BACK in the early hours of Friday, May 6 it was a little after 2am when Councillor Marc Bayliss, the ousted Conservative leader, declared he’d lost the Battenhall ward and therefore control of the entire council.
The ward result was yet to even be officially announced, but he realised the impending Green victory meant the loss of overall control, with 17 Conservative councillors not enough compared to 16 Labour members and two Greens – unless he could strike a deal.
“I’ve lost control of the council, they can have their grubby little deal,” he said.
In the hours that followed he even suggested he wouldn’t put himself through the process of even negotiating with the Greens, calling it a “sham” after saying the other two parties already had a deal in place.
But negotiate he did – only to find the Labour Party’s reluctance to work alongside the Tories prove the ultimate sticking point.
After several days of Green Councillor Louis Stephen, newly-elected to the Battenhall ward, being put under intense pressure, particularly by Labour, he approached this newspaper with an ‘open letter’ which insisted he would not do a Coalition deal with either side.
The Councillor Stephen’ deal was simple, a dual Conservative-Labour led cabinet, with a “50/50 split” of blue and red councillors – pursuing a set of policies shared by all three parties in a power-sharing arrangement.
It could have Councillor Stephen in the cabinet, or not, as long as it was committed to a genuine deal to push policies the Greens want, alongside Labour and Tory ideas.
Then came the dramatic statement by Worcester Labour Party late on Saturday night which attacked Conservative policies and made a fresh plea for a Labour-Green deal.
With the days ticking by, by 9.30am on Monday morning all three parties, pushed by Green Councillor Louis Stephen, spent five hours negotiating a potential Tory-Labour-Green 'power sharing' coalition alongside managing director Sheena Ramsey.
By Monday afternoon they even went as far as discussing an enlarged cabinet of nine politicians featuring four Conservatives, four from Labour and a sole Green, before agreeing to break for the day just before 3pm with no deal in place.
But the 4+4+1 talks collapsed on Tuesday morning when Labour insisted they would not serve under Tory leader Councillor Marc Bayliss.
Not only that, but they were concerned about the clear differences in policy which would have made an unlikely Conservative-Labour cabinet almost impossible to manage.
Councillor Bayliss then offered to resign and suggested his deputy Chris Mitchell become the council’s leader, but that was squashed too. Labour would not share power under any Tory leader – it had to be a Labour one to go any further.
Incredibly, one suggestion was even made that the council could have a Green leader, Councillor Stephen, but it was not considered with any seriousness - leading to complete deadlock.
By Tuesday morning the Greens were left with the option of either backing one side or siting on their hands - leading to the deal for a minority Labour administration and Labour Mayor, with a detailed set of Green policies at its heart.
The hard bargaining had worked, with Councillor Stephen and Neil Laurenson, Worcester’s second Green councillor agreeing to it on the basis the Greens and Labour share many policy ideas – despite the duo being unhappy about their hopes of a Rainbow Coalition collapsing.
But even those talks were frantic – with Councillor Adrian Gregson, the new leader, only able to tell his own group about the outcome around an hour before Tuesday’s 7pm Annual Council meeting.
* ELECTIONS 2016: So what does Worcester Green Party want from Labour?
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