Very very weird. The time as I write this is 20:15. I chatted for ten minutes to Alex from the Times for ten minutes after the meeting finished as well as an esteemed Barnet blogess and a couple of councillors. The meeting started at 19:00. Normally these things go on for hours. Item after item was passed with no questions. Not trifling matters but weighty tomes such as the corporate parenting strategy.
There was one notable absentee - Councillor Brian Coleman. The only light hearted moment was when Vicki Morris asked a question and Lynne Hillan asked Robert Rams to field it. His squeaky voice reduced the public chamber to hysterics. His answer was as one may expect - vacuous.
The feeling was like an end of season match where everyone knows the manager will get the sack at the end. Everyone is very nice to each other. Cllr Harper laughed at Hillans jokes. Hillan praised all and sundry. She even asked Cllr Rayner to present a paper. His response - he didn't have one, he'd come to enjoy the debate. As there wasn't one, I suspect he was disappointed.
I suppose they all thought that it wasn't worth the effort, given that they'll be out of a job tomorrow (or at least most of them will).
All in all it was a surreal experience, like my visit to the USSR as it fell. I love the smell of failing Empires.
I hope all you wonderful bloggers have ways and means to inform the world of the leadership contest tomorrow evening. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
ReplyDeleteTonight must have been similar to the last Pa Broon cabinet in Downing Street last spring.
The game is up. Either she goes, or the leadership will be a running sore, constantly derided and mocked - by the opposition parties, but also by much of the Conservative grass roots.
You are right, Baarnett: the game is up, one way or the other. Anyone who has any intelligence realises this, and anyone who doesn't is probably a Tory councillor.
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