South Wales Evening Post - 21 April 2006
Mike Witchell, Columnist
"MY legacy! My legacy!" screeched the Great Leader as he woke in a sweat from a nightmare which still seemed all too real in the cold light of day. With key allies starting to desert him, his flagship projects beginning to unravel, his judgement called into question, and whispers growing louder that he would be forced to step aside sooner rather than later, the outlook had seldom seemed bleaker.
"Now I know how Tony Blair must be feeling," muttered Swansea Council leader Chris Holley as he left home for County Hall.
True, he had seen off the immediate threat to his administration posed by the resignation of Independent members Richard Lewis and Ray Welsby, but his longer-term survival seemed to depend more on the feebleness of the opposition than the innate strength of his ruling coalition.
How had Labour group leader David Phillips described councillors Lewis and Welsby when they announced their decision to quit? Principled people making a principled stand."
He's changed his tune," mused Councillor Holley. "When we took over from his lot, he ranted and raved that we were a devil's cabal of crypto- fascists, racists, bigots and plain fools."
But if his political opponents had problems, so too had his ruling coalition, he reflected gloomily.Take mailto:Service@Swansea,the pioneering £170 million IT project intended to be a beacon of excellence for councils across the country.
It all seemed so simple when former council chief executive Tim Thorogood had explained the scheme to him with the help of some amazing computer modelling on his expensive new laptop.
Now Tim had departed with his £60,000 payoff after the row about his new garage at Rhossili, and contract negotiations with Capgemini, the company responsible for designing and installing mailto:Service@Swansea,were dragging on and on even as the price of the deal went up and up.
Worse still, another Capgemini project - a seven-year, £53 million IT deal with the Foreign Office to link the UK's 200 embassies and consulates worldwide, a project known as Prism - had recently been condemned by the Commons foreign affairs select committee as "a textbook failure", with the risks greatly underestimated and the potential benefits exaggerated."In the FCO's long history of ineptly implemented IT initiatives, Prism is the most badly designed, ill-considered one of the lot," one senior civil servant was reported as saying.
True, it was reported only by Private Eye magazine, but . . . Councillor Holley's mind moved quickly on to another cherished component of his political legacy, the rebuilding of Swansea Leisure Centre.
Now that really was a success story for the administration - or was it?
No sooner had he reached his office, taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to get to work - he was determined to push ahead with another top priority part of Project Legacy, what to do about the abutments to the old Slip Bridge - than the council press officer, Dr Spin, was handing him a copy of the latest edition of Construction News, bible of the industry of the same name.
"Page eight, Chris. You'd better take at look," he said grim-faced. Councillor Holley soon saw why.
A straightforward report about the shortlist of bidders for the £25 million leisure centre revamp included the following quote from a source at one the five rival contractors, commenting on the Christmas 2007 deadline for completion of the project: "The council leader's head is on the block and the local newspaper is running a countdown.
"This is Swansea's Wembley."
Oo-er.
