Cllr Tony Devenish represents Knightsbridge and Belgravia Ward on Westminister City Council. He is a former member of the London Assembly

A cold Monday evening early this year – a time when, if we are honest, most of us would like to be at home, in the pub, or perhaps using that gym membership we keep meaning to cancel to afford Rachel Reeves tax rises. For 18 years’ I have spent this particular evening as a guest at one of London’s premier Residents’ Associations Annual General Meeting. Over one hundred people, consisting mainly of the Queen Elizabeth II generation who rebuilt our country after a World War, turn up in a suit and tie or a cocktail dress. No dress down working from home mindset from these strivers and grafters.

Conservative Home readers may be asking the point of this article. The point is for the first time in those two decades, not a single London Borough council officer, nor the ruling Labour Party’s City Council Cabinet Member, nor Sadiq Khan’s quango, Transport for London, bothered to send a single person to the AGM to listen and engage.

Westminster’s Labour MP: ‘Rachel Invisible’ as she’s been nicknamed, and my successor as the local London Assembly Member, were also AWOL. Councils seem to be forgetting democracy is not exclusively about social media and Online meetings. But since Labour won Westminster City Council in May 2022 that is the direction of travel. Residents’ Associations across London have seen both Councillors and Officers who control vast multi-million budgets and huge tracts of our lives, being increasingly unwilling to leave the Town Hall. Or be available to meet, except online. There are (I stress) a few honourable exceptions amongst longer-serving individuals.

I am not medically qualified. But it does not take a doctor to tell you isolation as we saw during Covid has health consequences. As well as serious consequences for our democracy. I am regularly being quietly taken aside by concerned civic-minded residents and businesses to talk about Labour’s and Officers’ reluctance to engage, to just turn up. Most local people are simply baffled or resigned to this ‘poor behaviour’. This comes, like all Leadership, from the top; in just six months we have learnt Sir Keir Starmer would rather travel overseas or talk to his North London friends than ever meet a normal member of the public. A man called Morgan McSweeney actually governs the country.

Sir Sadiq Khan is exactly the same. Across eight years, the Mayor of London rarely even meets with his own Deputy Mayors, except for a photograph to Tweet, though I understand he does talk to his one friend: his pet golden retriever dog in Tooting. I expect he will turn up at the Palace to accept his Knighthood. Sadiq did surface just once this year to moan that little progress was being made post the appalling Sarah Everard murder in dismissing certain police officers due to red tape. The Home Security Yvette Cooper, another AWOL politician, could work with Sadiq to make this happen. If only.

Political Leadership needs to be visible. Since 2022, the non-political Lord Mayor of Westminster who serves for a single year in office (two Labour Party Councillors and a Conservative councillor to date) seems to be the only one with the public service ethos of turning up and listening. Attending a dozen Christmas tree openings matters. But it is not in that role to be accountable to the electorate for Council policies and services. With the huge changes in retail, housing, waste services, liaising with the Police, etc  the vacuum which is created by this failure to turn up and listen is a serious threat to our democracy. Khan is attempting to steal the West End from his own Labour Council but will he turn up to debate the issue? He says local people should not determine this matter.

People seek reassurance from their elected representatives in a City with world events and armed conflict impacting our communities, played out in protests on London’s streets. Reassurance that their children will have a job and a future. Labour have spent so long shouting “Tory Cuts” and “Austerity” that they have no idea how to lead, how to show optimism. Council officers, often just hide. We certainly have fewer Chief Executives that show such leadership , with a handful of exceptions across the country. Some Council Chief Executives have shown real leadership in the recent past from Grenfell to Covid. This melting into the background has become so pronounced quite recently.

Perhaps it is in part due to the student politics woke nonsense which has taken root In the  two years’ Labour has run Westminster City Council. Pursuing nonsense from ‘global majority’ anti-white job advertisements, to paying themselves huge inflation busting Cabinet Member allowances, taxing Green cars more (do these people not understand the word, incentive) and cutting to the bone the Policy and Scrutiny Committees where backbench councillors formerly held the Executive to account. Our Council Chief Executive made headlines being caught telling staff raising the Israeli flag ‘may be triggering’ for some staff just two days’ after the October 7th Pogrom. Hearing hard truths and a variety of views is the job of political leadership.

The message I’m picking up currently by engaging is that those who create and finance jobs are scathing about a Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Business Secretary of State whose CV’s are works of fiction.There is a real cost to this approach: the cost of borrowing for local government and for us all will go up. Business are pausing investment. A bit of visible leadership, some optimism (cheer up Keir) and actively being willing to listen would be a good aim for the rest of 2025 across local, regional and national Government. Westminster Labour has lost two council by-elections in less than a year. Perhaps be a little more visible, turn up and LISTEN. I won’t hold my breath.

Finally thank you to Conservative Councillors who re-elected me onto the CCA Councillor Board as the London rep. Chairman, John Cope, a regularly Con Home author is a breath of fresh air.

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