Most people expect the bother at this month's Labour Party Conference to come from the Left. But while many of those will be in town for The World Transformed, which is now the main event, barely any will be attending the Conference.
That will be a gathering of Hard Rightists, if they were anything politically, who had been on councillors' allowances until May, often as their only official incomes, but who longer were, and who no longer controlled vast sums of Council Tax, of business rates, of pension funds looking to invest, of sweeteners and backhanders from property developers and others, and so on, as well as vast powers of patronage in the allocation of council housing, of better council housing, of jobs with the council, of better jobs with the council, and so forth.
They had hated Jeremy Corbyn, but they had never lost their precious seats under him. Indeed, here in Lanchester, Labour had gained a seat in 2017, before losing both of them in 2021. That 2017 result was not an isolated incident. Those local elections, which are usually presented as having been a disaster for Labour, were in fact a mixed bag. The disaster was this year, under Keir Starmer. Or, at least, the first disaster to date. There are many more to come.
You might be onto something here, there are some very angry ex-councillors around.
ReplyDeleteAnd an awful lot of them these days.
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