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Post by batman on Mar 27, 2023 15:22:48 GMT
I think there's some truth to that. We often pick up members through activity, who then get active, delivering Focus and so on, who then become candidates, who can then get elected as councillors - without anyone really saying "are you actually a liberal?". I think it is a reasonable point to say we have tended to be more vulnerable to defections than the other main parties. I used to know someone who stood once as a Lib Dem candidate (around the time of the Iraq war) having been encouraged on the doorstep. She pointed out that she wasn't a member and wasn't really a Lib Dem : "Oh" came the reply "You don't need to be". When I did postgrad music at Sussex University, the faculty secretary was persuaded in a pub to stand for the Liberals in the local elections. She wasn't just not even a member, she didn't generally even vote for them, being basically a Labour supporter. She did it for a laugh and like most Brighton Liberals was not anywhere being elected |
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Post by batman on Mar 27, 2023 15:27:57 GMT
We never had a whip. Preferred it to the somewhat heavy-handed Labour approach summed up by a leisure committee debate on whether to permit fishing in our parks. A Labour councillor spoke strongly against, then voted for. When I asked him why he replied "group decision - whipped". Without a whip are you actually a group, really? yes, definitely. In 1994 only 2 Labour councillors were elected in Richmond-upon-Thames (which was 2 more than in any other elections the previous 20 years). 2 people isn't really a group, but the Council's Standing Orders required the 2 councillors to form a group, with a leader (it was agreed to alternate the leadership for the next four years assuming no change to the size of the "group"). In 1998 we went up to 4 councillors after gaining 2 seats in Mortlake, with yours truly narrowly missing out, and became a proper group with a proper leader, however the group (to which I was honoured to be co-opted & invited to the meetings) decided not to have a whip, and indeed it was never necessary. Our seats were gerrymandered and we lost all our councillors in 2002, so far never to return except briefly through defections. |
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Post by aargauer on Mar 27, 2023 15:34:42 GMT
Without a whip are you actually a group, really? yes, definitely. In 1994 only 2 Labour councillors were elected in Richmond-upon-Thames (which was 2 more than in any other elections the previous 20 years). 2 people isn't really a group, but the Council's Standing Orders required the 2 councillors to form a group, with a leader (it was agreed to alternate the leadership for the next four years assuming no change to the size of the "group"). In 1998 we went up to 4 councillors after gaining 2 seats in Mortlake, with yours truly narrowly missing out, and became a proper group with a proper leader, however the group (to which I was honoured to be co-opted & invited to the meetings) decided not to have a whip, and indeed it was never necessary. Our seats were gerrymandered and we lost all our councillors in 2002, so far never to return except briefly through defections. Seems strange these days that mortlake was your power base at all - however the boundaries were drawn! |
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iain
Lib Dem
Posts: 9,771 
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Post by iain on Mar 27, 2023 15:56:26 GMT
It's also the case that many groups without a whip do have a 'group line', which to all intents and purposes is the same thing. That's been the case with the Lib Dem groups I know of, even if they then boast that they don't have a whip. Certainly that is true where we're in power.
Generally I think it has only really been a problem for the Green Party (or more accurately, other parties working with them in power), who are more 'genuinely' whipless.
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Post by batman on Mar 27, 2023 20:15:44 GMT
yes, definitely. In 1994 only 2 Labour councillors were elected in Richmond-upon-Thames (which was 2 more than in any other elections the previous 20 years). 2 people isn't really a group, but the Council's Standing Orders required the 2 councillors to form a group, with a leader (it was agreed to alternate the leadership for the next four years assuming no change to the size of the "group"). In 1998 we went up to 4 councillors after gaining 2 seats in Mortlake, with yours truly narrowly missing out, and became a proper group with a proper leader, however the group (to which I was honoured to be co-opted & invited to the meetings) decided not to have a whip, and indeed it was never necessary. Our seats were gerrymandered and we lost all our councillors in 2002, so far never to return except briefly through defections. Seems strange these days that mortlake was your power base at all - however the boundaries were drawn! these days yes, but it does have a substantial minority of social housing (mostly council-built, but including some ex-brewery, now Guinness Trust, dwellings & other housing association stock) and in days gone by some of the terraced housing was quite working-class in nature, as were some of the private maisonettes off Mortlake High Street. In 1971, Labour's majority in Mortlake ward, which in those days included the very early council estate Manor Grove, was about 1,200, which stood as an all-party record for the borough until the Liberals overhauled it a decade later. In general housing has always tended to be more modestly-proportioned in Mortlake than in East Sheen across the railway. The presence of Watney's brewery and other light industry made it a relatively working-class area for this borough. Labour's wins in Ham & Petersham (or in the 2 eponymous separate wards in the 1964 elections) were because at that time a majority of the homes were council-built (it's still a very substantial minority), mainly because of the presence of Hawker Siddeley a few yards over the borough boundary in Kingston. |
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CatholicLeft
Labour
2032 posts until I was "accidentally" deleted.
