The Council meeting on Wednesday, 30th July was the first proper meeting since the May elections (the meeting on 11th June was concerned only with AGM business). There were a number of new councillors present at their first proper meeting sat down in the Chamber (rather than up in the public gallery). Several councillors from the last session returned, their old enmities magnified by the weeks away campaigning. One thing, however, is clear: the Council’s problem is that it has still not decided what the Council meeting is actually for, now that we have an Executive Mayor.
Cllr Rachael Saunders has a very different style of leadership from her immediate predecessor Cllr Siraj Islam (who had a nasty headache last night, poor love) and from Cllr Joshua Peck before that. At one point in the meeting, someone suggested that Cllr Peck was still in charge, with Cllr Saunders just a yes-woman. It was hard not to follow the example of the Labour benches and collapse into hysterical laughter at that one: the idea of Cllr Saunders letting anyone tell her what to do is preposterous. That, however, is another way of saying that she isn’t keen on taking advice from anyone. Ultimately, Cllr Saunders is more of the same: the voters were wrong to have elected Mayor Rahman and Labour has carte blanche (sic) to do whatever is necessary to save the voters from themselves. It’s a tried and tested theory. It was good enough to lose Labour the last election, and it will be good enough to lose them the next one.
The Tories have yet to gel their five members into a group. Cllr Peter Golds is still articulate and cutting; the new councillor Chris Chapman is articulate and his slightly condescending demeanour is probably just part of him finding his feet; and new councillor Julie Dockerill spoke well but with their air of someone who has yet to work out which meeting they are at. Give them time. It must be difficult being a Tory in Tower Hamlets.
Tower Hamlets First did not really put on their best show. There were a couple of flashes of fabulous oratory of the kind that makes you glad to be involved in politics. Cllr Alibor Choudhury traded verbal punches with Cllr Golds to the point where Labour and the Tories joined forces to shut him up. This drew a spirited response from Cllr Oliur Rahman, who found the fire in his belly that has been lacking of late and, for probably the only time in the whole meeting, injected some real politics into the show. Most of the gallery loved it, but it is not the stuff of an administration which is trying to put across how it is running the Borough – which brings us back to the original question: what is the Council for?
Members of the public can bring petitions and can ask questions of the Mayor, which are answered by relevant Cabinet Members. Only three petitions are allowed, and only time for half a dozen questions is allotted: this is not enough to provide genuine public accountability of the Mayor and Cabinet (who, in any event, are not really answerable to the Council as they are directly elected or appointed). Most public petitions and questions are planted by one party or another or, if a genuine member of the public slips through, their cause is hi-jacked by one party or another.
Councillors can bring motions to the Chamber. On rare occasions – this time, on Gaza; once before, on Stephen Lawrence – the Chamber finds itself momentarily united. On most other occasions the motions are just more political point scoring. Even if a genuine motion slips through – as with new Cllr Rachel Blake’s motion on cycling at this meeting – it is not clear what could happen as a result. Cllr Blake hoped that officers would work on her motion anyway, even if she couldn’t win cross party support in the Chamber. That rather misses the point of an executive mayor: the Council has delegated executive power to him, and councillors can’t claw parts of that back in a burst of resolutionary politics. Mayor Rahman offered the Labour Group seats in Cabinet way back in 2010 and they told him to take a running jump (to put it politely): they can’t go back on that position now.
There are some statutory duties the Council meeting has to fulfil: agreeing various reports on strategies and so forth, and the annual wrangle when councillors try to use their power over setting a budget to mess up the Mayor’s plans for exercising his delegated authority. Perhaps we would be better off if the Council meetings restricted themselves to those brief statutory duties and we had ward based arenas to hold the mayor and/or our own councillors to account or boroughwide opportunities such as the London Mayor provides (Ken Livingstone having set the standard on this one). However, we’ve said that before and no one paid any notice. We’re probably in for another four years of watching our councillors playing “Prime Minister’s Question Time” under the warm glow of the Council’s CCTV.
We’ll add some specific reports of agenda items shortly.