Labour Deputy Leader slams her own Council's "politics of division"

Even by Gateshead Labour standards, this outburst was noteworthy. Corbyn-adoring Catherine Donovan is the Deputy Leader of Gateshead Council. She loves to shoot from the hip when it comes to leftwing posturing, especially when she has Labour trade unionists as an audience, as she had at Cabinet yesterday. Whether a single word she has ever uttered in one of her rants has ever had a positive impact, or indeed any impact, on events is a debatable point.

Yesterday Gateshead Cabinet debated and agreed plans to close 3 libraries in the borough, including the one at Whickham. Cllr Donovan decided to launch a pro-Corbyn rant during the debate which barely mentioned libraries at all. She had a go at me when she saw my amusement at her belief that the country just needs to wake up to the call of Corbyn and then sweep him into power in 2020. Everything will then be solved. I intervened to call her "deluded" if she thought Labour could win the next election with Corbyn as leader.

Though libraries were barely mentioned, Cllr Donovan did manage to have a rant about post-war housing conditions, the Coalition and Donald Trump. And then she launched a remarkable attack on her own council when she said, "The politics of division that this council and Trump put forward is something that’s total anathema to what we are trying to do in this borough."

The video captures all of this.