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Post by CatholicLeft on Mar 27, 2023 20:56:52 GMT
Jackie Coade, former Alliance Party candidate for the Newry and Armagh at the last two General and Assembly electiions, who quit the party last November (I think) has joined the SDLP. whilst stating she is not a nationalist, but interested in a "conversation about unity."
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Post by tucson on Mar 28, 2023 0:15:48 GMT
Reminds me of a Quaker friend who asked why I wasn't one, and when I said I didn't believe in God replied, "Oh, don't worry about that dear, lot's of Quakers don't believe in God!" I heard a description of Unitarians that claimed given the choice between proof that God existed and a debate about whether that was true, a Unitarian would choose the debate every time. As a Unitarian, that’s definitely true! And at the end of the discussion, nothing would be agreed to anyway lol |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Mar 28, 2023 12:20:04 GMT
Another of the "left-wing Leicester councillors purged by Starmer" joins the Conservatives.
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Post by mattbewilson on Mar 28, 2023 13:00:42 GMT
Another of the "left-wing Leicester councillors purged by Starmer" joins the Conservatives. Vaz right hand man |
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Post by batman on Mar 28, 2023 14:18:47 GMT
Well I always said that Keithy was a Tory underneath it all. Let's see if he does the same
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Post by kevinf on Mar 28, 2023 16:45:59 GMT
Another of the "left-wing Leicester councillors purged by Starmer" joins the Conservatives. Has anyone actually described them as left-wing? |
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Post by carolus on Mar 28, 2023 17:02:14 GMT
Apparently one last bit of excitement coming from Barrow:
Barrow-in-Furness, Parkside. Iain Mooney, Labour to Communist Party of Britain.
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Post by gwynthegriff on Mar 28, 2023 17:43:11 GMT
Apparently one last bit of excitement coming from Barrow: Barrow-in-Furness, Parkside. Iain Mooney, Labour to Communist Party of Britain. Now that's a defection ! |
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Post by timrollpickering on Mar 28, 2023 17:45:36 GMT
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Post by carolus on Mar 28, 2023 17:54:48 GMT
You read it here first  |
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Post by greatkingrat on Mar 28, 2023 17:55:23 GMT
Reminds me of George Gardiner defecting to the Referendum Party a week or so before the end of the session in 1997.
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r34t
Non-Aligned
Posts: 530
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Post by r34t on Mar 28, 2023 17:58:55 GMT
Apparently one last bit of excitement coming from Barrow: Barrow-in-Furness, Parkside. Iain Mooney, Labour to Communist Party of Britain. That has to be for the lolz, or a couple of beers at least |
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Post by aargauer on Mar 28, 2023 18:00:29 GMT
Apparently one last bit of excitement coming from Barrow: Barrow-in-Furness, Parkside. Iain Mooney, Labour to Communist Party of Britain. A reverse boogie |
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Post by rcronald on Mar 28, 2023 18:07:47 GMT
How bad is the potential collapse in Leicester East? Leicester Labour has already suffered defections and 4 woeful by-elections there.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Mar 28, 2023 19:08:44 GMT
First Communist councillor in Britain since Willie Clarke retired from Fife council in 2016 (though he was fighting elections as an Independent in the last few decades of his career).
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