Norfolk Conservatives AT WAR - So Says EDP!

Norfolk Conservatives at war SHAUN LOWTHORPE 22 October 2008 08:18 There's nothing quite so heated and bitter as a family row. And Conservatives in Norfolk are going at it hammer and tongs in a very public way at the moment. Supporters of Daniel Cox point to a plot being launched against him, led by Breckland's Cliff Jordan, who is chairman of the Mid Norfolk Conservative constituency party. The cause? The leader's handling of the unitary issue, where the county council has successfully won favour (so far) with the Boundary Committee for plans for a single supercouncil including Lowestoft. In their view, the row is a revenge attack by those - and that means every other district council apart from Broadland - whose own unitary bids failed. Not so, says Mr Jordan, who from the outset has insisted there was no plot. What is happening, he says, is that the party in Mid Norfolk is making best use of rules to have a proper contest and a real debate - and the fallout is sour grapes from those who have lost out. His critics have told him to put up or shut up, and, stung by the criticisms, the signs are he is going to meet them head-on. So what is going on? There are two ideological wings among Norfolk's Tories - county and district. Relations have been strained for some time, with “district” Tories agitating for a tougher, leaner, more right-wing approach to running services - by which they mean cuts, charges, and sell-offs - to keep council tax down. County Tories, meanwhile, their eyes opened by the step up from running the parks and public toilets to the big-ticket services, ponder the savagery of such an approach and the consequences it might have on vulnerable children or older people. So, they have shied away from implementing such far-reaching measures - or gone native, as their critics might argue. Many try to straddle the two - serving as so-called “twin hatters”, as both district and county councillors (of which there are quite a lot, by the way) but at the end of the day you are ideologically in one camp or t'other. So far the “county” Tories have always been in the ascendant at County Hall. But is the balance about to change? The unitary issue appears to have concentrated the minds of wannabe county councillors who now feel that, if a new authority is on the cards, it might be time to sign up, when before they might have been happy to stay on the district councils. Several district Tories are vying for a seat at the county table, including Breckland leader William Nunn, his cabinet colleague Ann Steward and Broadland's Simon Woodbridge. West Norfolk borough leader Nick Daubney thought about it and changed his mind - but the signs are that an ideological shift could be on its way whether the unitary decision goes ahead or not. Knock out a couple of Mr Cox's supporters, whether by accident or design, and all of a sudden the sums start to shift. But divisions exist within all parties, and certainly on the unitary issue, so why are the Tories now reacting so badly? The local government review and the county's so-far-successful bid for a single supercouncil has quite definitely got up the noses of some. But the second simmering issue is a row over the cabinet's management of the County Farms, which, insiders report, sparked a heated exchange between Mr Cox and Mr Jordan when the Tories last held a group meeting. The third is ideology, and the battle for who really can lay claim to carry the torch for David Cameron's Conservatives, and just what that might mean. The Tory constitution allows for the option to challenge a sitting councillor; Mid Norfolk, where this row kicked off, has adopted that route. The fuss now centres on the technicalities of whether they did it properly and the precise details of what happened when the executive committee introduced the change at a meeting on June 18. All sides agree the meeting happened. That's about all they can agree on, so powers higher up will probably have to sort it out. Mean-time, the rest of us can only watch and wonder if this storm will blow over - or if the Tories are really hell- bent on tearing themselves to shreds.