SHIREBROOK’S LEADERSHIP CRISIS: When Lawlessness Becomes Law

I don’t know how to write about this.
I don’t even know what to think anymore.
I feel like I’m in a circus.
As if the world has been turned upside down.
Lawlessness has become law.
Black is white.
Right is wrong.

Yes, yes—I know. Once again I’m writing a dramatic opening. But I write like this because I’m running out of words, jokes, and clever turns of phrase to describe what is happening inside Shirebrook Town Council.

It sounds like a tragicomedy, but in truth it’s pure comedy: apparently the Leader of Shirebrook Town Council announced there will be no meetings until further notice because {insert excuse here—any excuse}. Completely against democratic tradition, but let’s skip that for a moment and ask ourselves what the opposition can do?

DO YOU REMEMBER THE LAST EXTRAORDINARY MEETING?
So, five opposition councillors took matters into their own hands and (I assume after following the proper legal steps) announced the date, place, and agenda for an extraordinary meeting of STC- the first one since 2015 (after which nothing changed, and I decided to run for council to take matters into my own hands).

And then—straight out of farce—the new Leader of STC, Paul Harford, famous for abruptly ending meetings because {insert excuse here—any excuse}, decided he would call his own EXTRA extraordinary meeting… using the names of the opposition councillors and their agenda, but NOT the time and place. He changed it. Which, in my view, is… illegal.

He can’t just change the place and date of a meeting called under the Local Government Act because {insert excuse here—any excuse}. Still—after zero meetings in August, and cancelling all meetings in the future without any time limit—it looked, for a moment, as though we suddenly had TWO EXTRAORDINARY meetings almost at once. Tadaaaa!

It’s as if our “new” Council Leader, Paul Harford, looked at the “successes” of his predecessor and said: “hold my beer, I’ll show them…” He called a meeting even though just a few days earlier he had said there would be no meetings until further notice. He had already abruptly ended two meetings before. Bravo! Or should I write Tadaaaa?

YOU GOT AGENDA! YOU GOT AGENDA! EVERYBODY GOT AGENDA!
Despite two dates of “extraordinary meetings” doing the rounds on Facebook, the official council website shows NOTHING in the calendar. No meetings at all- not one called by opposition, not one called by our genius-in-charge! Ah! I’ll risk another Tadaaaa!

Working hard or hardly working… In the case of our Town Clerk, the choice is clear…

And if you want to actually read those mysterious agendas floating around online, well… you’ll have to float around online yourself and hunt for them, because the last agenda published on the official council site is from—wait for it—March 2025! Yes—that definitely deserves a juicy Tadaaaa! She is working from home- what do you not understand?

If that’s not enough for you, and if you really want to smash your head against the rock-bottom of incompetence, you can try reading the minutes of previous meetings. The last ones published… well, see for yourself:

This time I’ll skip the Tadaaaa and go simple: OMG! February… almost six months without a single set of minutes published. Transparency! Efficiency! Accountability! Three words completely foreign to our Town Clerk and the current town leadership.

Hey, Mr Mayor! You might have left the Labour Party, but the Labour Party hasn’t left you. At least the “old” part of it.

SPOILED FOR CHOICES
There were supposed to be no meetings—and suddenly we’ve got meetings galore, a whole menu to pick from. It looks like Paul Harford has completely lost control of the situation. In doing so, he’s lost the trust of voters, only to make a complete fool of himself with this duplicated agenda. And this blunder won’t come cheap. It will cost him support among a large part of the town—the very people who care about Shirebrook and will certainly turn out at the next election.

Paul Harford has burned through his credibility in record time—our very own, even worse version of Sir Kier Two-Tier. He won the position of STC Leader thanks to the votes of the “old guard.” And just like his predecessor, he’s dancing to the whispers of that ever-present beehive of the old guard.

I suspect Paul Harford will end up the same way his predecessor did. He should. I hope he does. In my view, after publishing an agenda pretending to be the opposition’s agenda, he should resign. But what do I know… agenda-forgery? Pff. STC once fiddled with the Finance Report and nobody batted an eye.

