Power behind the throne: Patrick Ogbonna (second right) sitting behind the LibDems’ ‘Basher’ Lewis, just hours before he launched a devastating attack on his leadership
CIVIC CENTRE SKETCH: Sutton’s annual budget meeting proved to be just a subtext for a pre-election psycho-drama being played out behind closed doors by the ruling LibDems. BERTIE WORCESTER-PARK was there, ready for any guillotine motions
Knit one, behead one: Les Tricoteuses stood grim vigil during the Reign of Terror
During the Reign of Terror in Paris in the 18th Century, Les Tricoteuses, working-class women usually portrayed as wizened old crones, would take positions around the guillotine and casually knit their way through the day’s bloody executions, occasionally allowing themselves a wan smile, or sometimes shouting out “Vive la révolution!”
Was it a version of this that took place at Sutton Civic Centre on Monday night, as part of the way through the annual budget-setting meeting, former council deputy leader Jayne McCoy left her councillor’s seat and took up her knitting needles in the public gallery, smiling for a moment at the events unfolding before her?
There were no cries of “Off with his head!” But if looks could kill, then Sutton Council leader Barry “Basher” Lewis may have more political enemies than even he might imagine.
While her Liberal Democrat colleagues were defending the latest 4.99% Council Tax rise, tricoteuse McCoy spent two hours of the three-and-a-half hour meeting knitting. It looked to be in West Ham colours.
During all that time, not one of her 28 LibDem colleagues bothered to ask what the hell she was doing. And no, we don’t mean, “Is it a scarf? Or bootees?”
At one point, two councillors, Ed Parsley and Andrew Jenner, moved to the gallery and sat next to McCoy. But nothing was said. Were they there as friends? Or minders?
McCoy, the chair of Sutton’s planning committee, did not contribute to any debate. McCoy receives £29,062 a year in council allowances.
Given the devastating attack on the leadership skills of “Basher” Lewis that was contained in a resignation email from Patrick Ogbonna, distributed a few hours later, it seems impossible not to conclude that McCoy was aware of the simmering discontent within the LibDem group. And all just a couple of months ahead of the local elections.
It was a bizarre night for the annual council budget meeting held as usual in Sutton’s Central Library. It was also déjà vu, all over again, as the same old arguments and justifications were trotted out.
Balancing the books: a typical Band D household in Sutton will next year pay £220 less in Council Tax than a similar property in Croydon. But Sutton could be seeking government bail-outs in 2027-2028 and 2028-2029
The headline increase in Council Tax for 2026-2027 is 4.99%, comprising the maximum 2.99% general increase and an additional 2% for the adult social care precept.
This means that for a typical Band D property, the Sutton element of the total tax rises from £1,779.34 to £1,868.13, an increase of £88.79 , or around £1.71 extra per week.
The Mayor of London’s GLA Precept has risen by 4.1%, and is now more than £500 for an average home. The total payable for a Band D property is £2,378.64, a total inctrease of around £2.10 a week. Neighbours living in similar properties in Croydon will be paying £2,599.91 in Council Tax over the same period.
Narked: Cllr Sunita Gordon got her budget passed, but with shortfalls of £34.5m coming in the next two years
In the Sutton budget debate, Sunita Gordon, the LibDems’ finance lead, said the administration had balanced the budget and that Sutton was a well-run council with strong financial management. “We do not lurch from crisis to crisis,” she said.
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
The thrust of the Conservative response was that the council has lined up shortfalls of £17.8million and £16.7million in the following years, although conveniently coming after May’s local elections.It is worth remembering that Richard Simpson, who played his part in bankrupting Croydon, is now finance director at Sutton.
Tory councillor Mike Dwyer put forward an amendment to the budget that demanded a reassessment of the structure of the council. Parsley made a sneering little speech about how the Conservatives had failed to present an alternative budget, almost as if he and his LibDem colleagues wanted the Tories to waste hundreds of hours of council staff time, and Council Tax-payers’ money, in preparing a report only for it to be dismissed.
Later, James McDermott-Hill, the Tories’ deputy leader, pointed out that the LibDems’ annual demand for a full-on alternative budget was fanciful. “Instead of shadow budgets, we offer scrutiny,” he said, a warning tone in his voice.
As the LibDems claimed to be an “exemplar” council, Tim Crowley, the former opposition leader, listed a litany of council financial failures that stacked up to millions of pounds in public money lost.
Litany of failures: Tory councillor Tim Crowley
Crowley’s speech noted that when council leader Sean Brennan stepped aside in 2012, and Ruth Dombey took over, a cross-party spirit of consensus and cooperation was abandoned Even information on the deaths of councillors had been withheld from opposition councillors.
Conservative Jane Pascoe lamented the loss of trust in the council by volunteers that led to the demise of the Parent Carer Forum, a critical link in children’s care.
“That is a statutory failure,” she said. “We must resist the short view of the next election cycle, governing for the Sutton of 2035, not the headlines of tomorrow.”
Then came the one thing the LibDems could do nothing about. Their worst nightmare. Independent councillor and veritable pain-in-the-arse, the maverick Nick Mattey, had 15 uninterrupted minutes to attack the LibDem administration.
Mattey did not disappoint. It was quite a spectacle.
He laid into the “weaponised” committee system, which through council special responsibility allowances means the LibDem councillors each take home an average of nearly £26,000 a year.
Nepotism: Nick Mattey attacked the LibDems for awarding themselves £750,000 per year in allowances
Overall, the 29 LibDem councillors in Sutton are paid almost £750,000 a year out of council funds.
Mattey laid into Bobby Dean, the Wrythe councillor who also happens to be the LibDem MP for Carshalton and Wallington.
