While much of the country is celebrating the latest easing of lockdown restrictions, returning to cinemas, eating in restaurants and attending sports events, for local councillors it's the season of political nightmares. It begins with endless weeks of pavement pounding - delivering leaflets barely anybody reads and politely enquiring whether the voters whose casework has filled your spare time will consider supporting you at the ballot box. Once polls close there's the agony of the count, a nerve-fraying event even for candidates blessed with safe seats. And if that wasn't enough, worse is to come in the form of political group AGMs where plotting, scheming and skulduggery is simply a fact of life. I'm convinced politics is becoming more volatile. This year seems to have seen more than its fair share of council leaders defeated at the ballot box, while across the country group AGMs have hosted a slew of successful leadership challenges. As a new generation of council and group leaders prepare to take the reins, the indications are that the managerial politics which defined the first decade of this century is continuing its demise, making way for a politics defined by identity and culture.
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