This has been in the news in the last few days. A Labour councillor who is standing down from Haringey Council ahead of next year’s borough local elections has criticised the way that the borough has been managed in a strongly-worded letter sent to leader Cllr Claire Kober obtained by the StopHDV website.
In the letter, Cllr Stuart McNamara has attacked the council’s repeated poor governance, bad management and decision making which has led to repeated cuts in vital local services. He has also been highly critical of the borough’s regeneration policies and the constant waste of scarce resources. He also feels that the council also does its business in secret by handing over portfolios to a handful of officers and the executive at the expense of backbench and opposition councillors and the wider public.
Cllr McNamara is certainly right about the way Cllr Kober has led the council. After the Baby P scandal back in 2008 which led to the resignation of the late George Meehan, Kober’s elected to head the Labour group at the time was seen as a new broom. However, she has adopted the policies of her predecessor. She refused to start addressing the issues which led to the riots in 2011, problems that she helped continue have been deeply felt here in Tottenham for a very long time.
It’s hard not to disagree with Cllr McNamara on this. However, he needs to be questioned over the fact that if he, the backbench Labour councillors and party members put pressure to Kober and her friends’ control of the council’s powers, we wouldn’t be having to fight to stop the threat of Ward’s Corner be demolished. We wouldn’t also have had to do shady deals with big business in order to get anything done. They could have used their collective influence to stop all this nonsense, but chose not to.
The entire Labour party in Haringey are collectively to blame for this state of affairs. That includes Cllr McNamara.
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