“The MP who broadcasts daily from the St Helier Hospital car park,” the maverick teased. You could feel he was getting into his stride.
Luke Taylor, a councillor and also the MP for Sutton and Cheam, was not spared either, nor was former leader Dombey, as Mattey described an incestuous, interlinked world where special responsibility allowances were transformed into Liberal Democrat donations, leaflets and publicly funded jobs.
Referencing the connected donations between the MP, Taylor, and one of his employees, Parsley, Mattey said, “This is nepotism on an unparalleled scale, and it guarantees absolute unquestioning compliance.”
It was, Mattey announced, an “engine of patronage”.
Commenting on the council leader’s remuneration package of £65,637, Mattey said, “Councillor Lewis will say he’s highly skilled and has a fantastic track record of financial competence, but others might say he’s deluded.” Before entering local politics, Lewis had managed to crash the finances of two companies, leaving debts of nearly £9million.
Mattey had his usual pop at the LibDems’ “leafleting cult”.
“Have they gone completely bonkers?” Mattey asked, to nobody in particular, as he moved on to his favourite topic – Sutton Council’s local heat network, SDEN, which supposedly sources its energy from the toxic polluting incinerator, in Mattey’s Beddington ward.
Toxic pollution: Sutton Council has been accused of being in thrall to Beddington incinerator operators Viridor
Mattey noted that SDEN wanted to link to the Cancer Hub in Belmont, many miles distant. “To do this, we’ve got to dig a trench, a very big trench, to bury very large pipes. But this is a council that can’t even fill in small potholes.” Ouch.
And so it went on. Mattey described a council that was so subservient to incinerator operators Viridor that it dismissed 916 breaches of its environmental permit as “incidental”.
Mattey ended with a rhetorical flourish: “We’re not trying to exterminate people, are we?”
LibDem Jake Short was next up. “Thank you, Madam Mayor, you’ve given me the enviable task of following that.”
Short complained about the stranglehold that the Labour government had on local spending, but like Dombey, somehow managed to forget the Liberal Democrats’ role in ushering in years of austerity.
Dean, in probably his last speech as a councillor, having successfully climbed the greasy pole into Parliament, kicked off by taking a swipe at fellow councillors Sheldon Vestey, the councillor on the Costas, and at Mattey: “Some councillors aren’t in this country. Some aren’t on this planet.”
Dean said that his side had “taken some flak” from members, but also noted that even the LibDem councillors were mums and dads and grandparents, some of whom had full-time jobs, yet were “giving up their evening” to be at the meeting. Did anyone detect the hint of a scowl from his erstwhile ward and party colleague, Patrick Ogbonna, sitting alongside him?
The adoration: former council leader Ruth Dombey making her farewell budget speech, watched adoringly by her LibDem colleague, Qasim Esak
The other MP for the borough, Taylor, did his usual schtick of trying to rewrite history and bend the facts, listing as “achievements” schemes that the LibDem administration had worked hard to block – the regeneration of Quarry Cottage in Sears Park by Yourspace Sutton, and the building of a school at Rose Hill.
Conservative Wendy Clark noted “bad investments” due to the Lib Dems’ “ruthless appetite for risk”, citing Beech Tree Place housing and the Throwley Yard cinema as waste, and the £26million St Nicholas Centre – now abandoned as part of a major development – as a “white elephant”.
And there was a spectacular own-goal by Gemma Munday – the LibDem councillor who is married to MP Dean – when she praised Sutton’s children’s services, but pointed out that Sutton Council had been heavily criticised by Ofsted for using unregistered placements for children.
Tim Foster, the leader of the three-strong group of independent councillors, criticised council staff and the LibDem politicians for claiming projects came in on budget, when they had needed hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional money. “It’s the residents’ money, not yours,” he reminded Council.
Conservative leader Tom Drummond’s speech included a dig at Taylor that left certain LibDem members of a religious persuasion looking a little uncomfortable. “David Campanale is taking Sutton Liberal Democrats to court, saying he was discriminated against because of his Christian beliefs,” Drummond said.
“In legal papers, he claims that Councillor Taylor was the ringleader of the discrimination.”
Drummond continued: “There are multiple theories about who is really in charge. The one person who rarely features in those conversations is the individual who formally holds the title of leader.” That was Barry “Basher” Lewis bashed.
Waiting in the wings: Patrick Ogbonna’s resignation email was to come within hours of the budget meeting
Within hours, Councillor Patrick Ogbonna had resigned from the Liberal Democrats, launching a withering broadside against Lewis’s leadership: “Incompetent, inept, blustering and tends to make totally inappropriate, offensive comments.”
Closing the debate, finance lead Gordon lost her cool. She was clearly narked. Everything bad was someone else’s fault, it seemed, her blame-game switching from the Tories to Labour, and worldwide surge in populist politics.
The message was undeniably the same as it has been for the last 40 years. Like Japanese knotweed, Sutton LibDems are incredibly difficult to get rid of.
The Conservative amendment was defeated and the LibDem budget passed. Dombey’s claim that, “We don’t need a government bail-out”, though, might be a boast that does not last long, with £34.5million of council funding shortfall kicked down the road.
But at least, as the meeting came to a close, there was no need of a guillotine motion.
Read more: LibDems rocked by councillor attack on Sutton leader Lewis
Read more: Campaign petition is challenge to south London councillors
Read more: Sutton council leader denies punching colleague at meeting
Read more: LibDems’ sacked deputy storms out of meeting, and council
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Thank you so much for publishing pictures of Cllrs Barry Lewis and Sunita Gordon. They are my local councillors but without your helpful pics I wouldn’t know what they look like. Still another 4 years of them collecting their allowances whilst doing nothing for their ward.