Good to see David Cameron making clear his support for directly elected mayors pretty much at the start of his "unscripted" speech at the Conservative conference.
Dave's wake-up call to local councils prompted spontaneous applause from the floor, but try as I might I couldn't see the television cameras pick up the Tory leader of Birmingham City Council, Mike Whitby, whose over-my-dead-body opposition to elected mayors is well known.
Whitby was at Blackpool pressing the flesh, and did speak at a couple of fringe meetings, sharing a platform with luminaries such as John Redwood and Steve Norris.
Strangely, Whitby wasn't invited to address the conference itself on his favourite subject of global cities with local hearts, or even on the importance of Cushman & Wakefield. It could not be the case, surely, that the Tories do not want to give air space to someone whose grip on power depends on maintaining a coalition with the Liberal Democrats?
It will be fascinating to see what Whitby does if referendums on elected mayors become a Tory election manifesto pledge. Can you pick and choose which bits of the manifesto you support?
Meanwhile, Whitby's people in the council bunker are attempting to talk up the fact that their man made it into The Daily Telegraph's list of the 100 most influential "Britons on the right".
Well, yes, but only at number 96, which is hardly a resounding vote of confidence for the leader of the largest local authority in Britain. Ahead of him in importance, according to the Torygraph, were the leaders of Hammersmith & Fulham and Wandsworth councils, the leader of the Tories on the Welsh assembly (are there any Tories on the Welsh Assembly?), the chairman of English Heritage and even the right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes.
Perhaps Whitby should start a blog.
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The official re-opening of Birmingham Town Hall went off, thankfully, without any re-occurence of the "turf war" dispute between council leader Mike Whitby and the office of the Lord Mayor.
The "misunderstanding" over who has precedcence – the civic or the political leader? – appears to have been cleared up. In any case, the list of dignitaries at the town hall bash was such that both Whitby and the Lord Mayor were trumped – by the Lord Lieutenant, who as the Queen's representative was allowed to take first place in the queue for the buffet.
The only sour note concerned the scores of vacant seats at the ticket-only do. The Lord Mayor, I hear, was none too happy about the number of so-called VIPs who simply failed to turn up on the night.
Since the town hall was originally built by public subscription, you'd have thought they would have hauled a few ordinary Brummies off the street to make up the numbers.
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In the unlikely event of the Liberal Democrats winning the next General Election, John Hemming will be Minister for the West Midlands.
That would liven things up a bit.
The mercurial Hemming gave us a taste the other day of what we have been missing since he stood down as deputy leader of Birmingham City Council with a savage attack on the Regional Spatial Strategy, which envisages 362,000 new homes across the West Midlands by 2026.
Hemming, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, branded the strategy as failing on sustainability, failing on transport, failing on housing provision, in fact failing on just about anything you could name.
The entire RSS was in a state of "policy chaos" and ought to be completely re-written, he trumpeted.
Good for Hemming, although it is far from certain that his colleagues are on-message with such a magisterial put-down. Iron Angle is happy to be corrected, but having sat through several meetings of the Regional Planning Partnership it is difficult to recall a single comment from a Liberal Democrat councillor – either for or against.
Mind you, the contribution from members of other political parties has hardly been incisive.
Even though the RPP's own consultants have torn holes in the housing strategy, it is almost certain that the 362,000 figure will be confirmed at a special meeting later this month.