By all accounts, yesterday’s council meting was a depressing affair for the Lib Dem-run Swansea Administration – of which a significant number pushed off early (including their downcast looking leader who had a dinner appointment in Neath).His and other high profile but unexplained absences from the front bench gave education cabinet member Mike Day the opportunity to do a stint as stand-in leader and thereby demonstrate why opposition parties desperately want Holley to remain in post.
What remained of the coalition hierarchy could see how things were going to shape up after the vote on mayoral nominations and predictably tried to indulge their opponents with an offer to allow a future debate (quite a novel proposition) on the much publicised Swansea Bay Strategy. It was even admitted that Local Democracy Week might be a bit more democratic if other political parties were involved in the event.
But it seems that these concessions were not enough to stop a white-wash response to a critical auditors report getting chucked back at its authors with demands for something more substantial – and possibly bearing a closer resemblance to the facts.
The array of smacked gobs among cabinet members and their management team puppeteers was quite a sight, according to our sources.
We’re also told that there was a distinct lack of the usual ebullience among the administration members when they went on to get stuffed in two successive debates over school sprinkler systems and housing stock transfer.
