Brian Coleman suspended by the Conservative Party

There is an extraordinary report on the Times newspaper website, stating that Brian Coleman has been suspended by the national Conservative Party. The local Tories were due to vote on whether to keep him in the party yesterday evening. It seems that the national party ran out of patience and didn't trust the local mob to do the decent thing. The news was kept under wraps until the local meeting. It appears that the local vote was cancelled as a result.


http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/topstories/10016152.Brian_Coleman_suspended_from_national_Conservative_Party/

When I heard of this, I was reminded of the classic song "yesterdays papers" by the Rolling Stones. It seems that right now, no one wants Brian Coleman. He is very much yesterdays papers. There is a line in the third verse which says

"And all of these people just can't wait 
To fall right into their big mistake"

The sad truth is that when Brian Coleman was arrested for assault, this was the reaction of just about everyone I knew. It wasn't a shock, everyone just seemed to think it was a matter of time before something happened. It took two standards hearings, the "sad, mad and two old hags" comment, an arrest and a charge, and still the local Conservative party locally did nothing. In the end Cameron and Co had enough. I wonder what credibility is left now for Richard Cornelius and his merry men. If their own party can't trust them to make a decision about their own members, how on earth can anyone trust them to run the Borough.

Brian Coleman has brought the way Barnet is being run into sharp focus. Yesterday was yet another appalling day in Barnet politics for the Conservatives. As well as the local party in effect being declared unfit to administer itself by the national party, we had the undeifying spectacle of Councillor Robert Rams, Barnets libraries supremo, announcing that one year after stating that a landmark library would be opened at the Arts Depot, this wouldn't be happening because the rent was too high. I run several businesses and my family has run a commercial property business in Mill Hill since 1977. The very first thing you put on your business case, before anything else is added are the known costs. The biggest of these is usually the rent. The fact that Rams only found out it was too high, a year after the annoucement shows that he is totally unfit for the job. Rams and Coleman are close buddies. Coleman was GLA rep from 2000 to 2012 and Rams runs the Conservative office at the GLA.

I would suggest that if the Tories actually a few selected people who have a bit of experience in jobs where they were spending their own money, rather than taxpayers, and realised that the customer is king, maybe they would have avoided all of these pitfals. As it is, like lemmings in search of a cliff, if they fall off a cliff and survive, their first reaction is "I survived that, where can I find a bigger cliff to leap off".

Brian Coleman is most definately yesterdays man although it seems likely that he will still be in the papers for a few weeks. The Rolling Stones sang in verse 2 of "Yesterdays papers":

I'm living a life of constant change  
Every day means the turn of a page 
Yesterdays papers are such bad news  
Same thing applies to me and you

He could have sung this to his colleagues at the Tory group meeting. What none of them seems to have twigged is that what is bad for Brian Coleman is bad for the whole lot of them. To the people of Barnet, he is their figurehead and the fact that the national party had to step in to suspend him, shows that they must still support him. Shameful really.

(Coleman also made the ITV London Tonight news - http://www.itv.com/news/london/update/2012-10-30/coleman-suspended/ )