Jane Roberts stands down as Camden Leader

Jane Roberts has announced that she's standing down as Labour Leader of Camden in November. The Labour Group will elect their new Leader on 3rd October.

Roberts has achieved the rare double of being well thought of by both London Local Government and the Blair Government ... including being made a Dame last year. She took over as Leader from Richard Arthur in 2000, after ten years as a Cllr and two as Deputy Leader ... and has been (for a Blairite) an unusually effective critic of Government policy on housing and licensing. She'll also be retiring next year from her Haverstock seat ... a ward in which the LIb Dems won a surprise by-election win last year when Roberts' Deputy Leader resigned to work in a senior role for the BBC ('going downmarket' as they call it in Hampstead).

Speculation about her successor as Leader starts with current joint Deputy Leader Theo Blackwell (Regents Park) who has been increasingly high profile in the last few months (what did he know ? ..) However, Blackwell is clearly not wholly popular in the Group ... as he only returned as Deputy Leader in May after being ousted in 2004 by Sue Vincent (who looks spookily like Jane Roberts). The rest of the Camden Executive is an interesting mix of old and new, including three grizzled veterans first elected in the 1970s (John Mills, John Thane and Phil Turner) together with four members only elected in 2002.

Roberts' retirement will leave only two women as Borough Leaders - Ann John in Brent and the newly elected Leo Thomson in Ealing. Thomson's status as a leading high-flyer will be confirmed tomorrow, when she's been chosen to give the Local Government address to the Labour Party Conference.