Labour walkout over Lib Dem dirty tricks
Lambeth’s Labour Councillors walked out of a Council meeting this week in protest at the “dirty tricks” emails accidentally sent to a Labour Councillor. Steve Reed, Leader of the Labour Opposition demanded that the Leader of the Council dismiss the Councillors concerned and publicly distance the administration from their controversial comments. As a result of his refusal to take action, Labour Councillors showed their disgust by walking out. Last week Labour denounced the e-mails sent by Liberal Councillors which described planning agreements as “bribes” and discussed how to deny a local MP credit for a campaign for more GPs in Streatham. They also exposed Lib Dem Councillor Angie Meader using her position as Health Scrutiny Chair for party political purposes. At the time of the walkout, Members of the Administration were launching a cross party consultation on a Regeneration Strategy. Labour Councillors’ protest sought to highlight the hypocrisy of launching a cross party consultation whilst the Administration tolerated underhand behaviour from their own senior members. The walk out was a one-off demonstration and Labour Group will participate fully with the proposed consultation. Cllr Steve Reed, Leader of Lambeth’s Labour Group commented: “The “dirty tricks” of Councillors Meader and Sanders meant that the Labour had to draw a line in the sand. Either the Liberals and Tories want to engage with residents and stakeholders or they want to use us for their own petty games.” “We want to improve services in Lambeth for all its people. Our protest tonight is to show residents that we stand for a different kind of local politics which is focused on their needs, not short-term political gain.” “If the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council will not stand up for higher standards in public life, then we will.” Click
here (593kb PDF) to see the South London Press article covering this,
together with examples of the emails sent. |
