I blogged a few days ago that Cllr Dhiraj Kataria has left Labour to join the Liberal Democrats. This partly makes for Cllr Carol Shaw defecting from Brent Liberal Democrats to the Tories (Which I think relieved some of her colleagues), and Cllr David Clues long awaited resignation as a councillor. One up, two down for the Liberal Democrats.
However, my own feelings are of relief that he is no longer a Labour Councillor. I had similar feelings when Bertha Joseph defected. It was good to no longer be even tangentially associated with her embarrassing behavior. Similarly, it is good to no longer have a party colleague telling residents to go to hell. Of course his worst behavior was what the solicitor writing the investigating report (paragraph 6.10) referred to as Dhiraj Kataria admitting to having "lied to his fellow-councillors and to me", which is astonishingly strong language for a solicitor. He also tried to cast the blame for leaking things on to other members of the Labour Group.
This behavior actually caused Brent Labour Group to expel him for an indefinite period. Under the rules, he was allowed to reapply to join the Labour Group again, which he did in early 2013. One assumes that at this time, he was happy with the way the Labour Party functioned. I suspect those of my colleagues who voted by a narrow margin to readmit him probably regret their misguided generosity.
In any case, it will be easier to deal with such an individual as an avowed political opponent than as a colleague.
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