Barnet Council, bullying and localism

[Jaybird37]

For anyone not local, there have been lots of allegations of bullying within the Conservative group in Barnet Council, where Brian Coleman is the whip.

First there was a vote for a massive increase in some councillors allowances in July (100% increases). The one Conservative councillor who abstained was publicly humiliated at the end of the meeting by being stripped of all her committee roles (and the allowances doled out to supporters of the current leadership).

Then there was a leadership challenge by a newly elected Councillor, Mark Shooter, who wrote in a public letter "To me leadership is about more than cobbling together some decisions with a few friends and then bullying others into submission"

conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2010/09/final-pitch-for-barnet-council-leadership-challenge.html

Last night the vote took place. The current leader won by only one vote (incredibly narrow given that her challenger had only been a councillor for 3 months). However one of the local bloggers says he has received reports of "physical intimidation" of the councillors whilst they were voting

www.notthebarnettimes.co.uk/

Grant Shapps MP called the decision to increase allowances insane, but was powerless to do anything about it.

Is this really the flaw in the localism argument, that local Conservative associations are the only ones with the power to deselect, so individuals can stuff them full of their cronies and so secure a power-base, rather like Militant Tendency did within the Labour party in Liverpool in the 80s?

Brian Coleman is an embarrassment to the Conservative party. But if the people of Barnet don't like him, they can vote him out.

In general I would prefer more open primaries to select MPs - though it isn't really feasible at the councillor level.

Brian Coleman by himself isn't an argument against localism.

What do you mean 'physical intimidation'?

I don't know anything about internal council workings but Brian Coleman does seem to be out and about supporting events a lot in Barnet and he doesn't seem to be unpopular. People seem to quite like to see him.

Are the Barnet Conservatives all falling out with each other then?

Brian Coleman is a wanker, that's for sure. All you have to do is read his pieces in the local paper to realise that.

Barnet itself is pretty well run and nice to live in though, so I can't get into a frenzy about it IYSWIM.

I don't even know which ward he is councillor for... Barnet has large chunks of super-tory areas, so if he's in one of those it's unlikely he'll ever get voted out, even if he was filmed taking a dump on a war memorial and machine gunning immigrants.