Leader of the Labour Group on Birmingham City Council led a massive walkout of last night’s Birmingham City Council meeting, The Stirrer reports today. Sir Albert Bore (pictured right) led a walkout of all opposition members after a debate calling for the withdrawal of British troops in Iraq was limited to a mere eight and a half minutes.
The exiting Labour group was joined by Respect councillor, Salma Yaqoob, who commented that she had never seen debate stopped in such a way. The councillor for Sparkbrook went on to say “we have discussions that just go on and on about far less serious subjects when they go into all the minutiae, but with this one they missed the chance to send out a powerful message on behalf of all the people of Birmingham.”
Birmingham City Council is currently run by a Tory-Lib Dem coalition.
Council Deputy Leader, Lib Dem Paul Tilsley later blamed Labour members for dragging out a previous debate on post offices (proudly advertised on Conservative councillor Deirdre Alden’s blog as being proposed by her), and explained “it’s our duty to protect the interests of the people of Birmingham and so far £5bn has been spent on the war. That’s £50 for every man, woman and child in the city.” I can’t work out Cllr Tilsley’s arithmetic, but I’ve got a simple bit of my own – if the war has cost £5bn and Birmingham City Council cannot spend more than 8½ minutes discussing it, that values the time of our good councillors at £588 million a minute… it’s no wonder Brummies don’t think they’re getting value for money out of the council.
The Deputy Leader went on to state his disgust at the people of Birmingham being left to pay for an “illegal war” based on a “bogus agenda…” yet objected to any more than 8½ minutes being allocated. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Tory-Lib Dem pact at Birmingham don’t want to engage in a debate over Iraq – I sincerely hope the electors of Birmingham won’t be so forgiving when they try to re-open the debate with some one-sided propaganda against Birmingham’s Labour Group in the run-up to the May elections.
John Ritchie is Chair of BULS
Wow, this is quite something. Anyone would think that it wasn’t the Labour Party who took us into this illegal war. I sincerely hope the electors of Birmingham won’t be forgiving in the slightest to anyone connected with this shameful war, and as far as I’m concerned that includes the Labour party virtually in its entirety. Anyone who is still a member must have a bloody good reason for doing so.
This article is particularly outrageous considering the contempt with which the Labour goverrment treats any debate in the Commons about this (the place where policy could actually be changed).
Who has committed the greater crime, the Tories/Lib Dems for some procedural incident, the reasons for which are unknown, or Labour for actually taking us into this war? I hope no one falls for this ridiculous attempt to claim some kind of moral highground over the Iraq bloodbath.
The idea the debate cost £588m a minute is highly misleading – implies BCC spent that much of council taxpayers’ money on a debate!
Also it’s ridiculous that BCC should spend 8 1/2 seconds debating the Iraq war – it’s not in councils’ portfolios to declare or end wars, last time I checked. Couldn’t they spend the time debating things they do have power over – let the Labour councillors talk more about those post office closures, for example?
Of course the idea that the debate cost £588m a minute is stupid – it was supposed to satirically reflect the fact that the LibDem leader defended the holding of a debate in the first place by reflecting the cost to every elector in Birmingham. The hypocrisy was that after the LibDems introduced the debate in order to make political capital, they decided not to talk about it after all, but only after discovering the Labour group were in favour of stating an opinion on troop withdrawal from Iraq… political posturing at its worst.
I agree that BCC has no control over these issues, but it is one of the largest unitary authorities in Europe, and as such does have the ability to send a strong message to the government.