CURRENT City Council leader Coun Marc Bayliss claimed the dramatic set of results would see the formation of a Labour/Green Party coaltion to remove the Tories from power.
Coun Bayliss has only been leader for 11 weeks since taking over from Coun Simon Geraghty but told the Observer he suspected a deal had already been done by Labour and the Green Party.
“I’m not going anywhere voluntarily, but I suspect the Labour Party and Green Party will combine to replace me with a Labour leader,” he said.
“We’ve lost Battenhall and that is deeply disappointing particular given how great a candidate David Tibbutt is.
“But I say when you’re fighting a combination of parties, we had Labour activists going out with the Green candidate- two on one is never going to be easy to win.
“If we were having a fair fight I’m sure we would have won.
“I don’t think we’ll get a chance to lead an administration on 17 seats because I fully expect the Greens to seek to have some sort of pretend discussions with us, but ultimately decide to work with Labour.
“I’m not prepared to go through that sham. If the Greens have some demands that they have I’m happy to understand those. But I know what the Greens game is.
“I don’t think there’s the potential of any sort of coalition. They’ve ruled it out because they’ve already done a deal with Labour,” he added.
His claims were refuted by Coun Stephen who was asked whether a deal had already been agreed.
“Let me absolutely clear on this. We try to attract support from wherever,” he said.
“We’ve got supporters who were previously Lib Dem, Labour, UKIP- there are a whole lot of people who have been supporting us.
“When you start off from a very small base you have to attract people from all political parties. So we work with every single person and try to attract all people to try and support us,” he added.
Labour group leader Coun Adrian Gregson said: “What we have done over the last six weeks or so is knock seven bells out of each other so it’s always difficult to ask each other ‘where are your areas of common ground’.
“I think there is a need for some serious discussion before we go any further,” he added.
