I got an email today from a reader of this blog asking if I was fed up with Barnet Tory blogger Dan Hope AKA TheBarnetBugle making snide comments about me and my blog. My response? Mr Hope has banned me from viewing his twitter feed so he can say what he likes and I'd never be any the wiser. Anyway, as I do have a way of checking what he is saying, I thought I'd have a peek and sure enough, Mr Hope is chipping away with snide comments, safe in the knoweldge that I don't see them. So having reviewed them, I can now answer the question. Nope, I'm not fed up. If Mr Hope wants to make bitchy comments, it's a free country and good luck to him, I suppose it makes him happy. What was far more interesting was the fact that Mr Hope seems to have decided that it is a good time to jump on the BackBrianColeman bandwagon for the GLA Elections and has posted a stream of Twitter posts praising the good Councillor Coleman. Again it's a free country and one shouldn't be too surprised that a Tory activist and former Councillor supports their GLA candidate, but it is rather a volte face for Mr Hope given some of his previous comments. Like many Barnet Tories, Hope is rather too concerned with Town Hall politics to give a stuff how this may affect residents and businesses in Barnet. Here is one typical Tweet from Hope, praising Coleman for his effectiveness in the Town Hall.
Got to give #BrianColeman credit. He is running rings around Cornelius and the Cons Group over scratchcards. Killing them with detail.
Clearly Hope thinks that a BIG FISH like Coleman shafting "lesser" colleagues and local traders is creditworthy.
Here's another praising Coleman for his stance at County Hall calling for action against brothels
#BrianColeman urges the Met to rid Suburbs of brothels. @mayoroflondon agrees and condemns papers who take their adverts #mqt
Hope is clearly keen to show that the Tory Mayor fully backs Colemans populist initiative.
Now all of this doesn't really matter at all apart from one thing. It illustrates that despite the many Barnet Conservative misgivings about Brian Coleman, when it comes down to it, they all secretly admire him and back him to the hilt. He just says the the things they think, but are too scared to actually say most of the time
7 comments:
Is he praising Coleman or the elements behind Coleman? Let's face it, Coleman hasn't the brains to be Coleman. Someone else is Coleman and Dan Hope is just sucking up to the team who are aiding and abetting the vertically challenged MASK. In fact, very few Tory Councillors at Barnet have the brains to do what they have been doing. The question then is - who in Barnet has brains?
Oh, and just one other thing, someone had better remind Mr Hope that those he praises are not exactly renown for their largesse.
How can the right in Barnet ever regroup, though? Unfortunately many people in Barnet and Camden will always vote for the Conservative GLA candidate. And at the ward level in Barnet, the current regime controls all the selections of Conservative candidates.
Since the Conservative party is still rather decentralised, nothing will happen from the London or national level to change any of that.
I don’t think you can assume that Dan Hope’s comments are intended as praise for Brian Coleman. Love him or loathe him, Coleman has driven through these parking policy changes by the brute force of his personality. Arguably, this is the sign of an able political operator. Or a dictator, depending on which side of the fence you sit.
The fact that local traders will see their businesses suffer and that residents are deeply opposed to the policy are not matters to concern Coleman. Nor does he care that most Conservative councillors oppose the policy also. He knows he can bully them into submission. But that is more a reflection of their uselessness than anything else.
You have to remember that Coleman is not qualified to hold a proper job. He doesn’t have an MBA from British Telecom. He has never run a company or manufactured anything (apart from hot air). If he was not a councillor then, by his own admission, he would be stacking the shelves at Tescos (though frankly it is doubtful they would take him). As a politician, however, he gets to throw his weight around. This is the only way he will ever get to exercise power over other people and he is simply addicted to it. He doesn’t care whether his policies are sensible or not. He probably gets off on coming up with ever more ludicrous ideas, simply to satisfy his lust of being in control.
I am invoved with a group of mainly older, mainly middle class mainly conservative (small and capital 'C') Barnet residents. In normal circumstances, I would agree that as voters they would just tick the Conservative box. However, it quite dramatic how much Coleman (and actually this Council) is loathed - a potentially great borough has been humiliated (eg Metpro, One Barnet)and has lost its sense of civic pride (Social Care, Museums, Libraries, Lollipop ladies, parking etc etc).
I think that in the case of Coleman, he has created a brand beyond the Conservative Party for himself - and this will be his undoing.
If people open their ballot paper and see "Conservative" the automatic voting response MAY take over and Coleman may scrape through. If, on the other hand, people open the ballot paper and see "Coleman" he will get hammered. At the moment Icarus is soaring.......
Mickey: While it is gratifying to read what you have written, don't forget half of the coming GLA electorate is in Camden, which suffers our Brian rather less directly.
All very interesting, and DCMD has Coleman perfectly defined. MickeyN's remarks are also significant: the more politically dominant someone becomes, the more arrogant they are, and their judgement starts to falter. Coleman's undoing will be that he has made the fatal error of screwing his own electoral heartland. He has politicised the minds of voters who are naturally inclined to vote Tory but previously did so without any real thought. Now, thanks to the parking fiasco, MetPro etc, they are thinking politically perhaps for the first time, and their focus will be on punishing Coleman and his cronies at the ballot box.
oh and baarnett, Camden is blessed with the attentions of the Ham & High which has had a stream of terrible articles about Barnet over the last two years: I don't think this has done anything but damage his chances there.
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