James Alexander wants to shake things up

A FEW years ago, James Alexander had a temporary job on reception at City of York Council. Now he’s back as leader.

Although not quite yet. He doesn’t officially take over as Labour leader of the council until the authority’s annual meeting on May 26.

On the Monday after his victory in the local elections, we agree to meet at the Guildhall.

He’s clearly not quite got used to throwing his new weight around yet. “Can we use the leader’s room?” he asks, a little uncertainly, of someone at reception. Urm, no, he’s told. Someone else is using it.

That will all change soon enough. For now, we hunt out a committee room with windows looking out over the River Ouse.

Already, he’s looking tired, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep. It’s as if the realisation of the responsibility is only just beginning to dawn.

He expected his first day be easy, the 29-year-old says, with a sheepish look. Instead, it’s been a round of meetings, telephone calls and briefings – not to mention briefings about briefings. “I need a rest!” he says, only half joking.

Don’t be fooled. This is a young man who has worked – not to say plotted – long and hard to get this job. He gave up his ‘proper’ job as an outreach worker at York St John University a year ago when he ousted former Labour leader Dave Scott in a coup a few days before the 2010 General Election – in which he also stood as a Parliamentary candidate.

“I took a large pay cut, but I wanted to do this properly,” he says. “Thankfully, it has paid off.”

Coun Ian Gillies, the leader of what is now the official Conservative opposition on the council, has already been sniping at him, saying the new council leader is ambitious, and will be off in four years if he gets a whiff of a Parliamentary seat in London.

Is that true?

He fixes me with a studiedly frank look. “I have made no secret that I have ambitions to be an MP. But that said, York is an important place to me. It’s where I live, it’s where I met my girlfriend.”

So does that mean he no longer has any ambitions to move on? “I’m not saying I’m not going to go one day, but I’m not saying I will, either.”

So who is this new leader of the city council?

He grew up in Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush, in London. His mother was a single mum before meeting his step-father, whose name he took. “Before that I was James Glasgow. I never met my real dad. He was half Spanish, half Irish.”

As a child – before he put on weight, he says with a rueful look – he was a child model. “I used to be in adverts and magazines and things.” That may be partly where he gets his enormous self-confidence (some might call it bumptiousness) from, he admits.

But his family was never wealthy. “I could never understand why my mother, being a good person, didn’t have or couldn’t do things other parents could do,” he says. “It made me realise that I stand against what I perceive to be injustice. I believe in speaking up for people who cannot speak up for themselves.”

As a teenager, he dreamed of being an aeronautical engineer, but gave that up because he wasn’t good at physics.

He did work experience at the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry and with Lord Sainsbury (and even, for a brief time, with the Conservative Party, even though he was a card-carrying Labour member) after having the gumption to write letters to anyone who he thought might take him.

Then, at 19, he came up to York to study political and economic history at the University of York, becoming President of the Students’ Union.

When he graduated, he had trouble finding a job in York. So he headed back to London, where he worked as deputy editor of something called the Political Monitoring Service, which seems to be an organisation that sells politically useful information to business.

He missed York, however. So he came back, worked jobs with Jessops and then York St John, and won election to the city council. Now, a few years on, he’s the leader.

He has a young man’s impatience with the city’s established political elite, and clearly sees himself as the person to bring change.

“I don’t think it (York) has been a politically very open place,” he says. “There is a concentration of power within a few institutions, families and companies. I really think that somebody new, that’s not attached to any of that, can shake up the system.”

He seems to want to start with the city council itself. He is determined to implement Labour’s manifesto pledges, and its alternative budget (which will reverse £1 million of cuts agreed under the previous Lib Dem administration). Some barriers are bound to be put in the way of that, he says – but if necessary he will redeploy council staff. “There will be mechanisms to ensure we have the right people in the right place.”

To some, that might sound unnecessarily aggressive; and it is true that his manner can seem abrasive or even cocky, although he perhaps doesn’t realise that. He says he has a good relationship with the council’s respected chief executive, Kersten England. “She’s a very good thing for York.” But then he adds: “I will be setting out in writing the expectations that we have for her.” He won’t specify precisely what those are. “I want to discuss that with her first.”

He may not be everybody’s cup of tea, therefore – but politicians seldom are. You don’t get to be leader of City of York Council by being a shrinking violet.

And there is no doubting that under him, the city council will move in a distinctly different direction.

One of his initial priorities is to get his alternative budget through, to reduce by £1 million the severity of the cuts being made in services – with a particular emphasis on trying to protect youth services, adult social care and provision for disabled children.

Beyond that, Labour’s manifesto sets out some fairly radical ideas. These include proposals for an independent ‘Fairness Commission’, which would hold meetings around the city and invite local people to give their views on how to achieve the further cuts that will need to be made next year (“the feedback from that will form the basis of the next budget,” he says) and a plan to ‘rent’ police officers to join in noise patrols.

