January 6: Kent MPs seethe over Hoon and Hewitt
THERE’S a fair amount of unsuppressed
seething among Kent’s Labour MPs at Geoff Hoon and
Patricia Hewitt intervention today calling for a secret ballot on
Gordon Brown’s leadership.
I have to say their call seems
not only badly timed but rather perverse and there’s a suspicion
around that their move is somehow connected with a wider effort to
de-stabilise the leadership and flush a few more doubters
out.
Leadership ballot is mad, says Kent Labour
MPs>>
It seems an odd way to unite the
party by suggesting a poll that might split it.
On the strength of what I’ve
heard from backbenchers today, I doubt whether this has much legs
but while there is plenty of rallying around to Gordon Brown’s
cause, things can change fairly rapidly when it comes to leaders of
political parties. Ask Margaret Thatcher, who
enjoyed similar pledges of support from her cabinet colleagues
before being ruthlessly toppled in 1992.
The commonest complaint I’ve
heard from Kent MPs is their view that the party had just about
managed to stop the decline in the polls and was beginning to ask
some probing questions of Conservative policy. That will now be
sidelined and the perception of a divided party is almost as
damaging as a party that actually is split.
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I'm told a decision on whether to continue with
Kent TV will be made in the next
fortnight.
However, I spotted this in KCC’s budget book which might or
might not be a sign of the thinking of the Conservative
administration.
Under the heading of its
Strategic Development Unit, it shows the authority
earmarking £3.459million for "strategic
development and innovation, Gateways and Kent TV" in
2010-2011.
That is more than
the £3.091million earmarked under the same
heading last year but curiously, the net spend estimated for
2010-2011 is the same - £2.5million.
What all this means is rather
hard to divine though as council budget books are generally
designed to confuse rather than elucidate.
Meanwhile, I note that the
authority will be spending less on corporate communications
this year than last (shock horror).
The amount set aside for
"media relations and corporate events" will be
£1,165,000 -down on the
£1.46million spent last year.
There has in the past been some
complaints from opposition councillors about the amount spent in
this area. Maybe they've been heard although the sum is still
pretty sizeable.
Wednesday, January 06 2010