Local papers shed more light on the resignation of Blake Pain

Last night Blake Pain, the Conservative leader of Harborough District Council, announced his intention to resign his position at the end of a full meeting of the council.

The Leicester Mercury quotes my old friend Simon Galton, a Liberal Democrat councillor:

"It was bizarre the way it happened. It got right to the end of the meeting and then the chairman said there was one more bit of urgent business - a statement from the leader. And then he resigned. I think only one or two people knew about it in advance. 

"He said the Tories want a change of direction so I looks like he didn’t want to go."”

But it is the Harborough Mail that gives us a clue to the politics behind his resignation:

Signs of strain within the ruling Conservative group on the council were evident in July, when half a dozen Conservative councillors criticised their own leadership in a public meeting. 

They claimed that council funds were distributed unevenly round the district, with Market Harborough getting more than its fair share. A council team is now looking into the claim.

You heard the claim that all the money is spent in Market Harborough back when I was a member of the council.

In part that is because you hear such charges in many of the large rural districts the Conservatives created in the early 1970s. Their reorganisation yoked together many communities that had no particular connection with one another.

And in part it was because the rural councillors, or at least the rural Conservatives and the rural Independents who were Conservative Party members on the quiet, were not very good at organsising themselves to press for the spending they wanted.

They tended to wait until something was planned for Market Harborough and then complain that it was not being built in their ward.

Anyway, it's good to see such an informed report in the Harborough Mail.