It
wasn’t Councillor Davey’s best joke ever, that must be the one about Sadiq Khan
being the worst thing to hit London since the Luftwaffe but suggesting that
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (the Iranian political
prisoner) should perhaps be sent back to Iran after her
understandable disdain for Boris Johnson led to her joining the Labour Party ran it a close second.
The Left flew into a rage and even issued a Press Release on the subject
when John was reinstated six months later. (PDF.)
Another bunch of humourless Lefties had removed John from
the Governors of Bedonwell
School. Schools are well known hotbeds of unbridled Socialism so that was not
unexpected but what was surprising is that Bexley Conservatives withdrew the
whip from Councillor Davey and then refused to say what had got up their collective noses.
BiB appears not to have made much of John Davey’s
readmittance to the
Conservative ranks which may indicate the degree of interest it had in this storm in a teacup.
Not for the first time @tonyofsidcup took a less relaxed view of Council
shenanigans than I did and submitted an FOI asking of what was John Davey accused. He got the usual brush off from Bexley Council and the same from the
Information Commissioner.
So off to Court @tony went.
The Tribunal’s judgment reveals that the Monitoring Officer decided
against referring Councillor Davey to the Code of Conduct Committee. That
decision in effect led to Councillor Davey being protected from public scrutiny and the
Localism Act does provide for such a thing when a complaint has no merit. Had
the complaint gone to the Code of Conduct Committee the Council would have been
obliged to publish its conclusion but the complaint did not reach that stage. Presumably because the Monitoring Officer believed it had no merit.
Two of the three judges therefore backed Bexley Council’s decision
that it could legitimately adopt its usual secretive position, but the
third felt that was unwise. He was of the opinion that an accusation of racism is so serious
that the correct decision would be to be open and transparent and thereby remove
the suspicions which Councillor Davey has suffered. However the Court ruled two
to one that
“processing is not necessary for the legitimate purpose of dispelling publicly circulated rumours”.
Can we conclude that Bexley Council would rather let one of their Members
continue to live under a cloud rather than see their procedures exposed to
public view? And which Tory clown ordered him out of the local party?
