Internal Northumberland Tory Splits are personally and socially damaging across the new divide.

 

The revelations that investigations by a number of agencies are taking place looking into a series of allegations against a number of leading politicians which have spun out from County Hall in Morpeth have created a political chasm between those loyal to the disgraced former Leader Cllr Peter Jackson (the Out group) and those newly triablised personalities who find themselves as the less identity extreme (In group) under the new Leader Cllr Glen Sanderson.

In politics, numbers are the most essential steadying factor and the Out Group however extremely corrupt and bullying the investigations discover they are, don’t have a team large enough to turn over their now hated In Group colleagues.

Over the last few years we have seen those characters within the Out Group moving ever onward towards damaging extremism almost to the point of being radicalised. Their antics have been talked about in the shadows but until now very little has come out into the open.

Division at this level is very hard for MP’s and the wider members of the Tory Party as many have friends on both sides of this divide. The threats issued in the heat of the moment at times like this can destroy friendships which can stretch back decades and in some cases lifetimes. Polarising politics can in turn affect broader social relationships. 

A hostile culture of ‘othering’ political rivals can spill over into social relations but these political rivalries are supposed to sit on the same side in politics, and as time goes on we may see a deepening of these differences as the results of the investigations and audit reports become available for public consumption.

The Out Group have been undeniably secretive in everything they do and have done, so much so that they threw the opposition off the Councils Cabinet, reduced public Council meetings by half to cut the Council Taxpayers off from input, challenge and debate and turned staff against staff in order to keep their secrets. The In Group only have six months to turn this mess around and we know that timescale is immense in local Government terms and with the open sores caused by threats, social and personal breakdowns, deselections of candidates, lost friendships and accusations of collusion failing to heal we don’t believe the good times will return for many years to come.