Division in Brum Labour Cabinet as Cllr Clements nominates inexperienced Aitken for Parliament
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Division in Brum Labour Cabinet as Cllr Clements nominates inexperienced Aitken for Parliament
Cabinet member for Transport Liz Clements, who is also the Councillor for Bournville and Cotteridge, has nominated Cllr Alex Aitken (Kings Norton North) for the nomination.
Division in Birmingham City Council’s cabinet as Liz Clements nominates Alex Aitken for the Birmingham Northfield parliamentary nomination.
This usually wouldn’t be a big story however Cllr Liz Clements Deputy Leader on the City Council, Cllr Brigid Jones, is also standing in the race to become Northfield’s next MP.
Cllr Brigid Jones is the Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council and acts as Leader when Cllr Ian Ward is not available. For fellow cabinet member Liz Clements to nominate her opponent shows a lack of faith in Brigid Jones’ political abilities.
Liz Clements and Alex Aitken are to the left of the Labour party with both being heavily involved with trade unions and regularly supporting strike action and joining picket lines themselves. Liz Clements famously suggested that Elon Musk should use his fortune to buy everyone a bike in order to help the environment.
This is not the first time Liz Clements has shown her displeasure with Birmingham City Council’s leadership. After the 2022 local elections she ran for the top job herself at the Council in a bid to oust Council Leader Ian Ward. She came third in the contest behind Cllr Waseem Zaffar.
What is curious is that if Birmingham City Council’s own cabinet member for Transport doesn’t have any faith in its Leader or Deputy Leader then why should any of us?
If Brigid Jones were to lose out on the Northfield Parliamentary race to the relatively inexperienced Alex Aitken then she won’t be pleased that members of her own cabinet are endorsing her opponents.
One thing is for sure, if the Birmingham Labour Group weren’t divided enough following the leadership coup this summer (which Cllr Ian Ward won by just 1 vote), then they certainly are now.
Written by Jack Dixon
Division in Brum Labour Cabinet as Cllr Clements nominates inexperienced Aitken for Parliament
The B’ham Labour Council is on a knife edge. Ward did win by two votes (but of course one of them was his own vote - I presume he voted for himself). The Northfield Labour candidate contest is fascinating - it’s a marvel to see that Ms Jones has discovered the existence of Northfield, an area in which she has never shown any interest before. She claims to have always lived in south B’ham since her university days but by this she means the comfortably off, middle class university areas and not Northfield where the residents go out to work for a living. Aitken in contrast claims to have lived in the area and has been a local, if undistinguished, councillor since 2018 though the people of Kings Norton North might justifiably ask themselves what useful thing he’s ever achieved for the area in that time. At one time he was a close friend of the notorious ‘Olly’ Armstrong but seems to have dropped him when Armstrong’s behaviour became just too outrageous and intolerable. As for Ms Clements, a former denizen of privileged, leafy Oxfordshire, whose joint obsessions appear to be cycling and East German trams, and who wishes to be in a position to order all B’ham citizens to “get on their bikes”, she has already gained a lot of publicity by opposing the Labour leader and I suspect is now enjoying herself thumbing her nose at her deputy leader. Whichever of these candidates and their supporters gain the upper hand, the people of Northfield stand to gain nothing except another sanctimonious, preening, sneering, self congratulating Labour politician wanting to use the constituency as a means of furthering their own political career. At this stage, I’m predicting Aitken to win the candidature, but then again, what would I know?