by Ian Shires on 21 June, 2018

Yesterday saw the first meeting of Walsall’s new Tory Cabinet which came to power amidst the controversial use of the Mayor’s casting vote on who should run the Council at the Annual Council meeting at the end of May.

If you had blinked you’d have missed it. In the absence of the Conservative Leader of the Council the Deputy Leader started proceedings at 6.00 pm. By 6.05 pm it was all over.

This has to be some sort of record and one which does absolutely nothing for democracy. Is it any wonder that voters don’t engage when they are treated like this. If the Cabinet can’t be bothered then why should voters?

As this was the first meeting of the Tory Cabinet following may’s Local Elections you would have thought that they would have taken the opportunity to lay out their store, tell you how they were going to implement the promises they made during the election campaign. I say this because when the Labour/Lib Dem administration put its Budget for 2018/19 to Council in February the Tories did not come up with any alternatives, so it would have been really interesting if they had taken the trouble to let everyone know how they were going to deliver on their election promises.

As it stands there were just a couple of items on last night’s agenda, the Deputy Leader of the Council presented the recommendations. There were no comments from the other six Cabinet members and the whole thing was done and dusted in a matter of five minutes. Not a great advert for the democratic process.

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