Liverpool Labour whip Alan Dean loses power struggle after leaked email
Regular Dale Street Associates readers will remember the furore over Alan Dean's leaked email ordering Labour councillors not to raise Liverpool council shortcomings in public, unless they had the permission of the mayor.
The Liverpool Labour chief whip's diktat was then (obviously) leaked to Dale St, and led to him being dubbed Comical Alan.
The email had been sparked by the request of Joe Hanson and Laura Robertson-Collins that a special scrutiny panel be set up to look into low recycling rates.
And readers will remember another line in that email: "I have to advise you that this Scrutiny Panel WILL NO BE ESTABLISHED. At the next meeting of the Select Committee Councillors Hanson and Robertson-Collins will withdraw their motion."
As we report in today's ECHO Cllrs Hanson and Robertson-Collins did not withdraw their motion, and a scrutiny panel will be set up to look at the city's low recycling rates.
Funny how politics works out sometimes isn't it?
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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He is gone for being caught. His replacement will be told to make the sure the same rule is applied but leave no hard evidence.
Wouldn't even be surprised if his replacement and new enforcer was the one who released the email. In politics the wages of sin is promotion, only the wages of get caught in a truth is death.
If he loses the chief whip job (and that doesn't seem to have happened...yet), I wonder if he will keep his job as a director of LDL alongside Fitzgerald. He's not exactly effective, is he?
And if Anderson really has learnt his lesson, we will now have the LDL Scrutiny Panel that the Finance & Resources select committee wanted before the election, instead of some Commission of unelected and unaccountable people meeting in private.
With the power to ask hard questions of McElhinney, Fitzgerald etc etc. I cannot be the only resident who watched the squirming of the Murdochs and others being questioned by MPs and wanted councillors to do something similar here.
From their recent comments on this blog, both Warren Bradley and Paul Clein would probably be happy to help.
If they really are committed to transparency and accountability, this is what should happen next.
If he loses the chief whip job (and that doesn't seem to have happened...yet), I wonder if he will keep his job as a director of LDL alongside Fitzgerald. He's not exactly effective, is he?
And if Anderson really has learnt his lesson, we will now have the LDL Scrutiny Panel that the Finance & Resources select committee wanted before the election, instead of some Commission of unelected and unaccountable people meeting in private.
With the power to ask hard questions of McElhinney, Fitzgerald and Anderson himself. I cannot be the only resident who watched the squirming of the Murdochs and others being questioned by MPs and wanted councillors to do something similar here.
From their recent comments on this blog, both Warren Bradley and Paul Clein would probably be happy to help.
If they really are committed to transparency and accountability, this is what should happen next.
There has been no Scrutiny Panel established - that is clear from the report. It appears to be a "working group".
And actually if you look at what is said in the article, you will see that this piece is misleading.
It says "Cllr Munby said the scrutiny panel would be set up after the Cllr Robertson-Collins had brought forward recommendations"
So it is the Cabinet Member (not the Committee or its Chair) deciding what is scrutinised. The Cabinet is deciding. And this is overlooked by the media. Exactly what Cllr Dean said should happen in his earlier email.
Some journalism this.
After the shame he brought on the Labour Party following allowancegate, I can't believe Alan Dean still has any sort of job on the group.
What is comical Is how Comical Alan has been allowed to stay in this job. Surely he has got to go now after being humiliated!
Deano is one well-deserved loser. But let's not forget the really unprincipled loser who kicked all this off. Step forward, Clr Tim Moore, a man who dumped his friends in it to save his own neck. Somehow this guy still survives in the cabinet. You'd have thought Joe Ando wouldn't want these two sticking to his shoe for much longer.
For no particular reason, I look at the junk at the top of the recent comments section and think about the recent unfortunate comments about the olympics and wonder if Joe's twitter boys have returned from suspension yet.
Update on Dean and his jobs:
According to the LDL 2011/12 annual report and 2012/13 business plan, he is not a director (any more?), that will be Joe Anderson.
The link below is to a cached version of the LDL website (from 12 August). The current one no longer provides a link to the annual report, and the link to the business plan does not seem to work either.
This one does:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wepdK7y1ExEJ:www.liverpooldirectlimited.co.uk/1453.aspx+Liverpool+Direct+annual+report&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk
If both our powerful elected Mayor, and his Chief Executive, are both directors of LDL, how on earth can anyone hold them to account?