Leadership bid a waste of time

The new Mayor was installed, tributes and thanks were given to the outgoing first citizen and his Mayoress, various committee chairmen were elected and so on.

But one thing baffled Mr Pendle when he read the reports of proceedings on his return to work.

As long as he can remember, the leader of the party with the most seats has become leader of the council.

This year, that responsibility has fallen on Joe Cooney, the leader of the Conservatives.

All the parties know the rules, unwrittten or otherwise, so what prompted the Labour Party to put forward their own candidate for the post?

Did they hope that some Liberal Democrat councillors might be secretly disaffected with Coun. Cooney and back them up, despite the fact the Conservatives and Lib Dems have run the council effectively for the past year?

Or was their claim based on the fact that as more people voted for Labour than any other party in the elections last month, the leadership of the council was theirs by right by proportional representation?

Whatever the reason, it was an exercise which was doomed to failure from the outset and a total waste of everyone’s time, even that of the Labour councillors who backed it.