Opinion: Knives Out On Italian Night At Millmead…

Published on: 29 Jul, 2018
Updated on: 1 Aug, 2018

By Martin Giles

The Italian students visiting Millmead on Tuesday evening (July 24, 2018), here to see an English borough council at work, were probably expecting a boring evening.

They would not have been expecting Coliseum-like “carnage”. But that was the way one councillor described the full council meeting. One scene was akin to the demise of Julius Caesar.

Later a councillor said, “It was not the best advert for local democracy.” Maybe, or was it that democracy was coming sleepily to its senses?

Cllr Matt Furniss explaining his decision not to support Cllr Rooth’s retention of his membership of the Planning Committee

Exposed, for all to see, seemed to be the vindictive nature within the Tory leadership but also evident was the discomfort of the majority of the Tory group with some of the behaviour on show.

The well-known fallout between Deputy Leader Furniss and veteran councillor Tony Rooth, a former Conservative group and council leader who turned Independent, was at the root of the unsavoury events that unfolded.

Furniss was determined to strip Rooth of the one committee appointment he wanted, continued membership of the Planning Committee. But the deputy leader must have hoped others would take his side.

Rushing to the fight like a couple of ageing bouncers were Executive colleagues Cllrs Ellwood and Manning. Ellwood’s justification for voting against Rooth (“Et tu, Ellwood?”) was his unhappiness with Rooth’s defection from the Tory camp mid-term. Pilgrims ward “was a Tory seat and …should remain a Tory seat”.

Manning tried to appear considerate. He had been open-minded, he said, until Rooth’s “sensationalist” articles on the increase of empty shops in Guildford had appeared in local media. But Manning did not seriously challenge their accuracy. Perhaps he prefers the spun, positive messages that come from the North Korean “news” service or The Donald’s tweet factory?

If Furniss reckoned that a recorded vote would enforce party discipline, putting the spotlight on each Tory member in turn, he was wrong. Only one Conservative backbencher supported him. Any control freakery had back-fired.

The votes were taken in alphabetic order, so Council Leader Spooner had the advantage of seeing which way the Tiber was flowing before jumping in. Whether his vote for the option that would have kept Rooth on planning was calculated we will never know but when it came it left questions.

Was it simple magnanimity towards Rooth, a man who he had already brought low? And what did it say of the leader’s relationship with his deputy? The questions whispered within his own Conservative group and elsewhere about whose hand is really at the helm must surely have reached him.

Furniss, the youngest councillor at GBC, finds it difficult to imagine any issue in non-political terms. He is a Conservative zealot. The party must come first and hopefully, he must think, his single-minded loyalty will be noticed and rewarded with advancement.

Some of his characteristics are unlikely to endear him to older, more experienced colleagues and opponents. It seems that while he can turn on the charm when canvassing or socialising, he can too often display a condescending, patronising attitude in political meetings. It serves him ill.

I cannot recall any Conservative councillors I have spoken to speaking affectionately, admiringly or respectfully about their deputy leader. Some say leadership is not a popularity competition but politics is not the army and it is not business.

Furniss might have succeeded in preventing Rooth staying on the Planning Committee but it was at considerable cost to his own authority, such as it is: it was a Pyrrhic victory and his position is weaker today than it was last week.

When your party colleagues feel your performance is damaging their personal or group objectives and prospects they have it in their power to do something about it. They can challenge and they can vote you out.

There are corroborated reports that a challenge to Furniss’s deputy leadership was considered a couple of months ago but the numbers did not add up.

Would those numbers have changed now? Time will tell but it has been a damaging week for the ambitious young man, and any dreams he has of being Guildford’s MP seem a little more fanciful.

Of course, it is impossible for anyone who tries to achieve something in politics not to make enemies but if you make too many, there will come a payback time, as Julius Caesar himself discovered.

See also: Borough Council Chooses the ‘Nuclear Option’ Over Committee Appointments

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