Friday, May 23, 2014

Another Leicester councillor quits "divided and backstabbing" Labour

The Leicester Mercury reports:
A Leicester city councillor has quit the city's Labour party after claiming his former colleagues were divided and guilty of backstabbing. 
Councillor Wayne Naylor says he has left the party with “a heavy heart” after 12 years and will now represent the city’s Braunstone Park and Rowley Fields as an independent member.
Why the resignation? Apart from some unlikely claims about Labour members "being suspended or expelled across the country for actively demonstrating against Tory cuts," it seems that Naylor's support for another councillor who recently resigned from the Labour group, Barbara Potter, is behind this decision.

Because of the first past the post electoral system, Labour has 52 out of 54 councillors in Leicester - as well as the elected mayor, whom they are somehow supposed to hold to account while he wields the Labour whip on the council.

This absurd overrepresentation has not helped Labour councillors' behaviour on the authority, but they now seem set on providing the missing opposition from among their own ranks.

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