Sketch: Flies in the champagne as Hackney elects a new Speaker
Last night, I went to the town hall to watch the new Speaker and Deputy Speaker for Hackney get voted into office.
No, please: come back. I won’t take long.
It’s a simple procedure: the elected mayor (and leader of the Labour group) nominates someone from his own party and speaks in his favour; the leader of the much smaller Conservative group commends the nominee personally, but points out that as his own party members are de facto excluded from the office of Speaker, they’ll be abstaining; members of the Labour group shake their heads vigorously and pretend to look outraged; and the leader of the two Lib Dem councillors makes a pleasant speech commending the choice of candidate. So, as fixes go, it’s a good natured and tolerant one - which is quite in keeping with our diverse borough.
I can’t be arsed to do the maths, but with the backing of all the present Labour councillors, both Lib Dems and one Tory (I don’t know about the Green), the new speaker is:
- Councillor Ian Rathbone.
And, thanks to a similar process and result, his deputy is:
- Councillor Muttalip Unluer
That was the easy bit. When the appointments were over, the elected mayor, Jules Pipe, told us what his policy priorities were for the coming year.
I’d not seen him speak before, but a few seconds were enough to reveal that he falls into the personable and well-prepared school of public speaking, rather than in the devastatingly charismatic camp. I’m not sure how he does it, but there’s some sort of switch he flicks that transforms him into state-of-the-art Soviet statistics transmitter: “….waste recycling up from less than 1% in 2002… crime down 32% since 2004… 53% of students achieving five GCSEs at A to C compared to less than one-third in 2002… 36% of Labour councillors beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 2007 - up from only 27% in 2004.”
Okay, he didn’t say the last one, but he might as well have.
It’s a terrifying sight: the seemingly affable man, suddenly endowed with the power to bore his political opponents to death. My eyes glazed over repeatedly, but I think that, when you penetrated all the “coming year going forwards” and the like, the gist of what he was saying boiled down to “in the six years under my most excellent rule, Hackney Council has learned to sweep streets, collect rubbish and admit that a schools system that fails over two-thirds of teenagers is not acceptable. We are now excellent at improving, so I might as well tell you that we’re improving at being excellent. It’s the same thing really. I am, incidentally, most excellent.”
In the new, improved Hackney, in which teenage gunmen throw aside their weapons and launch renewable composting schemes with small business start-up grants, dissent is frowned on. So when Tory group leader Matthew Coggins stood up to dissent, everyone on the opposite side of the chamber knitted their brows in the way Churchill might have done when discovering an insect or three in his morning glass of champagne.
“Yuck,” they thought as they picked out Hackney’s pisspoor SATs results from amongst the bubbles. “Eeergh,” they muttered as they grasped rising knife crime between thumb and forefinger and flicked it into a clump of cow parsley. “Not again,” they hissed as stuck their pinkies in the glass, fishing out the suggestion that their consultations were more faits accomplis than any genuine attempt to listen to residents.
There was lots more of this, but as the occasion was a celebratory rather than an adversarial one, the Tory refrained from snapping the stems of his adversaries’ flutes. Not so Lib Dem leader Ian Sharer, who poured the champagne down the drain whilst drawing attention to the poisonous sight of a Labour Mayor campaigning to save Post Offices that his own Government had condemned. Then, as the Pol Roger bubbled down the grilles, he pointed out how vast numbers of parents couldn’t get their children a place in any Hackney secondary school.
Pipe wasn’t going to let that lie. Standing for a second time, he muttered something about how he had planned to let the Conservative speech pass, but really had to respond to the more recent outrage. How could anyone, he said, believe that he had the ear of Government? (Answer: no-one does. Besides, that wasn’t the point). Surely it was right for him to campaign against post office closures? (Answer: yes, if he wanted to look like a hypocrite). And as for the schools situation, surely the fact that so many parents were being turned away was a sign of the borough’s success? Why, back in 2002 parents didn’t want to send their children to Hackney’s schools. Now they simply couldn’t (I paraphrase, but that’s essentially what he was saying).
There was no stopping him. Within seconds he was back on the statistics. I averted my gaze before it was too late, only to find it resting on the expensive propaganda that had been laid before me. There was an Olympic folder/booklet with a velcro fastener and a fold-out chart entitled “Hackney highlights: a 12 month summary”, taking credit for - amongst other things - the opening of Clissold Leisure Centre, retaining Investor in People status (woo-hoo!) and the CSCI rating of “Hackney’s Adult Social Servcies [sic]” as ‘good’. All these publications were printed on gold paper, making me wonder whether the colour is a sort of socialist rank entitlement for an elected borough mayor - kingly gold to Livingstone’s Imperial purple.
Pipe finally ground to a halt and it was time to head next door for drinks and supper. As I stood in the queue, I looked behind me to see a man who was clearly by himself. I wondered who he could be. He didn’t look like an organic farmer or race relations expert. And he looked way too content to be a politician. Nor did he emanate the aura of a businessman. Yes, from all the Hackney folk who hail from every continent and walk of life, I’d found the sole representative of the borough’s single army base. Damned nice fellow he was too.
–
(Sadly, I took no photos of the Council meeting, nor has anyone posted any footage. But for the curious and disbelieving, I have discovered this wonderful clip of our esteemed mayor defending one of the world’s most ridiculous education selection policies.)
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Ben Ben Ben. you’ve excelled yourself! How to describe the boring without beoming one of them. Well done. Don’t get me started on the schools, though! Fancy a top-up?
Comment by Ms Baroque — 16th May, 2008 @ 9:31 am
Thanks Ms B. I couldn’t resist poking fun… You SHOULD get started on the schools though. It makes me froth at the mouth that we’ve got a system of education rationing, which - from admittedly well-meaning, but short-sighted motives - is not only damaging education for a lot of kids (at random), but is pulling apart children’s support networks, communities and more.
Yes, I’d love a top up. Thank you so much…
Comment by Ben — 16th May, 2008 @ 10:30 am
See, the one council meeting I miss and there are people in the gallery… normally the travesty that passes for democracy in Hackney is attended by about a third of the Labour councillors, most of the opposition and err… me, normally on my own in the gallery.
Occasionally someone turns up to protest at something, and normally Chris Sills (ex of Lordship ward) asks a question and nasty-piece-of-work-in-chief Alan Laing tells him off for daring to question him.
I would strongly recommend coming along again, if only so you can see that Pipe knows a very finite number of statistics and keeps repeating the same ones over and over and over again, month in and month out. I’ve come to the conclusion that he is convinced that a) there is virtually no crime or deprivation in Hackney and b) everything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault (indeed your point on beatifications may have some substance - Hackney Labour do believe themselves ineffable)
Comment by Reuben — 26th May, 2008 @ 8:47 pm