It's somewhere between teen drama and soap opera -- City Hall 90210 or Peyton Place Hamilton. If any two players aren't sleeping together (figuratively speaking, of course), they're backstabbing each other.

Here, a mayor and a councillor who both campaigned hard on the issue of bringing integrity to Hamilton council, are caught in likely breaches of council's own code of conduct. The "gotcha" culture at Hamilton council -- gutter politics by another name -- just goes from bad to worse.

It has always been the case that council is collectively demeaned and debased by the actions of a handful of its members. When mud gets flung, bystanders often get smeared.

Councillor Brad Clark and, to a lesser extent, Mayor Fred Eisenberger have to wear the blame for the council's most recent scandal.

Eisenberger has been embarrassed by the leak of a recording of an off-the-record conversation with a Spectator columnist, in which the mayor gave background and context to a personnel issue that had already leaked from City Hall. When the recording surfaced, the mayor tried to get ahead of the story with a hasty news conference in which he acknowledged he had broken council rules.

It went downhill from there. Clark was revealed to be the person who had circulated the recording, then claimed he was acting in the public interest as a whistle-blower on an integrity issue.

A police investigation into the removal of the recording from the mayor's office and a review of the affair by council or council's yet-to-be-hired integrity commissioner promise to keep the issue at a steady simmer for some time.

There will be much tsk-tsking from other councillors, not a little hypocrisy from those who have leaked more and worse, and likely an apology or two.

But don't expect the leaks and off-the-record conversations to stop. There's a symbiotic relationship between politicians and media -- each needs the other. Sometimes information is passed on that is self-serving; other times an elected official is trying to do some good, bring sunlight onto a problem, set the record straight, or give important context to a journalist trying to figure out if his or her story is on the right track. That may ebb and flow, but it won't change.

The change that is really needed is in the destructive, almost cannibalistic, relationship around the council table. When individuals are constantly trying to gain advantage over each other, looking to the next ward -- or mayoral -- election, public interest takes a back seat to political ambition and gamesmanship.

Leadership is important. So is councillors' acknowledgment of the mandate to lead that voters give a mayor.

When teen dramas get stupid and pointless, they eventually get cancelled. The same thing can be said of city councils.

Editorials are written by members of the editorial board. They represent the position of the newspaper, not necessarily the individual author.