As I live in Islington, I was intrigued to see Carole Cadwalladr's
recent article about the borough in the Observer. Amazing that an Islington resident can write a long article about her home borough without mentioning the fact that for ten years - 2000-2010 - it was run by the Liberal Democrats! They took over largely because the former Labour administration run by Margaret Hodge was so inefficient and hobbled by its public-sector union connections, that the voters threw them out, even while New Labour was triumphant. So much so that, apparently, when the new Lib-Dem leadership came in, their first action was to make it a sackable offence for council officers not to answer the phone when members of the public called. Jeremy Corbyn was an intimate member of the Red Islington gang. I don't know if he has responded to his colleague John Mann's
open letter about the 1980s/90s Islington Child abuse scandal but that's all part of the same issue. Today the council is in far better shape, largely because of its decade of freedom from Labour control, but now with only one beleaguered Green opposition councillor there are signs of the same impenetrable cabals taking control and true accountability seeping away. As ever "All power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely."
