My week ahead 3 - 9 March 2014

Monday – 3 March , 6pm Labour campaigning

Tuesday – 4 March, 7pm – Ipswich Fairtrade Event, Suffolk New College

Thursday – 6 March, 4pm – Health and Safety inspection, Sidegate Primary School
6pm Labour campaigning

Saturday 8 March, 10am – Labour campaigning – South West Ipswich

What a week for the Tories – both nationally and in Ipswich. In Westminster we have FOB v FOG (Friends of Boris and Friends of George) briefing against each other to start the meltdown and this weekend we have Liam Fox and a senior Tory Council leader both praising Farage and UKIP and criticising Cameron.

Not to be outdone here in Ipswich the Tories split into at least three factions – those supporting the leader on his budget amendment, those who did not support him and abstained plus a third faction of those who could not even attend in case they had to decide who to support!

Leadership? Certainly something the Tories seem to be lacking from top to bottom.

Another consequence of Tory cuts hit Suffolk this week (not that you would have known if you just followed Tory MP, Ben Gummer in the local press and on social media) the Tory Police and Crime Commissioner for Suffolk was meant to attend a meeting and rubber stamp the closure of the county police control room. This service would have moved to Norfolk. But what seemed a done deal soon unravelled as the local paper criticised this action and then Mr Passmore came under further pressure to stop the move from workers, the union and Labour’s David Ellesmere and Jane Basham at the meeting that should have rubber stamped the merger.

I have already publicly said that a full merger of the Norfolk and Suffolk Police may be a way ahead but what we are seeing is a merger of all services but we will still be left with two expensive PCC’s and two Chief Constables.

What was noticeable is that not one of our (Suffolk) Tory MPs has commented on the proposed merger.

It will be interesting to see what Tory Mr Passmore now does, as it seemed obvious to those who attended a recent Scrutiny meeting where Mr Passmore spoke that this was a done deal and it is also evident that both Chief Constables and the Norfolk PCC also thought no further consultation would be needed.