Gio Spinella

THE leader of Camden’s Conservatives has quit the Town Hall after 14 years on the green benches.

Gio Spinella said this week that his decision to leave was “not political” and, echoing Jurgen Klopp’s mid-season announcement that he is leaving Liverpool, instead said he was tired after his long service.

His exit opens up a vacancy at the head of the group and triggers a by-election in the Frognal & Fitzjohns ward.

Mr Spinella took on the leadership after car crash local election results in 2022 which saw his predecessor, Oliver Cooper, fail to get elected in Belsize.

Once the official opposition in Camden, this status has been lost to the Liberal Democrats after the Tories dropped to just three seats. It means if a Conservative candidate wins the upcoming ward poll, they may instantly become the new leader of the group.

Mr Spinella – first elected in 2010 and a popular character in the chamber, even among his Labour rivals – said: “After 14 years of service, I’m tired. It is time for somebody else to come through. I am proud of my public service but it is an exhausting role.”

He told the New Journal that being in permanent opposition meant that “you can make the speech, do the tweets, but ultimately it doesn’t lead to any change.” Labour has near total control of Camden Council with 46 of the 55 available seats in the council chamber.

Nevertheless, MR Spinella said he was proud of the campaigns he had started and joined, including his work to ensure the Hampstead School of Art was not lost in a development project.

“When they were knocking down seemingly all of Kidderpore Avenue, we got the council and the cabinet member to come down to the school of art and show them how important it is,” he said. “And in the end the school got a space in the new development.”

He said as leader he was proud that he had brought forward a motion – supported by the Labour leadership – publicly supporting women’s right to have an abortion at a time when some US states were banning the procedure.

Mr Spinella said it was a moment which showed people that Camden Conservatives were not supportive of comments made by Tory MP Danny Kruger, who said that he disagreed that pregnant women had an “absolute right to bodily autonomy”.

Mr Spinella said that he had never planned on a political career or harboured ambitions to be an MP like many other councillors do.

He said one of his happiest periods was the run up to the 2010 general election but it showed him that he did not have the same belief in himself as candidate Chris Philp who drove the Tories on to within 42 votes of winning the parliamentary seat in Hampstead.

He said: “It was a great time. Activists were coming out and I met people who became friends. It was clear people were sick of the Labour government and there was interest in David Cameron.” Everything changed with the Brexit vote, he said, and the party nationally began to see London as less of a target.

Mr Spinella with Siobhan Baillie, the former Camden councillor who is now an MP

Mr Spinella, who was against the divorce from the European Union, said: “It soured things, and so much of it became culture wars which I’ve never supported.”

He had voted with Labour councillors in a motion against the leave campaign. There were times too when he had been critical of past prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and made clear his frustration last year that Tories in Holborn and St Pancras were hosting Lee Anderson for a fundraiser talk.

The now ex-deputy chairman of the party has since joined Reform.

But Mr Spinella laughed at any suggestions that he belonged in another party. Recently, he had reflected that Covid had turned things upside down as well for the Tories.

“It damaged us organisationally because for two years we couldn’t knock on doors or deliver leaflets,” he said.

The party has announced Steve Adams as its candidate for the Frognal & Fitzhohns by-election.