Unprecedented!

Key to any mayor’s success is their ability to pass a budget. It is their ability to raise and spend money that shapes their programme. If they don’t have control of their budget, if they lose the support of their party, they become lame-ducks. 

At 9pm on Monday 19th February, (Yep, 9pm the meeting started!!!) the Labour Group gathered to discuss their response to the mayor’s budget proposals. Before them was a motion to adopt the 15 amendments suggested by the Budget Working Party.

The mayor, obviously, had been lobbying hard to have her budget accepted by the Labour Group, unamended. 

The proposal to accept the Budget Working Party recommendations was tabled by councillors Garfield and Booker. For the first time in the history of Newham Council, there was a serious attempt to overturn the budget presented on behalf of the executive. This was not an odd amendment; it was a root and branch savaging of the mayor’s proposals.

The Budget Working Party had gone to great lengths to critique the budget and offer changes and it was clear that a number of Labour councillors were willing to challenge the mayor. It bodes well for Labour that those leading this challenge were amongst the younger members, those who will be critical to any future administration.

At 9pm the debate began. At around 10pm the vote was called.

Three members of the Group abstained.

Those voting for the Garfield/Booker proposals 27.

Those voting for the mayor’s unamended budget, 27.

This was the stuff of high drama. The decision fell to the Chair of the Labour Group, Cllr Lakmini Shah. This was not simply about yes or no to the budget. How Shah voted would deter mine the future of Fiaz’s tenure. And Shah voted for the Garfield/Booker proposal.

The mayor’s budget would be amended.

This caused some degree of uproar. Points of order were tabled in an attempt to overturn the vote. The trouble for the mayor and her allies was that to overturn the Chair’s ruling, she needed to get two-thirds of those present to support her. She had just demonstrated that she didn’t have the support of half!

Needless to say, the attempt to overturn the ruling of the Chair, failed.

In what must be the greatest of a long line of humiliations at the hands of the Labour Group, mayor Fiaz now has to go back and rewrite her budget incorporating the recommendations of the Budget Working Party. If she fails to do this, she risks half of the Labour Group voting against her budget at full council.

If she had presented that budget in good time, say in early December, she might have had a chance to make changes. Given that this all came so late in the day, she and her senior staff will have some long nights pondering what to do. She will be under internal pressure to retain the budget and, if political necessity requires, amend in the new financial year. But if this is the course she chooses to adopt, she risks a greater humiliation when the budget comes to full council.

The Labour Group has adopted the Budget working Party recommendations; that is their policy position. Introducing a budget that fails to incorporate this, will be a budget that is contrary to that policy. How do you whip a Group to support a budget that the Group has rejected?

It is now quite clear. Fiaz has lost the confidence of her Labour Group. There is a new mood being championed by younger councillors who seem determined to make Labour electable again.

Once upon a time, a politician in this position would have resigned. That was in the olden days when politicians’ used terms like honour and responsibility. We don’t expect it here, but Labour have begun to show that they might just have what it takes to set a new agenda and tackle the challenges from other parties and in delivering for the people of the borough.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are lumbered with a lame-duck-mayor.