you know what what, they turn up to ward meetings!
I really do feel that the group of candidates selected to stand in the 2018 local elections is going to feel very different from past years. But as always it depends on who turns up on the night and the that is hard to predict.
PS. I did say that Blarite/Corbynite is a rough way to describe the split in the party but I do know one person who stood in a previous selection round who actual describes themself as a Blair supporter on their Twitter account. And they’re not the only one to do that

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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on October 18, 2017 at 16:53

The increase in membership is incredibly important. You can't just gloss over that and say "what else?". In the past our Labour council candidates have been decided by a group of less than a dozen people (including the 3 candidates) and some horse trading. Then there was St Ann's in 2013 where five fraudsters and a complicit party bureaucracy allowed the selection of a party apparatchik, a local businessman and a HDV supporting trade unionist. This cannot happen with a hundred voices in the room. These councillors are then elected term after term by a group of people hundreds of time bigger than the original Labour Party selectorate that put them on the ticket. Size is important.

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