More Trouble for Labour as They Lose A Member to the Tories.

Four members of Stoke-on-Trent City Council have crossed the floor to join the Conservatives, making them the largest party in the chamber with 19 councillors, but leaving them short of an overall majority.

Three of the councillors, Lesley Adams, Shaun Bennett and Janine Bridges, were previously members of the City Independent group. The fourth, Ally Simcock has crossed from Labour.

Members crossing the floor is not an uncommon event in local government, over the years I have known some elected members who moved party so often they needed a post-it nots on their desk to remind them who they were voting with this week.

Out of the current group two of the former Independents are young enough to have ambitions beyond Stoke-on-Trent. In which case it makes sense to hitch their fortunes to the party that is in the ascendant.

What is more interesting is the 'defection' of Ally Simcock from Labour, a party she has only represented on the council since May 2019. Speaking to the Sentinel she echoes here other new colleagues, all of whom sing a variation on the theme of wanting to be 'part of the team that is getting things done'.

Fair point, there are serious questions to be asked about the direction of travel, but there is no denying that the Tories have been busy. On their watch the Smithfield development has started to look like a miniature Manhattan on the outskirts of Hanley, whether the returns on this and other dips into property speculation pay off in the long term remains to be seen.

Ms Simcock goes on to cite a 'divided Labour Party' as another reason for her departure, suggesting that replacing Jeremy Corbyn with the more moderate Keir Stamer hasn't ended the party's woes.

The real concern though for Labour locally is the loss of a member with, potentially, a long and productive local government career ahead of her. This points to the parlous state of the party in what was once amongst the most secure of its strongholds.

The problems within the Labour Party in Stoke are long standing and include a lacklustre leadership, an ageing active membership and a lack of political direction. Put simply there are too many middle aged and decidedly mediocre people in leadership roles holding back anyone with talent or drive from progressing.

Once upon a time that wouldn't have mattered, joining a political party was like getting married, it was a relationship that lasted for a lifetime. Things aren't that way now, if the old guard insist on doing the things they've always done in the way they've always been done, then the younger people behind them aren't disposed to wait quietly in line. They pack up their loyalties and move on to where the grass is greener and the opportunities better.

If they are ever to get out of their current rut and be an effective opposition, let alone regain control of the council, then Labour are going to have to take a long hard look at their own benches. If they see, and they will, too many hacks holding on to what is a very comfortable berth whilst the handful of eager younger members grind their teeth in frustration, then it is time to do some judicious pruning.

If they don't, and it is hard to imagine the current moribund leadership having the guts, then expect more departures between now and the next election.

By Cauldon Canal I Walked and Remembered.

I have always held to the theory that if you want to truly see a place, then you should travel around it on foot. This is something I am hoping to put to the test in this series of occasional articles about walks taken around my home town of Stoke-on-Trent

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On a warm, if slightly overcast morning I accessed the towpath of Cauldon Canal by crossing a narrow footbridge by where the old Lock-keepers house and the new health centre faced each other. 

On one side of me a couple of short streets of terraced houses ran down to the waterside, one of which ended in a tiny and not very well cared for park. If someone had spent half an hour or so there with a lawnmower and a litter-pick it might have been a nice place to sit and watch the barges go by.

On the other the last bit of the Cauldon College I knew as a teenager was being turned into rubble and a slicker, shiner new one taking its place. This, a sign facing the car park helpfully informed me included an Enterprise Hub and an Atrium Restaurant. Very nice, back in the day the best we could hope for was a canteen serving up tepid coffee and soggy toast.

Passing under the bridge that takes College Road over the canal I entered Hanley Park, where on one side the pavilion and bandstand stood surrounded by an honour guard of bright municipal flowers. On the other grass sloped down to the lake with its fountains firing jets of water up above the treetops.

It was easy to imagine the Edwardian families who must have walked along these paths when the park first opened. Men in tall hats, women in long dresses, their children dressed in either sailor suits or like miniature versions of their mother playing with sticks and hoops. 

Under another bridge and I had moved out of the park to where a development of new apartments fringed the water. As new build developments go it looked like a nice place to live, I could almost imagine myself sitting on one of the benches placed by the water's edge like something out a property developer's glossy brochure.

At least I could until I noticed that the waterside set aside for the use of people living in the new apartments was fenced off from the older tower blocks that loomed over the site. It was, probably, unintentional, but made me think about the drawing of lines that 'the wrong sort of people' aren't allowed to cross that is so much a part of modern life.

Passing under the Litchfield Road bridge on slippery and uneven cobbles I stepped into a reminder of why the canal is there at all. This is where the Emma Bridgewater

pottery factory stands, through the grimy windows of which I could see racks of ware waiting to be fired, somewhere beyond the weedy nearside bank someone bashed out a steady rhythm on a piece of metal.

This is the version of the canal that hasn't been tidied up, here things are still made for sale, even if these days they are transported by road rather than by barge. Here graffiti, of which there is a lot, is the real thing, a silent scream from people with little or no agency over their lives, not self-consciously hip 'art'. 

Then it was back to the land of apartments, the Waterside development that has replaced the pottery works that still lined the canal when I first walked here as a boy in the eighties. 

They look nice enough, each one has a tiny balcony for the owner to put a couple of chairs on or a BBQ. The trouble is looking at them you can't help thinking about the community of work that had to be swept away so they could exist at all and feeling a little sad.

On the balcony of one apartment a wooden heron looked sadly upstream, I knew how he felt. Given the choice I'd rather be back where things are less tidy; and a lot more lively.

My walk ended at Bucknall by the sprawling Goodwin engeneering works where a swing bridge carries a narrow road over the water. As a child I was fascinated by this bridge and longed to see it opened up to let some great vessel pass. It never happened and it didn't this time either, one more reason to come back again.