IS IT EVEN LEGAL???
Using people’s names on official documents without their consent is illegal. Change my mind. And yet—the Town Clerk, on Paul Harford’s orders (because I can’t imagine she did this off her own back—that would be doubly illegal), circulated an agenda for the “new” extraordinary meeting with a different date and venue than the one requested by councillors under the Standing Orders of STC and national legislation.

What STC has done here appears to contradict the Local Government Act 1972. Period.

Pfff. But we live in a Red Wall Labour town, in Sir Kier Two-Tier’s UK. The law doesn’t matter here. After two-tier policing and a two-tier judiciary, we now have the Two-Tier Extraordinary Meeting. Why not?

THEN THE MIC DROPPED
I reached out to one of the opposition councillors. In my opinion, the old guard played the opposition. There was supposed to be a meeting on their terms—and somehow it ended up being on the terms of the Town Clerk, who isn’t even a democratically elected member of STC. She is a civil servant, yet she dictates the conditions. She chooses who to answer, what to answer, and whether to even turn up to work or not. All of this—at our expense.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—the Town Clerk should be investigated and fired. ASAP.

So, what are we left with? Behind the door on the right: a meeting in the Miners’ Welfare—a large hall, proper sound system. But meaningless, since the “opposition” gave in to the “old guard” demands. Behind the door on the left: a Town Hall meeting, where TEN people can just about squeeze in, with no sound system and no proper fire escape. But it’s on the terms of the ruling “elite”—so this will go through and change nothing. Guaranteed!

The only silver lining in all of this is that the opposition has grown from two to five councillors. They’ve learned another lesson—even if you follow the law, old Labour will break it just to get their way.

Opposition is still a minority. But, and this is a big BUT, even a small minority is the foundation of real democracy. Without opposition, we have tyranny. Communism. Nazism. Corruption and the disintegration of the basic rule of law. We have Shirebrook.

WAIT A MINUTE! FIVE OPPOSITION COUNCILLORS?
There’s a little wrinkle here. Among the councillors I’ve just described as the “opposition”—two of them are actually from the Labour Party. Or maybe they’ve finally quit Labour too and I just don’t know about it yet? With Labour suffering a sort of mass-resignation epidemic these days, anything’s possible…

Or maybe they’re like those Labour Party members in the Shirebrook Together organisation—there just to listen, sow discord, oppose everything and ultimately dismantle it. I just cannot fathom how anyone who knows how Labour operates still clings to their membership card.

POLITICS
The political situation in STC is so messy you can’t really tell what’s going on if you’re on the outside, like me. Labour won 100% of the seats—but now, the Chair and some Committee Chairs aren’t Labour. They were voted in partly by Labour, with other Labour councillors voting against them. It’s a proper mess. And we are paying for it…

So here we are. Two agendas, two meetings, one circus. But one thing’s certain: the trust is gone, the chaos is real, and the voters are watching.

Tadaaa!

Out of journalistic duty, I rang for an official statement on the duplicated extraordinary meetings. The Town Clerk wasn’t at work. She earns over £50k a year and yet can’t be bothered to show up. I was informed unofficially that she was allegedly “working from home.” Yeah… we all know how that goes, right? Maybe that’s why the website isn’t updated—she’s working so hard from home she’s forgotten who she’s working for.

This is the conversation:

Later that day, a civil servant from the Town Hall (not the Town Clerk or her brother) rang me back and confirmed: STC had disregarded the opposition and called its own extraordinary meeting. In the Town Hall. The opposition? Played. Cheated. Dismissed like an old tissue. The law? Who cares. This is Shirebrook under the Labour Party. This is the UK under the Labour Party.

By the way: bond yields are at their highest level in 30 years. Unemployment is up. Inflation is up and CPI is 4.1%—double the Bank of England’s target. Job vacancies have fallen to their lowest since the Credit Crunch. The only increase in jobs? Public administration. And that means more taxes. So yes—taxes will rise. 100% guaranteed.

You’ve got what you voted for—in Shirebrook and in the country.

Now! Remember to vote next time. Vote for someone new. Someone brave. Someone ready to fight back.

Sylwester Zwierzynski info@shirebrook247.com
Lead picture made with Midjourney AI