Having attended part of Bristol City Council's budget meeting on Tuesday night, it occurs to me that a massive opportunity to take on the government over its ideologically driven cuts program has been missed.
To set the scene, the LibDems, Labour and the Greens had all expressed their opposition to the budget. Indeed, Helen Holland, leader of the Labour group had said (2hrs 54mins into the webcast) said Labour couldn't support the budget. Her reason - 'we have lost sight of the huge amount of cuts we have to deal with'. 'By the general election', she said local authorities 'will be working with 42% less than they had'. At the time, the cuts amounted to £83 million from Bristol's budget. A clear majority existed against the cuts, and the budget that contained them.
So - imagine - if Bristol's councillors refused to set such a savage budget, and the reason being given was the scale of the cuts. It would in itself have been newsworthy.
But there would have been an opportunity - of course, one council acting alone in defying government will be picked off. But lots of councils acting together, now there is a challenge.
(And of course, Labour control lots of councils, and government cuts have hit them much harder than the Tory heartlands). So Helen could have taken the opportunity to contact all those like-minded Labour councils leaders and said 'now is the time - lets say no to the cuts, let's all refuse to set a budget'. Perhaps George would have helped.
Unfortunately, within two hours of these statements - possibly the quickest U-turn in history - Labour had done a deal with George to put just over £1 million back in to the budget, and vote it through. This is of course great for the services saved. But, what they have actually said is while local government working with 42% less than before is no good, working with 41.5% less seems fine. £83 million of cuts bad, £82 million of cuts is perfectly acceptable.
Of course, opposition may not have worked. But for goodness sake, for the sake of all those who will still be deveastated by their severity, couldn't they have even tried?
There was a piece on the Guardian website (at http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2012/nov/14/local-authority-cuts-map ) that confirms how the government are at their most savage in the big city strongholds of Labour – and most benign in the Tory heartlands. In the face of this, I really can't understand how Labour activists, whose party is founded by the Trade Unions and the Co-operative movement, don't even attempt to mount a shared challenge to this appalling government. Like you say, an opportunity missed – and we don't get many....
ReplyDeleteYou'd expect the big cities to start the ball rolling, though. I'm not sure what Bristol Labour could do, from a relatively small and wealthy city which as even Gary Hopkins says , “is being treated a lot better than the northern cities on the new funding arrangements”