Northumberland is at a crossroads

We have a County Council that is not trusted by local councils and a leadership that is so tied up in their own pockets that they cannot see beyond next months allowances.

We have seen a decade where everything they have touched has turned to dust.

I did once think that they were holding on to power for ideological reasons - that they thought the County Council was the only one to take through Labour policies.
I was naïve.

Allowances have gone up so much that some councillors now describe themselves as ‘full time councillors’. That is part of the problem not an answer to them.

Everyone is against them and their future.
MPs Districts, the public, even their own unions, nowadays the papers describe them as a destitute spent force.

Now even their own councillors have taken a stand and are voting against the Executive, that is the centre of all their woes.

How else can we explain why Bill Brooks will not allow the full council to vote on support for a single unitary.

As one senior officer put it – he has been painted into a corner, only he hasn’t worked that out yet!

I don’t know whether or not the Tories would carry them through, carrying 8-10 Labour councillors that want to vote against the party line,whatever - they are staring down the barrel of a Tory or Liberal run authority.

The latest treachery by Bill Brooks has a lot in his group dazed and not knowing which way to go.
His leadership is weak and the wolves are circling to take over – what chance John Whiteman making a come back?

As Bills nemesis, Bob Watson wrote, ‘ Bill has stated the obvious – he cannot work with other partners’ – not a good start for a unitary bid is it?

He has two ways to go, after crying off any future partnership working

Win the government round to thinking one huge single unitary will suffice, at which point all the Labour support in the South East of the county will fade away. Bill had hoped for a continuing authority – one in which he would see out his current term of office. The latest announcement from DCLG puts paid to that then.

With no general election to bolster his election chances and with the threatened disintegration of his own CLP a likelihood – he stands to get only 20 seats on any new single authority, based on last years elections.

The latest tittle-tattle from Morpeth, amongst the officers, is that there is a strategy in which the Government seeing there is to be a blood letting in Northumberland and that the preferred option of a single unitary is not universally welcome, they will stop the move and re-instate the option of closer working.
As Bills other arch-nemesis has said his ‘hat is on a shugley peg’.

Bill knows which ever way he turns his time is up – his colleagues are hoping he will fall on his sword after publicly stating he, he not the council, cannot work with the districts. He knows he will have to do a volte-face if he wishes to salvage anything.

Divinity