They run Sandwell but the seventy Labour councillors demonstrated their inability to organise the proverbial party in a brewery when it came to their own leadership election.
The election was first delayed by controversy over publication of the Gowling (Wragge) report. Mistake number one was that the report was commissioned to be a confidential document with limited circulation. How, in view of its contents, anyone could have expected it to remain so, beggars belief. Serious errors of judgement, as well as a display of arrogance, were shown by those who resorted to litigation to ban its public release. However, once a court had ruled for publication, the leadership election could proceed.
The conclave of notables, (should readers have difficulty in recognising this description we make clear the reference is to Sandwell’s Labour councillors) met to elect their chief and thus council leader on Friday 20th May. Absent, but no doubt a significant spectre at the feast was Cllr Mahboob Hussain, once all powerful but now the hunted quarry of colleagues who had previously kow- towed before him.
This is a point made, by Sandwell former Labour councillor, Mick Davies. The self-proclaimed whistle-blower on the dodgy land deals, was reported to state, by the Evesham Journal (the more local Express and Star has historically shown a reluctance to engage in this issue, whether through timidity or because its mouth was stopped with Sandwell Council advertising gold) that “Others are complicit by their silence”. Mr Davies, then went on to put the almost revolutionary view that “Officers named in the report as falling well short of the professional conduct expected should be sacked”
At the 20th May vote there were two candidates, a third having withdrawn beforehand, Despite this, one of the clots voted for the candidate who had withdrawn and for one of the remaining candidates. This was unfortunate because the others divided equally; 34 for Cllr. Eling and 34 for Cllr. Yvonne Davies. After an almighty row had resulted, because, as the voting indicates, the Sandwell Labour party is split between left and right and Labour councillors reserve particular venom for their colleagues, the meeting adjourned to try again.
Before they re-met, lobbying and fixing reached fever pitch. The Eling camp, possibly with connivance from higher up in their new stalinist party, found cause to disqualify 11 councillors from voting on the basis that they had not paid their subs to the Labour party. The end result was a triumph or more accurately a win for Cllr. Eling.
He has since proclaimed “I am going to run this council from now on with honesty, openness and transparency as three guiding principles.” Many relying on this assurance might suppose Cllr. Eling had been parachuted in as a reforming, even avenging, angel from some socialist heaven. A kind of Indiana Jones in the Sandwell temple of doom. Nothing of the kind. He is an old Sandwell socialist sweat; deputy leader in charge of finance under the late Cllr. Cooper’s leadership and previously under the leadership of the disgraced, and now defunct, Bill Thomas, a cabinet colleague of Cllr. Mahboob Hussain and on the periphery of the “loos scandal”. He was, according to Gowling, responsible for pulling Bearwood lavatories out of the deal.
Still it is refreshing that Cllr. Eling had something new to say. Usually, his public statements tend to blame everything from Noah’s flood to Ukraine winning Eurovision on what he calls “the cuts”. Though he is unable to reconcile these “woe woe and thrice woe” statements with his boasts that, under his financial stewardship, Sandwell has preserved front line services.
A countryman by inclination, Cllr. Eling is Chairman of Warley Woods Trust and has a home in rural Derbyshire, which is handy as being nearer to Rotherham than his Sandwell pied a terre. Rotherham, another Labour dominated authority and no stranger to scandals itself, is where Cllr. Eling has a lucrative part time job with the council. We wonder who will be minding the Sandwell shop, let alone cleaning out its stables.