Bradford Council will be exclusively run by the Conservative group for the next two years after power-sharing talks with the Liberal Democrats broke down.

The authority's powerful executive committee - which includes Ilkley councillors, Martin Smith and Anne Hawkesworth - will be entirely Tory.

Liberal Democrat Leader Janette Sunderland claimed: "It is a recipe for complete chaos and confusion."

While Coun Smith admitted that the Tories might struggle to run the council without the support of either Labour or the Liberal Democrats on the executive. "It might make the next two years difficult," he said.

The behind-the-scenes talks broke down after the Labour group refused to take part on the new executive. It is believed they were taking orders from their party nationally.

The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives couldn't then agree on a power-share structure, leaving only the Tories to take their six seats on the executive.

Labour leader Ian Greenwood said his party now planned to use its seats on the council's scrutiny committees to get its message across.

He said his party failed to do that by working on the executive committee, and admitted: "The previous structure has not been a success."

He also criticised the Liberal Democrats for attempting to put forward an alternative eight-seat executive which would have given the Conservatives four seats and the Liberal Democrats three, with the Greens getting one - effectively making the Liberal Democrats the opposition.

He said: "It just demonstrates the completely cynical opportunist nature of the Liberal Democrat Party. They had been propping the Tories up and have now decided to chuck them away."

But Liberal Democrat leader Coun Sunderland hit back, saying her party refused to work with the Conservatives because of changes to the council's working structure.

"It is not a cynical move it is about saying there are fundamental principles of openness and transparency and it is about rigorous scrutiny of the executive.

"Labour has sold off democracy in Bradford, they have grabbed committee chairs on scrutiny panels and handed power to the minority Conservative group with very few checks and balances, so the next two years are going to be difficult," she claimed.

But Conservative group deputy leader Kris Hopkins said: "The other parties have made their choices not to come to the table and what we intend to do is work extremely hard for the people of the district.

"We have not banned them. We have invited them to the table and they have chosen not to come. There are still full council and scrutiny processes which can challenge any decision of the executive. If there is an imbalance on the executive it has been caused by them."

The Conservatives have 38 seats, Labour 29, Liberal Democrats 15, British National Party four, Green Party four and there is one Independent on the council.

Although the Tories are saying nothing in public, privately they are blaming the Liberal Democrats for being too greedy.

But Coun Sunderland (Idle) said that her party were only trying to gain a balance on the executive committee to reflect the fact that there was no overall majority.

Because the Labour group refused to serve on the executive, Coun Sunderland wanted the Tories to work with the Lib Dems and the Greens but they refused.

She said that an executive containing five Tory councillors and two Liberal Democrats would not be balanced and the Tories would be able to vote down any Liberal Democrat initiative or proposal while having the power to push through their own proposals no matter how controversial or unpopular they were.

Coun Sunderland claimed that the real deal had been done by Conservative and Labour councillors, giving Labour chairmanship of Scrutiny Committees, albeit with their powers much reduced by the leading group.

Controversial or unpopular decisions taken by the Executive can be referred by the Scrutiny Committees (which are expected to be renamed Improvement Committees) to meetings of the full council before they can be implemented. But even if the full council voted against, the decisions could still be implemented by the Executive at a later stage.