Head to head

The other is a millionaire consultant from leafy Highfield with a PhD and a portfolio of eight city properties.

The man of humble origins is Royston Matthew Smith, the Conservative leader of Southampton City Council. And his wealthy counterpart is Richard Francis Williams, the leader of the city’s resurgent Labour group.

For months they have been pitched in a bitter election battle that will be decided this Thursday when one of them is destined to become the new council leader.

Both have been vilified by each other’s supporters.

Councillor Smith has been targeted by a fierce union campaign, largely backed by Labour, against the backdrop of industrial unrest.

In turn, the Tories have portrayed Cllr Williams, a GMB member, as a union puppet.

Yet amid the bitterness, both confront the same problem – how to plug a £46m budget hole over the next two years with the least damage inflicted on public services and council staff.

Whoever wins, tough decisions will have to be made – and both men have approaches as different as their backgrounds.

Cllr Smith, a city councillor for 12 years, took over the leadership of the Southampton Conservatives two years ago after a stunning landslide election victory in 2008 that swept them back to power for the first time in 24 years.

Despite the economic downturn he has sought to revive the city’s economic fortunes alongside the outsourcing of key council services such as leisure and highways, while cutting the size of the council and axing more than 400 jobs in two years.

SureStart centres and libraries have remained open, pensioners have been given a ten per cent council tax discount, and a pledge to keep bin collections weekly was kept – at least until strike action engulfed the city last year.

Taking a high-prolife leadership role, Cllr Smith has also sought to encourage private sector jobs and development in the city to drag it out of recession.

He’s appealing to voters to judge the Tories on their record with a £3billion city masterplan to create 24,000 jobs taking shape.

He also hopes to be seen as a safe, assured pair of hands that have already steered the city through turbulent waters.

But he’s not afraid to make waves.

While other councils, many Labour, were shedding hundreds of jobs to meet Government funding cuts, Cllr Smith instead forced through pay cuts across the council in a personal crusade to protect around 400 jobs.

Despite some doubts over the plan in his own party – and opposition criticism – he stuck to his guns and provoked a summer of rolling strikes by bin men, street cleaners and other sections of the council.

The council now faces a £12million law suit from the unions over a lack of consultation on the pay cuts.

Unions made him a “wanted man” in Wild West-style posters and delighted when he was caught on camera being pulled over by police in his Jaguar when he was found to be driving without insurance.

Meanwhile Cllr Smith has benefited from something of a man-of-action image makeover following a tragic incident in the docks last year.

With little concern for his own safety, he wrestled and disarmed a gunman onboard a nuclear submarine, who had gone on a shooting spree killing his commanding officer and seriously injuring two others.

He has since been awarded a George Medal for bravery.

His career CV is impressive too.

Cllr Smith’s trained as an aeronautical engineer and spent ten years in the Royal Air Force flying as ground engineer with the Nimrod maritime reconnaissance fleet.

He served in the Falklands before taking up a position with British Airways in 1990.

First elected to represent the Harefield ward in the east of the city in 2000, he has risen through the ranks of his party.

And while acting as deputy leader of the council, Cllr Smith also became chairman of the Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority in 2009.

Ambitious to represent his own city in parliament, at the 2010 General Election he nearly unseated Labour MP John Denham in Itchen, then a Cabinet minister. He lost by just 192 votes after a recount, and went on to become council leader – taking his total public pay to £48,000.

A tennis-playing family man, Cllr Smith lives in Peartree, near the Harefield estate. However, he has mortgages on three other properties in the city.

His rival, Cllr Williams, is no stranger to the property market either.

His portfolio boasts seven properties across Bassett, Portswood, Swaythling and Woolston, as well as his Highfield family home.

His CV is similarly impressive – and colourful.

An environment scientist with a PhD in flood analysis, he came to study at University of Southampton from Derby.

In the 1980s Cllr Williams worked on a local radio station in Portsmouth and was involved in the production of records by groups such as Style Council, The Stranglers and Motorhead.

The football and cricket loving councillor has now built up his own company, Richalis Ltd, and lists his occupation as a computer consultant and project manager.

He also continues to work for the European Union, evaluating projects for funding support.

But his business success has earned him a “champagne socialist” tag among opponents.

And his strong advocacy of green initiatives – he was formerly the city’s environment boss – saw him become the butt of a Tory jibe in the council chamber when he turned up to a meeting driving a Porsche.

Tory councillor Matt Dean remarked the only thing green about the sports car was its colour.

Yet his supporters insist he has strengthened his local party’s credentials and election prospects.

He assumed control of the Labour party in 2008, after former leader June Bridle was ousted by the electorate after forming a controversial alliance with the Lib Dems to briefly take power in a budget coup.

Promising to unite the party and deliver a “better and fairer Southampton” he has taken a more collegiate approach than his predecessor, delegating responsibilities to his shadow Cabinet, and has notched up a successive council seat gains over three years to position his party to regain power.

But Cllr Williams has come under criticism over the years. He has been accused of flip-flopping on his positions, a tendency to talk in jargon, and using complex metaphors and council chamber stunts to make his point.

But his profile as opposition leader has risen in the past year as Conservatives provoked a campaign of industrial action in the city by the unions against staff pay cuts.

However, despite marching and speaking at rallies of striking council workers, he told the media he never supported strike action – but supported the right of workers to strike as a last resort.

Cllr Williams has spent the past 18 months drawing up Labour’s manifesto for the city to provide an alternative to the Conservatives.

An environmental and “sustainability” theme runs through his vision for the city from jobs and crime to housing and economic development.

He has promised to restore the staff pay cuts and rebuild morale among the workforce, bring in an internal jobs market to avoid compulsory redundancies, and protect frontline services while still making the council “leaner” to meet funding cuts.

While acting as Labour leader in the city, Cllr Williams made the shortlist to become Labour’s parliamentary candidate for the Reading West seat in the 2010 General Election.

The party instead opted for a London councillor who went on to lose the seat to the Tories.

He previously stood unsuccessfully to become an MP in Gosport in the 2005 and 2001 General Elections, despite claiming the largest swing to Labour in a Tory seat in the country.

He also dipped into his own pocket to donate more than £5,000 to the party in 2004, and his company Richalis donated £8,000 in 2001.

A five-term city councillor, first elected in 1996, he is also standing to be re-elected in his own Woolston ward, where he notably joined residents protests against 1,650 homes on the former Vosper Thornycroft (VT) site four years ago, now the city’s largest housing development.

The results of the local elections in Southampton will be declared in the early hours of Friday morning.

While Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP, anti-cuts and independent candidates are also standing the maths means only the Conservatives or Labour can win outright control of the council.

Cllr Smith or Cllr Williams will then be officially be made council leader 12 days later on May 16.