Friday 20 August 2010

A tale of two leadership contests

The tension is mounting here in Barnet as Tory group and council leader Lynne Hillan prepares to go head-to-head with Mark Shooter. This bout is scheduled for Tuesday 7 September, at an undisclosed location (well, I don't know where it's happening).

The odds are shortening on Hillan (I can't remember how I know, but I know!). She has done enough, backing down over Allowancegate, and she has enough cronies about her to see off the challenge from the plutocratic whippersnapper. But her career has almost certainly been shortened by this episode, and Shooter might make a name for himself and go on to greater things. (Or he might just be a nice, ineffectual posh boy who... goes on to greater things cf Matthew Offord.)

I forget why I started this blogpost... oh, yeah! The other party...

The other one, no, not the one that's being led by the nose by David Cameron's Tories. The one that ran the country (ha!) until a few months ago. The Labour Party.

Of course, the Labour Party have their own rather less interesting leadership contest going on, for leader of the party nationally, the man (or woman!) who would be PM.

Hendon Constituency Labour Party is endorsing Ed Miliband in this contest. It's only an endorsement and is not binding on anyone's votes. Members of the Labour Party and affiliated trade unions and Labour MPs will all have an individual vote - they'll just be weighted outrageously heavily in favour of MPs. Ain't democracy grand?!

Predictably, I (yes, I get a vote!) am going to vote for Diane Abbott, the most left-wing candidate (I'm not sure she actually qualifies as left). I think the worst of the candidates I have seen is Ed Balls. He gave the most creepy and inept performance in the "Newsnight" debate a few weeks back; he has been the most willing to tap into xenophobia; and I saw him in action at the teachers' unions' lobby of Parliament against the axing of Building Schools for the Future. (Ridiculous pic below of Balls trying to look noble next to a dishy blonde.)

Ad Miliband (I call him that because he sounds adenoidal) will be answering questions at an event organised by Hendon CLP this Sunday. I'll miss it, as I will be stuck in motorway traffic heading back into London from Milton Keynes (see previous blogpost) - hmm, not such a bad idea going there, after all.

In spite of the strong challenge by his younger brother, I predict David Miliband will win ultimately. But is anyone watching?

Here's that pic of Ed "Queen Bee" Balls I promised you:

7 comments:

Citizen Barnet said...

This is how I found out that Hillan is unlikely to lose:
http://barnetcouncil.net/

It is the return of a blogger that blogged before my time, Statler and Waldorf "Heck[l]ing from the Balcony ...since March 2007".

(You need to put an 'l' in there, fellas - fuzzy hugs.)

franklymydear said...

But they haven't listed the rest of the electorate -there's 37 of them. So she could lose.

Jaybird said...

I think Statler and Waldorf are just speculating to be honest.

Barnet Bugle suggests that a number of councillors have been rubbed up the wrong way recently - see items on Hugh Rayner, Richard Cornelius, and also Mike Freer's influence.

http://www.barnetbugle.com/journal/2010/8/14/mike-freer-calls-mark-shooter-a-great-and-highly-talented-co.html

Anonymous said...

Warning - the weird Hillan promoting web site, the London Daily News, is about to relaunch!

Customer Service update – August 11 2009

To all our readers our site will be down over August intermittently for server repairs and for our new website to launch. We hope this to happen over the last days of August when everyone is on the beach enjoying the sun. We expect normal service to resume once our computer boffins have cleared up all those nasty bugs in our systems and launch our new site.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that was last year!

The current rubbish is the relaunch???

Anonymous said...

The dishy blond is Speaker Bercow's wife

Citizen Barnet said...

Did anyone see Newsnight last night? There was a cringe-making item on David Miliband's Parties for David.

That alone should disqualify him from getting the post. It's astonishing that he hasn't got the time to go and visit people when they take the trouble to put on a supporters' party, and sends along a third-rate vid instead.

This is not the United States, he is not Obama, and the electorate is only the small number of Labour Party/affiliated trade union members. And he's supposed to be learning from Obama!

Go and press the flesh you lazy, smooth slob!