Ten green bottles (or should that be eight?)

Altogether now:

🎶  “There were ten Labour councillors at Kensington Town Hall. Ten Labour councillors at Kensington Town Hall, and if  one Labour councillor should happen to defect/leave/get kicked out of the  Labour Party, there’ll be nine Labour councillors at Kensington Town Hall” 🎶

Well actually there are only EIGHT RBKC Labour councillors left now.

Yesterday we heard  that one of the Colville Labour  councillors, Cllr Dahabo Isse had just left Labour and was sitting as an independent.:

But now there is further news – Cllr Isse has since defected to the Conservatives. See this:

Oh dear. In fact Cllr Isse has done nothing at all    to champion Colville Ward. She is mostly noted by residents there for being absent from the ward and failing to  take any notice  of local issues and hardly ever doing casework, plus she also has one of the worst councillor attendance records in the Town Hall.

This is just the latest of defections, resignations and sackings on the Labour side, or rather what is left of the Labour side.

First there was Emma Dent Coad resigning after she wasn’t allowed on the Kensington Constituency PPC longlist – LINK

Kensington PPC longlist- “Your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in”

Then there was Dalgarno councillor Eva Jedut being suspended and ultimately removed from the Labour Party over offensive social media posts – and after she was found breaching the RBKC Councillors Code of Conduct.

Next came Notting Dale councillor Mona Ahmed resigning from the Labour Party over Keir Starmer’s position on Palestine – LINK

Cllr Ahmed was sitting as an independent but fairly recently she has formed an “Independent Group” with Emma Dent Coad.

Then came Golborne councillor Mona Adam defecting to the Green Party partly over Gaza and partly saying Labour was in an “open war against itself” – LINK

And now Cllr Isse defecting to the Tories makes FIVE of them no longer Labour councillors. We do wonder if any more will follow. The goings-on with members of the RBKC Labour Group are like a soap opera .

No more drama? If only!

Look we know that there were valid reasons behind a few of the defections and resignations but it’s getting beyond a joke now.

Also, surely some of these councillors know about committees, majorities and the balance of power and where that leaves their constituents ? Or care? Did anyone think about long term local government duties? We’re not entirely convinced all did…

We  also really wouldn’t like to think that maybe a few of them (the ones who are only known for being no shows and doing hardly any work like the new “star of the Kensington Tories” here ) might be mainly  staying put  for the purpose of collecting their councillors allowances, would we?

We also don’t think any of this is fair to members of the  North Kensington electorate who initially voted for 13 Labour councillors. There have been no  by-elections, so we do question why  wouldn’t supposedly  principled councillors then not be principled enough to let the voters decide?

On another but not  unrelated point about Labour and former Labour councillors and the utter mess they’re in, the open animosity and public squabbling between the two Dalgarno councillors, that is the  Leader of the Labour Group (not leading by example here) Kasim Ali and  (now independent) Cllr Jedut has got way out of hand – LINK   . We’re hearing from their residents about grants for City Living Local Life funds being rejected ot blocked and events and community initiatives not going ahead all because these two can’t agree on anything and now work, meetings and other business in the ward are being affected by these two councillors laying into each other , sabotaging each other’s work and continually reporting each other. – LINK  

It goes from RA events and children’s Christmas pantomimes being cancelled and ward matters not being seen to and then goes on to frustrated residents writing to us asking us to say something , We’re not the least bit surprised to hear that so many locals up there are utterly fed up and  becoming increasingly disaffected.

We think both councillors   are not conducting themselves  professionally at all and just end up (regardless of whether they intended to or not) failing their residents and issues in the ward.

So who is to blame for all this mess on the Labour side ?

Yes it’s hard to forget about those Labour councillor selections and deselections. There were perfectly good decent and hardworking councillors in Colville Ward before the selections got messed around with. Emma Dent Coad might like to think she can walk away with her hands in her pockets pretending it’s nothing to do with her but she does not have clean hands over this – in fact it’s been a common opinion around here that Cllr Dent Coad and a few of her close colleagues in CLP were deliberately putting in people who would pose no challenge to her and ignoring or pushing out those who were deemed to be either a threat to her leadership, not on their wing of the party or just not in their “clique” ( which also understandably put some good people off).

Back in 2022 a resident who was understandably unhappy about Kensington Labour’s terrible results in the 2022 Local Elections with no gains at all in contrast to a huge swing against the Tories everywhere else and the quality of some of the new people plus popular and hardworking councilors being deselected –   was told at this at the time in an email by the former Chair (who has since also left the Labour Party)  in an email:

Famous last words

Trying to be fair and hearing both sides here, when we sent that back to the former chair earlier , he did say that he had his doubts about the pool of available candidates and their abilities and that “several potentially good candidates did not get through the London Regional selection process” .

Regardless of whether people agree with his comnents or our comments or not, we do note that this could also throw up a frightening prospect fur the future of our local representatives – meaning the prospect of people with little to no connections to our community being parachuted in to be Labour councillors. We hope not, because in an area with such a rich history of local campaigning, , with a community that has so many great things to offer and no shortage of residents with the skills required to be councillors – we deserve better.  Having some out of touch  robot  who doesn’t know one end of North Kensington from another put in to supposedly represent us wouldn’t exactly go down too well with most  locals .

In our view,  this is the weakest and most volatile opposition in our living history  and beyond a small handful of  councillors who are now overworked and tired from attempting to get on with it and pick up the pieces (yes councillors, we are sending this post directly to you if you’re one of them who does work hard and still has our respect ) , it sure as hell doesn’t feel like  the best interests of the North Kensington community matter too much  these days at a local government level.

The RBKC Tories have of course taken full advantage of this situation and pushed through things knowing they will get a bare minimum of scrutiny.

What it all amounts to at the end of the day is our community ends up on the losing side of everything with an opposition barely fit for purpose and residents (some of whom are traumatised and vulnerable) left having to fight their own corners entirely now by themselves because there’s hardly anyone left further up who can fight for us anymore. To answer some of the queries we’ve had about why THINKers hardly ever go to the Town hall these days, here’s why: Because we cannot stomach our community getting it from both barrels. North Kensington residents and our issues and concerns have been well and truly left at the bottom of the .pile.

. .

Cllr Isse cannot be too surprised if she doesn’t receive a warm welcome back around here especially when she has barely done any work and people wonder what she’s still doing here anyway , when Colville has NEVER been a Conservative ward and when the Conservative Government isn’t exactly too popular. If she wants to know what her ward constituents think about her decision to join the Tories, here are a couple of comments we have received from them :

“The first recorded case of a rat joining a sinking ship”

“To become independent in protest is one thing but to join the Tories at this time and espcially given their racist and their anti-immigration policies is another. I think Colville residents will want to take action on this and call for a by-election”

We also have to say that the RBKC Tories might want to stay away from too much gloating and political point scoring over this latest defection if they have any idea of what will be coming up on this blog soon.

So far, no sign of any by elections on the horizon happening anytime soon and goodness knows what will  happen next, but in the meantime we will sarcastically “thank” Cllr Isse and others staying on with ZERO electoral mandate in North Kensington  for participating in the erosion of local democracy here.

What a mess this all is.

At this rate, when the next Local Elections come around in two years time, we can’t help wondering if there will actually be any Labour councillors left?