A House Divided?

The full quote from Abraham Lincoln is, “a house divided against itself, cannot stand”. It is a salutary reminder to the current administration.

We thought that we would revisit the consultants’ report on the problems between Scrutiny and the Mayor and Cabinet. Have things improved, we ask?

We fear not.

The current administration clearly under values or indeed, sees no value in the scrutiny role. This does not appear to have changed.

We note that in the last few months, two chairs of scrutiny have changed. With the departure of Cllr Brooker and Cllr D. Lee-Phakoe there were elections for the chairs of the commissions they headed. In the election to replace Brooker, Cllr Lakmini Shah was elected. In the election to fill the gap left by Lee-Phakoe, Cllr Terry Paul was elected. Both are expected to bring a bit of gravitas to the role and to hold the mayor and cabinet to account. This will be welcome given the findings of the report at 3.7, (below).

Given that the opposition has never had more than one person on any of the scrutiny commissions the reference to “underlying tensions” puts what we already know into diplomatic language. The mayor does not have problems with the Greens, by and large. (She may experience more challenge from the Independents.) The mayor’s problems stem from her relationships, or lack thereof, with her Labour colleagues.

Councillors feel treated like ‘political mushrooms’ and the mayor has been the subject of complaints from colleagues about bullying.

We could not suppress a smile when we read (in 4.3) that unnamed members of the executive sought to “dominate” scrutiny meetings by the “length of time taken to answer questions”. Just who could they have been thinking of? Did they mean members in the plural, or were they being diplomatic when in fact they were really thinking of just one?

When scrutiny is able to have a meaningful impact, it seems to be diverted or ignored.

The distrust and level of hostility between executive and backbenchers must have been considerable, because the consultants return to the matter again.

It seems that the politics within the Labour Group have adversely affected the work of Scrutiny and therefore the work of the council.

Again, the consultants reflect upon the tendency of cabinet members to use bureaucratic means to undermine the work and effectiveness of Scrutiny.

In short, it is clear that the relationship between executive and back benchers is fraught and the relationship between members of the Labour Group is fractious.

That does not bode well for Labour in any forthcoming elections.

Once voters get used to the idea of voting for a different party, it is increasingly difficult to win them back.

But 2026 seems such a long time away.

As we have previously noted, at a time when Labour is staggeringly popular in the country as a whole, it is struggling in Newham. Gaza has an influence, (as did the Iraq invasion in 2003), but Mirza was elected with a thumping majority almost three months before Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli kibbutzim. Blaming Labour’s poor electoral performance on Gaza or fickle Muslims won’t wash.

Labour has an underlying problem of poor services and high taxes. It will be made worse when we learn where the £40m of cuts will be made, (but as we note in an accompanying article, Fiaz is attempting to delay publication of the budget as long as possible).

Until they are ready to address this and come up with some answers, we can expect to see the minority parties making inroads into what was once an impregnable Labour bastion.