Wandsworth’s new Conservative administration has started as it means to go on – with a fight.
Wednesday’s inaugural annual council meeting began smoothly enough. Emmeline Owens was elected Mayor. The chains were on. The applause died down.
Then it fell apart.
The row
Councillors on both sides had barely settled into their seats when Labour made clear they were not happy. Papers setting out a wholesale restructuring of the council’s committee system – the bodies that hold the administration to account – had arrived that day. Labour said they had not been consulted and refused to take part.
The Conservative administration apologised. The changes were temporary, they said. Everything would be reviewed in July. Labour were not convinced.
By the time the meeting ended, Wandsworth’s new council had no functioning Finance committee, no Housing committee, no Transport committee. All six scrutiny committees have been suspended until 22 July – eight weeks into a new administration on a knife-edge majority of one.
The mayor
Owens won her first council seat in Northcote in 2022, then was forced out the seat to make way for a loyalist. She redeployed to Southfields and held it.
Her reward is the mayoralty. Her job is now to cast the deciding vote whenever the council ties. In a chamber split 29 Conservatives to 28 Labour, with independent Malcolm Grimston as the solitary kingmaker, that moment will come.
What it means
Without scrutiny committees there is no one to formally question the administration’s decisions until late July. Labour can still call a vote, but only by triggering a procedure through a temporary catch-all committee – currently staffed entirely by Conservative councillors, since Labour have refused to nominate members to it.
And buried in the same batch of last-minute papers: a constitutional change giving the leader’s own committee the power to vet any future amendments to the council’s rulebook before they reach a full council vote. Aled Richards-Jones chairs that committee. Malcolm Grimston sits on it.
Same old story
Three weeks ago, voters sent Wandsworth its closest result in a generation: 28 Labour; 29 Conservative; 1 independent. The message was hard to miss.
On Wednesday night, both sides appeared to have missed it anyway.
