Can we please not forget that councillors do not run council departments - that is done by council employees. Were there to be an election tomorrow and the control change to Conservatives, Newham would instantly become a "Conservative-run council", but the employees in the parking services department would be exactly the same people doing exactly the same things, and if that change in control had happened before this deplorable incident then The Telegraph would have been duty bound to write
'A Conservative-run council has issued a grovelling apology for wrongly accusing two motorists and their legal representative of forging faulty penalty charge notices (PCNs) in an “orchestrated fraud”.'