Birmingham Post

It is difficult to see that this is doing anything very much for Birmingham, other than reinforcing an unwanted reputation for small-town provincialism.
In an ideal world Whitby and Jones would have spent the past three years working closely together with a joint vision to promote Birmingham at a national and international level. But politics is a rough trade, even for someone as apparently “unpolitical” as Lord Jones, and it is unlikely that the ill feeling between two such forceful characters will ever be fully erased.
Iron Angle was present when it all began to go downhill, in the very early days of Whitby’s council leadership. The CBI conference was being held at the ICC, where Digby, then the organisation’s director general, appeared to be getting on famously with Whitby. . . until, minutes later, the Digger stood up to announce that the CBI would be holding its next annual shindig in London and not be returning to Birmingham in the near future. Tact has never been Digby’s strong suit.
Whitby, not for the first time, felt let down particularly by someone who claimed to be a great ambassador for Birmingham. But far worse was to come with Digby’s infamous New Street speech, in which he castigated the council for lack of progress over the £550 million station refurbishment and eloquently urged the city to “pee or get off the pot”.
Two factors made Lord Jones’ behaviour, in Whitby’s eyes, unforgivable. The first was the location of the speech, at a Conservative Party fringe meeting. The second was the unfair nature of the comments. Of all the things that you could criticise Whitby for, his dedication to the cause of New Street is beyond question.
Lord Jones, whose political style might best be described as schoolboy bullying, appeared to have no understanding of the time-consuming difficulty of putting together a huge regeneration project reliant largely on Government funding.
Or perhaps he did, but just wanted to annoy Whitby.
Behind all of this lies the M-word. It is increasingly likely that Birmingham will be required to hold a referendum on whether the city should be governed by a directly elected mayor. Whitby is convinced that Lord Jones’ candidacy would be announced before the ink on the paper ordering a ballot was dry.
By joining the Labour Government, but not the party, and after failing to do a deal to become the Conservative-backed candidate for the Mayor of London, Lord Jones demonstrates that his ambition for high office remains unabated.
Whitby, meanwhile, appears a man under pressure if the hysterical nature of some of the letters to this newspaper are anything to go by. One effort yesterday, apparently from a supporter of the council leader, praised Whitby’s foresight in promoting iconic buildings with straight lines making it easier for window cleaners to do their work thereby promoting the council’s environmental credentials.
Nevertheless, even with friends like that, Iron Angle feels confident to make this prediction: Lord Jones will be out of the Government within 18 months, but Mike Whitby will still be city council leader.