Tameside’s first female council leader – who resigned at the eleventh hour amid what she described as a ‘hostile’ leadership challenge – has said they must now put their differences aside.
Denton West Councillor Brenda Warrington, who was elected to lead the council in 2018 following the death of Kieran Quinn, announced on Sunday that she would not contest the leadership. She was being challenged by fellow cabinet member and long-serving Labour councillor Ged Cooney, who was appointed group leader unopposed at the party’s AGM on Sunday night.
Coun Warrington had come out swinging ahead of the AGM with a defiant public statement in which she claimed she would not be ‘bullied, harassed or intimidated’ into standing down from the position she has held since 2018.
