Next Monday afternoon, we county councillors have been called together to consider a motion of no confidence in the deputy leader Cllr Paul Miller.
Cllr Miller’s offence is to have proposed that the authority should try to establish why parents appear to prefer schools where teaching is in the medium of Welsh rather than their English counterparts.
Is it because of the language, or the fact that Welsh medium schools have a high reputation for educational excellence?
Another possible reason is that parents are attracted by the fact that some Welsh medium schools are in shiny new buildings, though that can’t be the case in respect of Ysgol Bro Preseli which manages to combine being one of the best schools in Wales with buildings that are, by all accounts, on the verge of imminent collapse.
The deputy leader’s crime is compounded by his statement that parents in his ward choose Welsh language schools because of educational standards/new buildings and some “didn’t give a toss” about the language issue. While this might be an injudicious turn of phrase, it is hardly a hanging offence.
But what really interested Old Grumpy is that this isn’t the first time a deputy leader’s head has been on the block.
Cast your mind back to May 2014, when Cllr Jamie Adams’ deputy, Cllr Rob Lewis, faced a similar vote.
Cllr Lewis, you may recall, had been found guilty by the Ombudsman and the council’s own Standards Committee of attempting to subvert the democratic process by the wholesale, and unlawful, use of the council’s computer system to run the Independent Political Group’s 2008 and 2012 election campaigns.
This all came to light after the young upstart uncovered a cache of emails and other documents (see Partygate) detailing Rob Lewis’ activities.
Thanks to the IPG’s block vote, Cllr Lewis easily survived by 36 votes to 16.
As it happens, quite a few of those who were happy to give Cllr Lewis’ conduct the green light are still with us.
It will be interesting to see whether they regard a few injudicious words by Cllr Miller as more worthy of censure than a blatant attempt to undermine the democratic process by their fellow party member.
I will report further once the votes are in.