Martin Francis is seeking to persuade people there is some magic way for Councils like Brent to avoid setting balanced budgets. In fact Councils are required to set a balanced budget. If a Council breaks down (like Anglesey), it can have commissioners put in to pass a budget without any public accountability.
Where Martin and I could agree is that the Tory government's austerity programme is utterly self defeating because it destroys economic growth. It is also pretty clearly now admitted that it is an ideological project to shrink the state. One might add that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both been accused of misleading people in their defence of the cuts programme. The only solution to this bigger picture would be the election of a government without an ideological commitment to shrink the state, and that can only mean a Labour government.
However, that does not alter the position of a local authority such as Brent which has to carry on delivering services to sometimes vulnerable residents to the best of its ability. Senior local authority figures have argued that on present trends this will become impossible. They may be right, but in order to limit the damage as much as possible, we have to be as imaginative as possible. Simply objecting to any change just won't do. Instead, we have to identify areas where we should no longer attempt to do things (As Brent did for instance with regard to festival spending), where we can do things more efficiently (as Brent has done in a range of procurements, notably the public realm contract) and where we can do things in a totally different way (as Brent did with the introduction of alternate weekly collections).
That means being hard headed about what the priorities are, which is the essence of political choice. Martin's "just say no" approach is not even possible to implement, and in any case is a negation of political choice, and in fact a retreat into mindless small minded conservatism.
Britain's only Green Council is itself struggling with these realities in Brighton. It is noteworthy that the people responsible for making the budget (led by the wonderfully named Mr Kitcat) are trying to get on with it, whilst local Green MP Caroline Lucas is sitting on the sidelines trying to distance herself from her own colleagues. Incidentally, the Brighton Greens appear to divide themselves into a whole set of different fruits; I wonder where the Brent Greens would fit in the salad?
UPDATE
A response to the two comments below can be found in this post.
2 comments:
My position is not 'Just Say No' James but a recognition that there comes a point when your defensive shield approach will no longer work as the 'senior local authority figures' point out. This point will vary between councils according to their budgets and local needs but is fast approaching for many - 2015/16 looks particularly dire in Brent. It is not a matter of individual councillors or even individual councils saying no but of local authorities, backed by their communities and their workers campaigning to say 'enough is enough' and challenging the Coalition government. I would never claim that this is easy and of course the MINORITY Green Council in Brighton faces a particular problem. What I would say though is that there is an open political culture in the Brighton Green Party and elsewhere where that debate is happening now. Is it happening in Brent Labour Party? Certainly some of the PPC hopefuls were sympathetic to my position.
You seem a bit obsessed with Martin Francis.
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