Opposition motions are like buses at Manchester City Council. You wait eight years for one, and two come along at once.
Wednesday's full council meeting in the Town Hall’s illustrious civic chamber featured two motions from the loose pact of the Liberal Democrats and Green Party, who make up five councillors. The other 91 are Labour.
It has taken this long to get an official motion in place because it needs five councillors to submit it — one to propose, one to second, and a further three to sign it. And, with the Labour Party being an election-winning-machine in the city for decades, any opposition has struggled to make an impact.
Yesterday (October 5) though, that changed. The two motions were passed; albeit significantly different to how they were proposed by Greens and Lib Dems after Labour amended both.
But to see this as a day of business as usual in the council chamber would be to overlook the elephant in the room: Manchester has a proper opposition now, even if it is small.
Mancunians show they can mudsling
The meeting on Wednesday morning began with the traditional prayers, and a minute’s silence for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, this being the first full council meeting since she passed away last month. That marked out this meeting as special — and it was just the start of things to come.
The first meaty item to be debated was on the national housing crisis. Shortly after it was carried, without the amendment proposed by Lib Dem leader John Leech that led to a debate on his track record as an MP from 2005-15, protesters interrupted proceedings. The three activists from community union ACORN, in the public gallery, held aloft a banner which said ‘Boot the Bailiffs’, and chanted their slogan.
The meeting was adjourned, they agreed to quieten down, then the meeting resumed… and so did the shouting. Eventually, the three people left of their own accord.
That paved the way for debate on the first full-fat opposition motion in council since 2014. Proposed by Alan Good, a Lib Dem elected this year, he asked the authority to formally petition MPs in Greater Manchester to extend proportional representation. Coun Good will have been buoyed by the fact that his opposite numbers’ party had just voted to endorse the voting system at the Labour Conference in Liverpool.
Green leader Astrid Johnson also made an impassioned appeal that the UK’s current voting system, first past the post, forces the electorate to a point where ‘there’s no point in voting because [it’s] a vote for the lesser of two evils’. It did however also mention that the country was ‘still scarred from the Tory and Lib Dem coalition and its austerity’ — which Coun Good’s party were a member of — but she added that councillors should ‘look at the idea on its substance’, and not its effect.
That was when Labour members seized on the past. First came Pat Karney, the city centre spokesperson for Labour and one of the party’s most senior members.
He used his six minutes to argue in favour of an amendment to the motion which somewhat watered down the original ideas, before he brought two books by David Laws and Nick Clegg. Coun Karney went after John Leech for his record in government, comically flicking through the index of each text to see a mention of him.
“J… K… L… you were down there and you did not say anything,” he told the Lib Dems, who called it ‘narcissistic ramblings’ and vowed to continue the fight after the meeting. Alan Good retorted, pointing out that the 1997 Labour government ‘promised to bring in proportional representation’.
But you don’t win 91 seats without controlling the agenda. So leader Bev Craig stepped in. “This is all very interesting,” she said. “I am keen to just get on with things.”
And that was that. Amendment? Carried. Motion? Carried. On to the next one: Windrush.
This was proposed by Ekua Bayunu, the Hulme councillor who joined the Greens from Labour this year. Her appeal to appoint a Lead Member to help communities affected by the Windrush scandal in the city was even more impassioned than anything heard previously.
“I am ashamed at the point-scoring here,” she shot across the aisle. “We must not stand by and give a clear voice to these communities. We need someone who can support us and for them to be at the cutting edge of service delivery to those most vulnerable residents.”
She was followed by Lee-Ann Igbon, who like Coun Bayunu, is a Windrush descendent. The Labour exec member had an amendment.
“Having a Windrush Lead will not make a difference,” she told the chamber. “We need specialists. We need legal help. One of us cannot do that.”
Tensions were running high, but quickly cooled with another Labour councillor’s intervention. This time, it was Erinma Bell, another Windrush descendent. She reiterated her commitment to support those communities, as she has done already, and offered to train other councillors on how they could follow suit.
In the end, Labour passed the amendment — something which left an irate Coun Bayunu attempting to withdraw the motion. The city solicitor said she couldn’t, as per the council constitution.
The motion carried. The spats, in the main, stopped.
The opposition that won’t be going anywhere
It had been a lively and bruising first encounter between Labour and the Lib Dem-Green team. Hopes of a Lib Dem victory on the proportional representation motion, which around 24 hours before the meeting seemed genuine, had been dashed.
But it won’t stop the two groups collaborating again, it seems. Astrid Johnson spoke to the Manchester Evening News after the meeting.
“We decided to work together on a motion which we can agree on,” she explained. “I feel sad. These motions represent a lot of Labour thinking and because they are whipped, these voices are not heard. At least there’s a conversation that's not pre-agreed.”
And that is the real takeaway from today: Labour will still get its business done, as it has done in Manchester for years. There’s no talk of the party having to watch its back at the next election, or expectations that existing numbers of Labour councillors will lose their seats.
That being said, the opposition are promising to keep the Labour group on its toes. So it seems we can look forward to some more jibes, more point-scoring - in short more politics.
Read more of today's top stories here
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