Dissent in the Tory ranks
It is perhaps a measure of the Birmingham Conservative group’s success in recent years that opposition is now growing from within.
Now the largest party in the council chamber and having spent almost five years in joint-control of the City Council, the humble backbenchers are feeling a little more comfortable to voice dissent to the diktats of leader Mike Whitby.
Just as in the pre-2004 era Labour’s ruling group had more trouble from its own internal factions than the official opposition.
A group of young, ambitious Tory councillors and emerging candidates have set up their own club, the Primrose League, where they no doubt sit around in finely upholstered leather chairs plotting policy initiatives and tax cuts.
The Primrose League, founded in honour of and to promote the ideals of Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, was disbanded a few years ago, but is now being revived by the young Brummies.
One of the founders, Coun Peter Smallbone, explains: “We need to keep applying Conservative principles more and more firmly to the way we run the council and the Primrose League is our way of helping deliver that goal.”
And they have already teamed up with a handful of grumbling colleagues to dismiss Leader Whitby’s Municipal Bank policy as a huge waste of time and money.
The minor rebellion is not being viewed at all favourably in cabinet circles, especially as the Conservative group meets next month to select leader, cabinet members and committee chairmen and women.
Iron Angle’s cabinet source said: “Mike led us out of 20 years in the political wilderness in Birmingham and they seem to have forgotten that.
“This boys’ club has about five years’ council experience between them. They are getting a bit above themselves. They ought to watch themselves.”
Speaking of Leader Whitby, that is exactly how he was referred to by director of planning and regeneration Clive Dutton at yesterday’s unveiling of the Library of Birmingham design.
Mr Dutton spoke about the ‘Leader’s vision’ for Birmingham, and the ‘Leader’s ambition’. Has he perhaps spent too long in the corridors of power in far more autocratic China and the Middle East?
And while we are on the launch, Councillor Whitby really did downgrade the Town Hall from a Grade one to Grade two listed building in front of the nation’s media.
* Readers may be aware that the council has a new BEST policy to encourage and motivate its staff with the mantra Belief, Excellence, Success and Trust.
But the strategists behind this great project have found themselves indulging in too much blue-sky thinking and not enough real-world thinking and forgotten to pay the electricity bill. It is what was described as an ‘issue with the electricity provider’ by an official spokeswoman.
With their computer screens plunged into darkness they, to coin another favoured corporation cliche, found a new direction of travel out of the Pitman building and into other offices.
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