31 December (Part 2) - Is it close to a one woman dictatorship?
@tony bows out - for now.
1. The Queen
Recalling the story of Bob and John, how would I react if someone - say, a Bexley councillor shamed
out of the Section 32 shadows - told me to go back to Belarus? Smugness is a helpful quality: I would
smile and say “Thank you, I will do that when it’s safe”. You see, in 2020, Belarus’s “moderate”
dictatorship, where “only” opposition politicians risked harassment and jail, was almost overturned
at the ballot box. Saved by Putin, the moustachioed dictator Lukashenka retaliated with a wave of
violence, followed by a regime of random arrests - where Belarusians with foreign passports became
an appealing target, as bargaining chips used to negotiate with EU diplomats. I have no desire to
become Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe myself, so going home is not an option.
Belarus, and Russia for that matter, are extreme examples of what can happen when a political
leader stays in power for too long. A far more common scenario is stagnation. I think this is what has
happened in Bexley under the fifteen-years-and-running leadership of Baroness O’Neill. I have no
appetite for unfair Teresa-bashing, but I think it is safe to say - will any Bexley Tory councillors in the
audience disagree? - that Cabinets under her leadership have never had a strategy, and just kept
“muddling through”. “Muddling through is darn good when your government grant shrinks every
year”, Baroness could object - and then I would move to my second criticism.
The #MakingBexleyEvenBetter slogan notwithstanding, Bexley’s leader has never seemed to be one
to aspire to high standards. Naughty behaviour by councillors - including Cabinet Members - and
senior council officers has been tolerated, and criticism dismissed, rather than accepted and
actioned. (Recall Bexley Conservatives’ blocking, in 2022, of “call-ins”, i.e. bipartisan scrutiny of major
decisions). A vicious circle of poor decisions and poor attitude has developed, with Bexley residents
bearing the cost. Who is to blame for a dodgy corporate culture if not the long-serving council leader?
(One suspects that a side effect of this has been difficulty recruiting new councillors. Consider the
recent rise in the number of PR specialists among the Tory ranks. Things on the ground may not be great, but the press release will be!)
This year, Baroness’s commitment to transparent and fair governance was tested by The Great Petitiongate of 2023 - and got a failing mark.
The affair started with your truly examining Bexley’s Constitution to see what it had to say about
petitions with over 2,000 signatures, the kind that get the organiser a full-council debate of the
petitioned-about issue. The findings were confusing. On one hand, there it was, the statement that
2,000 signatures get the full-council debate. On the other hand, almost in the next sentence,
certainty evaporated: now 2,000 signatures *might* get a debate - or merely a committee hearing.
That is not all: on the same page, “full-council meeting” turned into “meeting which all councillors
can attend” - like a pub quiz - and to top it off, there was a provision to dismiss “inappropriate”
petitions, but no guidance on what might make a petition “inappropriate”!
I started by asking Bexley, in a FOI request, what process and what criteria were there to guide the
council’s “triage” of a petition between a full-council debate and a
committee hearing. “We have no criteria, and no process”, Bexley advised, after a lot of prodding. “The CEO is ultimately responsible”.
At this point, I (very politely) shared my observations with Bexley’s Monitoring Officer and Bexley’s
Head of Member Services, the council officer in charge of petitions. (Notably, this is the same
gentleman who in 2011 “shunted” a petition with over 2,000 signatures to a
committee hearing).“There is some dodgy wording in the Petition Scheme guidance - can you review and revise it please?” No response.
Then, in late June, I submitted the following three FOI requests:
Page 56 of of “Codes and Protocols”, Part 5 of “Bexley Constitution and Codes of Governance”, says:
“If a petition has more than 2,000 signatures, this would be sufficient to trigger a debate at a Full
Council meeting. This means that the issue raised in the petition will be discussed at a meeting
which all Councillors can attend”. (Emphasis added).
Can you please confirm that “full council meeting” refers to a meeting of the full council. (“A
meeting which all councillors can attend” is a broader concept).
Page 56 of of “Codes and Protocols”, Part 5 of “Bexley Constitution and Codes of Governance”, says (emphasis added):
“If a petition has more than 2,000 signatures, this WOULD BE SUFFICIENT to trigger a debate at a Full Council meeting”.
Page 3 of “London Borough of Bexley Petitions Scheme” document says (emphasis added):
“If a petition contains more than 2000 signatures it MAY be debated by the Full Council unless it is a
petition asking for a Council officer to give evidence at a public meeting”.
Can you please confirm that a petition with over 2,000 signatures - not deemed “vexatious, abusive
or otherwise inappropriate” (cf. a related question about what
“inappropriate” is) - will be debated at a full council meeting if requested by the organiser, or provide the full
list of reasons why it could not be debated at a full council meeting.
Page 56 of “Codes and Protocols”, Part 5 of Bexley Constitution and Codes of Governance, says:
“Petitions which are considered to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate will not be accepted”.
Can you please provide the full list of reasons why a proposed petition could be deemed “inappropriate”?
On July 14, I received a letter informing me that my requests were dismissed as vexatious. I wrote to
members of Bexley Council’s Constitutional Review Panel - Cllrs O’Neill (chair), Borella, Jackson and
Leaf - providing examples of contradictory wording and asking them to consider revisions. Cllr O’Neill
responded, saying that Bexley’s Petition Scheme was “in accordance with statutory guidance”.
Local-government finance and local-government development strategies are complicated subjects,
where Council Leader O’Neill’s contribution and competence are difficult to assess. In contrast,
fairness is something that’s pretty easy to judge, and it is very clear to me that Bexley’s Council
Leader does not put much stock in that “British value”. Her replacement is unlikely to be any better -
and that is, unfortunately, also part of Teresa O’Neill’s legacy.