Row ahead as council tries to choose leader for third time

A row over who should be running Oldham is getting louder as talks descend into ‘bickering’ and tensions run high. Councillors in the borough are to meet for the third time but things are not looking promising.

There is still no political leadership in charge of Oldham Council as a nearly two-month-long stalemate drags on and no one can agree who should be running the place. There has been progress in selecting a ceremonial mayor as well as appointments to some key committees.

However some councillors are warning the local authority is ‘perilously close’ to expensive commissioners being brought in to run things despite three different options on the table. After weeks of saying they would not seek to run the council, Labour have now put themselves forward arguing ‘the borough needs stability and leadership, and it needs it now’.

They are coming up against Reform UK, the second largest party in the chamber, who want to run the council themselves as well as an alliance made up of a number of smaller parties led by the Oldham Group and the Liberal Democrats. No option has a majority of all councillors supporting it.

The Local Government Association is supporting every party to see if there is a way forward while the government is watching but the longer things drag on, the more likely council services could be impacted. However the public have been reassured officers are still working to make sure key services are being delivered.

Key decisions that may be controversial cannot be made and the UK Government may lose patience and appoint commissioners. These are public officials who take over the functions of the council but if this happened in Oldham due to the stalemate, that is believed to be a first.

After the local elections in 2026, Labour said they would step aside following the loss of eight seats and accepted people did not vote for them. Now putting themselves forward, other parties are wondering if this was the plan all along and questioned what had changed.

The question of who runs the local authority is likely to come down to how the borough’s various smaller groups vote.

While Labour, Reform, and the Oldham Group all argue their respective pitches are the only viable option, councillor Lewis Quigg feels his party is best placed to lead. In 2026, Reform won the most seats and the most votes but came up against the fact only 20 out of 60 seats were up grabs this year.

When Labour stepped aside, Coun Quigg said they had been ‘the most reasonable and the most cooperative’, adding: “We were told we were running away, we weren’t stepping up but we did step up. Reform broke the block and then they voted us down. They can’t have their cake and eat it too.

“It’s unfortunate this is the position we find ourselves in and we moved and tried to break the impasse on various occasions. Our hands on this are clean. We do not make silly backroom deals. 

“We want to run a minority administration. If people want to support that, they can support that.”

If the other parties continue to vote against, he said next year they ‘will call it for what it is and call the bluff’, telling the LDRS: “At the moment there are clear shortcomings so we are in a position to say we would look at doing things differently. 

“We get accused quite often that we have not got a lot of experience but I say that we have. We have got people at a director level with years of experience in industry in very important jobs. We are preparing to govern and getting things in place.”

Labour group leader Arooj Shah argues their pitch ‘is about the reality that the Labour Group, with its experience and track record of delivery for the people of Oldham, is best placed to lead at this time’ with established links to the city region and Westminster. She has promised to work with smaller parties.

She added: “Finally we will need to give consideration to how we better engage and include group leaders and members with particular interests on matters and decisions that affect the borough as a whole. We have to move past the personalisation and tribalism that we have seen over recent years to a politics of greater collaboration for the good of the people we serve.”

This offer seems to have gone down like a lead balloon in Oldham’s divided politics though. The Conservatives have already rejected the offer arguing it is ‘now too little too late’.

Kamran Ghafoor, who leads the Oldham Group, said their alliance had support from a wide selection of councillors across the borough while Labour ‘can’t admit defeat and can’t admit that the people of Oldham have voted them out’.

He pointed out they were the first to put forward a bid for the leadership which Labour and Reform rejected and argued they too had suggested multiple ways to try and break the deadlock.

He added: “They clearly can’t get over the fact there is something possibly more capable than them to run the council. We have offered to Reform and the Labour Party that I will step aside and they can choose another leader from the alliance and they have refused that as well. I thought the sticking point was me. These people are not thinking about the people of Oldham and that is a major issue.”

Similarly the Liberal Democrat’s Sam Al-Hamdani felt like he could not trust Labour’s offer to work cross party, adding: “Labour have been singularly aggressive in stopping people from being able to work constructively and actively worked against any form of collegiality for several years.

“For them at this point to say that everybody else is the problem and why don’t we all work together nicely I think is fairly hypocritical because they have created, not just them but certainly been a very active participant in creating the uncooperative atmosphere that there is in Oldham politics.

“For them to ask everybody to forget about that because they are promising to play nice now, they have made that promise before and not kept it. I want to know why this time I should believe them.”

The councillor said they were prepared to listen but Reform had refused to discuss their plans, adding: “That isn’t being cooperative. The most cooperative group is not the one that says we are not prepared to talk to anybody, not prepared to negotiate, not prepared to discuss your opinion.”

He told the LDRS: “There needs to be a lot more grown up conversations because frankly every time we are all in the room, it’s just been bickering and that isn’t good enough from anyone.”

In response, Reform’s Coun Quigg said people did not vote for the alliance and argued the Oldham Group and Liberal Democrats earlier this month ‘refused to listen and made clear we must accept everything they say’. He said his party ‘have had meetings with senior officers to go through our proposals and are working diligently to prepare for any outcome’ and if the council was investigated, it will find Reform did all it could. 

Meanwhile Coun Shah said her party ‘are ready and willing to lead in a progressive and collaborative way with all the experience and knowledge we have gained taking the council through its toughest ever period’.

She added: “The sixty councillors in the chamber have a simple choice – either support the continuation of Oldham’s improvement journey under Labour or give Reform an opportunity to lead.  My only ask if that in doing so they put politics aside and vote for what is best for Oldham and for its people.”

“Labour has now made its offer clear – both in terms of its ability to lead and in what it has to offer the people of Oldham. Reform have done the same – they have put their cards on the table and been clear about what they stand for.

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for any other options which have come forward without clear policy offers and even without detail about who would form a cabinet to lead key council service areas. Councillors cannot be expected to make a choice about who they support without absolute transparency and openness.”