"A total shambles" - Reform councillor responds to last minute deal between Sheffield's Labour & Green groups
Richmond ward councillor Jack Byrom gave his thoughts after the Labour and Green parties managed to salvage their alliance to lead Sheffield City Council...
The events of yesterday amounted to a total shambles. Councillors with decades of service tell me it was the worst meeting they have ever sat through, and they are right.
Days ago, the council leader declared trust in the Greens "completely broken" and promised to end the joint administration. National Labour said it could not work with any party backing the Greens' conference motion, at any level of government. When it came to the crunch, Labour performed the most incredible of U-turns.
I had a flicker of sympathy for Labour, tied to a Green Party that has abandoned its roots to push extreme agendas. That sympathy ended on Wednesday morning. You cannot tell the city a deal is dead, then resurrect it at the last minute, without saying why. The Greens have been making much the same points for weeks, so what changed? Did national HQ approve a reversal of its own line, or did Sheffield Labour go rogue? Sheffield deserves answers.
It didn't get them. Labour and Green infighting delayed the council by a full hour. Then, astonishingly, Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats voted to keep the guillotine at 5.30pm instead of extending the meeting to make up the lost time. They robbed Sheffield of the chance to get the answers it deserves. Reform was the only party to vote to extend.
It is common sense. If a meeting is delayed, you extend it to make up the time. Any working person in this city would tell you the same.
Full councils are already too short and have reduced in number in recent years. Residents get far fewer chances to watch their council at work, and on one of the few afternoons left, the administration wasted an hour on its own survival and then voted to cut the meeting short. If the only appetite on show was for clinging to power, what exactly are residents paying their council tax for?
Think of the people in the public gallery. They gave up their time and waited through the delay, hoping for answers. Too often they leave with the same poor replies from the leader, or none at all. The leader is ultimately responsible for this mess, and showed no steel when it counted.
Sheffield residents have suffered enough, whether that's crumbling roads, unreliable public services, disastrous traffic management policies or having to spend every spare minute fighting to save their green belt. We were elected to improve all of that, not to argue over a foreign conflict no councillor has the power to change.
This is an administration in name only. Sheffield deserves far better than Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems, who have all in recent years failed this city.