Gillingham North rocked by row

It seems like the Liberal Democrat factional war continues in Gillingham North with senior figures leading the charge against their former Parliamentary candidate, Andy Stamp.

Commenting on the Tales from Gun Wharf, a post purported to be from Alan Jefferies, former Group Whip and leading Liberal light, is particularly telling.

Below is the comment;

"Yes Alan you are right Liberal Democrats are angry, me too. Why? because we have a young man who has chosen to misuse the system of Standards and complaints.

This is a subject you have spoken about many times. Yes Mr Stamp has the right to raise a complaint about any one, I would defend his right to do that, but what he does not have the right to do is abuse the system. The two people he has complained about are legally prohibited from making comment about the complaint and so is he prohibited as he is too a member of the Council controlled by the council's Code of Conduct.

However he has quite cynically ignored the legally supported rules of the Standards Board and chosen to make public comments about 'his' complaint.

Thus attempting to try 'his' complaint in the pages of the local media. Of course the two councillors involved are not able to defend themselves because they are sticking to the rules. Mr Stamp's complaint has been tested and rejected by the party outside of Medway and still he was not satisfied.

Although the incident took place in October 2009 he never reported it till September 2010 even though he was advised by me to take action in December 2009 if he really felt malpractice had taken place. However based on what he told me I didn't agree with him and I still don't. Why would the Chief Legal Officer of Medway Council and the Monitoring officer for Standards take the decision to wreck their career for two Councillors from one of the minority parties? Answer is they would not allow such a situation to occur.

Yet in 2011 he rakes it all up for the Local Elections before the Standards Board have had chance to report on his complaint. You may be asking why the long delay from September 2010? well it appears Mr Stamp took time to finalise the details of the complaint to the investigating officer thus ensuring it would be unlikely to be heard by Standards Board before the local elections. Now we know why.

Moral Right. Sorry Alan this man lacks any morals at all. Its about his views being rejected. No clashes over policy, no being against the coalition, its just about a simple rejection of his views about two colleagues by his peers within the party and not getting his own way. The question is if he had won the Leadership of Liberal Democrat Group in June 2010 would we be talking about this at all today. I doubt it."

Ouch, that has got to hurt...