Reviews and on casting votes
May 8, 2012 2 Comments
It is interesting to read some of the post-mortems on Thursday night’s results. Neil Monnery has written intelligently here (Thoughts on the night Southend-on-Sea Borough Council went from blue to grey) and although I do not agree with everything he has written his thoughts are nonetheless worth the effort.
It should be Tony Cox versus James Moyies in two years’ time in West Shoebury. That this will likely be a war of word is evident, and Tony’s reflections on last Thursday are a pointer to this (Election Results).
The Liberal Democrats are not out of the woods in the perennially marginal Blenheim Park. James Courtenay puts a brave face on what was a disappointing result for his candidate. James must be aware that his own position is less than comfortable.
Anne Chalk’s comments (The Tory Post Mortem) on the election have confused me – perhaps easily done. She states that Blaine Robin was ostracised by his own party – how so? His outrageous raised barely a murmur.
What is certain is that Del Thomas’s skills as a predictor are worse than mine (Elections on Thursday). However, there is no denying he worked hard and I expect to see him contesting somewhere in 2014.
This week will see it decided who will run Southend for the next two years. Negotiations are on-going, but it does occur to me that with the next two mayors both being Conservative that their presence on the floor of the chamber is further reduced.
I am not sure what the protocol as to the mayor voting, but as chair of the chamber they will certainly have a casting vote.
Whenever I have chaired a vote I have taken this as a cue not to vote unless there is a tie – when I employ the chair’s casting vote. Some chairs will enjoy the privilege of being able to vote twice – we shall see whether Sally Carr and Brian Kelly do this or not.
Casting votes…casting my mind back, the convention at Southend Council is that, generally, the mayor doesn’t vote. But they are free to do so.
The maths are interesting. 25 Cons and 26 others. There is at least one independent against a coalition and there maybe people absent from Thursday’s annual council.
But let’s say in the vote for a new leader, it’s 25 for Holdcroft and 25 against. The mayor, as a councillor would vote and therefore support Cllr Holdcroft.
I think the convention is that the mayor, if using a casting vote, always supports the administration, no matter what party is in.
Because there is no administration at that point, the mayor would probably vote Holdcroft in
Del raised a point to me a few days ago. Does the deputy mayor get a vote, I thought they did, he indicated they didn’t.
The problem with ousting the Tories will almost certainly be the indies, or at least some of them. but they will still spend the next 2 years bleating about how bad the Tories are. Prepared to be corrected in the fullness of time.