A toe-curling email in which a senior Herefordshire political figure lays into her political opponents has come to light.

Coun Diana Toynbee, a Green city and county councillor, former cabinet member for children’s services and parliamentary candidate in the county, sent the email to colleagues in May following local elections which saw several city councillors, mostly Liberal Democrats, winning county council seats.

But it was inadvertently copied in to one of those it disparaged.

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“I get on OK with them – none the sharpest, weak political insight, just courted and groomed by the party,” Coun Toynbee said of her LibDem colleagues. “An unimpressive bunch. Very tribal.”

On the councillors individually, she said:

  • Current Hereford mayor Coun Jacqui Carwardine, who took Newton Farm county ward in May, is “fairly popular, I used to be friendly with her, bit lazy”.
  • Coun Mark Dykes, the previous city mayor who took the Belmont Rural ward, is “not up to being a city councillor, let alone mayor or being on HC [Herefordshire Council]. Nice enough bloke but wouldn't trust him to wash my car.”
  • Coun Aubrey Oliver, who took Saxon Gate ward, is “sweet and green, pedantic, old and deaf and past it”, though “has the basics of finance”.
  • Coun Rob Owens, newly elected to Bobblestock ward, is a “shifty and cynical party person”.
  • Coun Dan Powell, who took Red Hill ward, is “very young, a party person, ambitious”.
  • Coun Toynbee added she knew “nothing” about Coun Ben Proctor, newly elected to both city and county councils.

She also described Conservative councillor Rob Williams, who was elected to the Kings Acre county ward but who lost his city seat, as “very weak”.

The email was sent while negotiations were ongoing following May’s inconclusive county election result which left no party with a majority.

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Green party leader Ellie Chowns replied to it: “Liz [assumed to be Independents for Herefordshire leader Coun Liz Harvey] and I are trying to write to them all to make v clear that the door is open for getting around a table to discuss.”

In the event no deal could be agreed between the three parties, leaving the Conservatives as largest party to form the current minority administration.