Joe Salmon, 27 February 2024, Tags:
THIS BLOG IS ONLY MY OWN WORK - IT DOES NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF ANYONE OTHER THAN ME JOE SALMON AT THE TIME OF WRITING
Also sorry for posting this late - it should have gone up on Sunday, but I had issues getting this posted to the Green Party website.
So sorry all for the radio silence, I’m not good in the winter, and I’ve been fairly busy with work, life and council stuff. I’ve still yet to reduce my hours and we’ve torn apart the top of our house as it needed replastering, new carpets all of that jazz (we were lucky to move into a new rundown 3 bed just before Liz T put some real effort into crashing the economy, but it needs a ton of work). Anyhow I thought I’d share my thoughts after the budget, and I’ll try and get my public to do list and whatnot updated by next weekend.
I was struck by the degree to which Labour can only follow the Tories lead not just nationally but locally as well. Ahead of the budget meeting on Tuesday I was very open about my opinion and intentions with anybody who cared to listen. I spoke to officers about what setting an illegal budget or rejecting the administration's budget would look like, and was clear that this seemed to me the only option given the lack of action on climate change in the current budget along with the lack of funding for essential services.
However it was clear that there was not the seeming political will to take this kind of radical action, and all councillors seemingly felt that being served a section 114 notice (Appendix 1 s114 Notice definition.pdf (oldham.gov.uk)) was something to be avoided at all costs (or at least didn’t pipe up when this was being discussed or missed meetings when this happened and I attended). Speaking to other Green Councillors across the country there simply wasn’t the ability or energy within the Association of Green Councillors to attempt what would amount to national mass civil disobedience in setting budgets that didn’t conform with the UKs legislation.
At the end of the day regardless of energy within the environmental movement for a reattempt of something like the Rate-capping rebellion we accepted this would not happen in BCP last week (this is a good new statesman article worth reading if your interested in that discussion Where have all the rebel councils gone? - New Statesman).
Anyhow you can tell from my blog and general conduct I’m not coy about my intentions or feelings on a topic, I’m not a political animal and don’t have any instincts for that kind of thing. I had been asked by a couple of councillors outside of the Green Group how I’d vote and I was very open that I’d abstain as I couldn’t support the budget, especially with the library closures on top of the lack of green action, but that I’d not be voting against as I recognised that we didn’t have things in place to tackle the fallout of a section 114 notice or take that action as part of a coordinated concerned effort to overturn the plundering of the public purse by the Tories.
I was surprised that when I asked a Labour colleague how they were voting that evening they told me they were keeping it a secret. Labour hadn’t even made the last min politicking amendments seen from the Tories, so I assumed they’d all vote for after telling us how the extra powers Labour will grant (but to be clear only extra powers, not funding, as they are sticking rigidly to Tory economic dogma) will sort the current problems out.
Instead just as the Tories Labour voted against the budget as a group, although unlike the Tories they weren’t even able to suggest what they would have done differently. Frankly the decision seemed to have been made exclusively to be able to say on their leaflets that they had opposed the council budget cuts. I can’t stand this kind of politicking or indecision. If Labour’s position was one of opposing the budget why on earth didn’t they at any point suggest any alternatives? The cynical use of their position as councillors to simply further their own political careers and that of their colleagues disgusts me.
There was a moment when Phil Broadhead leader of the conservatives was told he could not speak to the budget, having already spoken when proposing his amendment. This was met with a lot of jeers and some wag shouting “send it to the Echo”. I’m not overly keen on the pantomime of politics, but I can understand the frustration a lot of the councillors have with Phil given his frequent political point scoring and bringing amendments that simply exist to get a press release in the echo (Conservatives budget amendment 'restores pride' to BCP | Bournemouth Echo).
However I think what I think a lot of councillors dislike about Phil is that he does the political point scoring they want to do better than them for a party they aren’t members of. Labour took the exact same approach to the budget and the Tories, but only the Tories had the understanding of the budget to actually come up with any actual alternative ideas.
Labour and Tory politicians look at each other and often see something they despise, yet if they weren’t so self deceiving it would be like looking into the mirror. The narcissism of small differences is never shown more when hearing candidates from Labour or the Tories talk about what makes them different.
People are sick of the silly political point scoring each engages in rather than getting any work done, but you’ll find that members of either party only see it from the otherside, and are unable to identify the problem in their own party. Indeed this week a local Labour activist was sneering at Liberal democrat election literature for using the local election results to create a graph showing they could win the general election seat, when not 12 months ago Labour were using the general election results to create graphs they could win seats in local election.
It is insightful however how fearful Labour are in particular to literature that says ‘Labour can’t win here!’ given Labour’s only selling point since the 90s (bar whatever happened with Corbyn) has been that they are not the Tories, but can win electoral seats.
Labour currently occupy much of the space where a progressive movement could exist where alternatives to the current broken system could be developed. Last week's budget meeting, where they engaged in empty political point scoring rather than genuine work towards addressing our problems showed they have no intention of developing those alternatives or vacating that space.
With them and the Tories stoking racial hatred and advocating climate inaction, our future looks grim and the general election hopeless unless both failed parties are abandoned by the electorate.
Anyhow, the budget itself is simple enough, the Lib Dems have done as much as they can with the meagre funding received from central government, If BCP existed 10 years ago it would have received £106 million in funding, instead it has received £6. This means services will be run down further, and stupid decisions made to save money.
What’s worse is the investment in the transformation to make the council an effective organisation is almost impossible to see happening with this poor funding. When Phil suggested the council spend £10m or so that was put aside incase savings didn’t materialise I asked Jeff as the councillor leading transformation to see what evidence base there was for these savings. It just doesn’t exist.
The council has flown blind for a long time now, without the data collection and analysis you would see in any other organisation of a similar size. Indeed it makes you wonder how any of the directors on six figures can justify their salaries, and they simply don’t deal with the deluge of complex information to process and act on that other directors in similarly sized organisations would be faced with. If we just need a leadership team that takes a guess at what they recon is best why not just get one of those animals that predicts the result of world cup games successfully. If your car has no windows then any idiot off the street is going to be as good as Lewis Hamilton is at trying to drive it about, especially if to over extend the metaphor there is barely any fuel in the tank anyway.
Anyhow on that rather clunky metaphor I’m going to call it a day and try to get some more DIY done in time to catch Liverpool Chelsea in the five ways. Thanks again for reading
PS THIS IS ONLY MY OWN THOUGHTS AT TIME OF WRITING AND NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GREEN GROUP AS A WHOLE
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