As Brent's councillors start to grapple with the prospect of setting budgets for the next four years, they might do worse than take on board the analysis of Flip Chart Fairy Tales. My own experience of debates in Brent chimes with his view that there is "an air of unreality". Very often I have seen people confronted with appalling figures of how the income of Brent Council is being reduced, and then plunge into a discussion of how they are going to spend more money on this or that. This year's budget was one such example. As he says, the LGA figures he quotes are actually fairly optimistic, and assume some increases in charges and efficiency as a given.
I fear that Brent Council is just going to float along without proper planning, until suddenly the money simply isn't there and panic cuts have to be implemented. When that happens, councillors cease to exercise any sense of priorities and simply try to balance this year's books, until they go through an even more difficult exercise next year.
Nye Bevan famously said that "The language of priorities is the religion of socialism." It is also really the basis of all serious politics.
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