He also wants to increase the number of new houses being built in York; talks about investigating the possibility of the city council itself becoming a mortgage lender to make it easier for people to buy their own homes; and wants the city council to take on powers to regulate bus services.

He is also determined to cut back on council waste – including scrapping any moves to build a second new council building in Acomb, which he says the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives wanted to do, at a cost of £1.4 million. “If you knock on doors in Acomb, nobody says ‘What we really need is a new office here’.”

He admits it’s not all going to happen at once. “Not everything can be done in five minutes. But we’ve got four years.” He pauses for a moment, reflecting on the size of the challenge. Then: “I’ve already started going greyer!” he says.

He’s likely to be a lot greyer still four years from now.

Ian Gillies

IAN Gillies is enjoying the prospect of life as leader of York’s official opposition.

For the past four years, the Conservative leader held the balance of power on a hung council.

It’s not necessarily an easy position to be in, he says. “You get blamed when things go wrong, and you don’t get the credit when things go right.”

Being an outright opposition will be easier – and more fun, he says. “I can say what I like now. I can ask the questions – and I don’t have to provide the answers.”

The 65-year-old – who has just qualified to collect his pension – wishes the new Labour leader James Alexander well. Then slips in the knife.

“I don’t want to over-personalise this, but he has never had what I would call a proper job. He’s never worked in the private sector where he has had to put his own money at risk. He’s totally inexperienced when to comes to the real world.”

Labour will have nowhere to hide now, Coun Gillies says. They wrote their manifesto knowing perfectly well what the economic situation was. Now they have to deliver – or face the consequences at the ballot box four years from now.

Delivering won’t be easy. He ticks off some of the items on the Labour leader’s agenda. “A Fairness Commission? You can smell the bull**** from here. Getting rid of traffic jams? I’m looking forward to that. A 20 mph speed limit in residential areas? That will cost half the road safety budget.”

Writing letters to The Press to complain about the way the city is being run is one thing, he points out. “The other side of the coin is that now people will be sniping about things he has done. James won’t have experienced that.”

The Conservatives will not oppose things for the sake of it, however, Coun Gillies stresses. Where they think Labour proposals are in the best interests of the city, his group will support them.

And he hopes that by being positive, constructive and realistic – his words – the Conservatives in York can demonstrate that they are ready to hold power themselves.

He thinks that could happen one day? “Too right!”

Andrew Waller

ANDREW WALLER is putting a commendably brave face on things. A week ago, he was leader of the city council. Today, he’s not even a councillor.

“It’s quite odd not having a full diary,” he admits. “I’ve had eight years of either being leader or deputy leader. That does keep you busy.” But it was also eight years of putting civic duty first, before family or friends. “So it was nice to be able to go to visit my relatives at the weekend and not have to think about phone calls from journalists.”

The 41-year-old has had setbacks before. He has been made redundant twice – once from Nestlé, where he worked on product design, and once from GNER, where he spent three years in railway accounting.

So what he will do now, he says – after getting to grips with an eight-year backlog of personal filing at home – is take stock, then dust down his CV and look for a job.

Not that his political or public life is over, he insists. He is still a school governor, for one thing, at York High. And politics is in his blood. “I’ve been involved in local elections since I was 14, so I’m not going away.”

Does that mean he might stand for the council again one day? “I’m not going anywhere because I live here. That’s where we are at the moment.”

For now, the Liberal Democrats in York have to elect a new leader. Whoever takes over as the new group leader, he won’t get too close, he says. “I think a former leader needs to know when to step back, and that’s something I’m determined to do.”

As leader himself, he was sometimes accused of being in Steve Galloway’s shadow. Was having the former leader so close a problem? He pauses. “It makes it difficult”, he concedes.

Before we finish, he makes a point of thanking the council staff and others – “they know who they are” – who helped him during his time as leader. “It’s not an easy job, and there were huge numbers of people who were helpful.”

Andy D’Agorne

GREEN leader Andy D’Agorne had hoped to increase his party’s two seats on the council – and possibly even to hold the balance of power.

They came close in Micklegate, Guildhall and Heslington, he says, with their vote significantly up, but didn’t quite make that breakthrough.

So the Greens’ two councillors will be sniping from the sidelines again, rather than wielding real influence.

His job will be to watch closely how Labour go about implementing its manifesto, he says. There are some clear differences with Green policy – but also much that he feels he can support.

“We will be looking to challenge them on those things that we have differences over, but also working as far as possible to support whatever they do to minimise the impact of the cuts. And we will be continuing to press, as we would whichever party was in power, for issues of sustainability and social justice to be a top priority.”