Good article.

I ask this sincerely: what’s the answer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome

“The usual rejoinder here is that Labour councils could use their reserves and their borrowing powers to avoid making cuts this year, and use the breathing space to build a mass movement in their support. A key demand would be for Ed Miliband to commit an incoming Labour government to write off any debts incurred.

…For a start, I am not aware of a single Labour local authority anywhere in which the necessary courage is part of the councillors’ collective DNA”

There is nothing “courageous” about this approach.

Manchester has to cut £110 million this year. If they did this by running down reserves and borrowing, it might get them through another year until 2012, at which point they would need to borrow a further £170 million + the interest on the payments, all without any reserves. Then in 2013, they would need to borrow another £200 million or so…the council would go bust long before we get to the next election in 2015.

This is not a “coherent game plan”.

1 – Grit your teeth until the next election and ride in on a wave of anti-Tory hatred?

The legal and financial (perhaps the latter is actually more important) of local government in this country is so weak that they have no choice but to implement savage cuts; of course you acknowledge that but still present it as some kind of political failure anyway. Of course even if local government had a stronger legal position, Labour councils would not be able to ‘resist’ the cuts; there might be a long history of Labour councils doing just that, but it’s a history of – sometimes heroic – failure. The only thing Labour councils can do (other than make sure to make sure that everyone knows who’s to blame) is remember what Bevan said about priorities.

I agree that if it couldn’t work then then it can’t work now. The Labour left is pretty much at rock bottom, local government was crippled by the Tories (always the great centralisers – so much for ‘localism’.) and the unions can no longer organise in support of dissident councils, not that that actually turned out in the 1980s either. Public opinion is probably less supportive now that it was then as well.

This sort of thing is an ultra-left fantasy. It leaves you ideologically pure, but actually it will weaken the left. This is the wrong fight to pick.

Sometimes our campaign material is a bit crap. Lets take this article. Dave starts by describing the redundancies, and after that moves onto the services that are being cut. A TUC pamphlet did the same.

There needs to be a change of emphasis here. Campaigning material and articles against cuts shouldn’t start by pointing out the job losses as most people place this low down the list of concerns about cuts. They should start by pointing out the services that will be lost, the impact this will have on people, and after that explain the impact on jobs.

Long term the answer is simple – free local councils from dependence on central government (effectively shift the distribution of taxation so local councils are funded from their own revenues). Then councils are free to do what they like.

Short term, Manchester will have to reduce spending to 2008 levels (I believe)…

Watchman, you are completely right about the need to de-centralise the state and free local councils from central control and dependance on the treasury and council tax (which surely has to be the first tax that needs to go).

@2′s link is spot on. Councils always play the game of cutting the things people want, like their bins emptied and the street lights left on. Meanwhile the massive empires they’ve built stay. Manchester, for example, has a ‘street wardens service’. Why for pete’s sake?

Irritating thing was we have a party in government that wanted local income tax, but one of their best ideas (people might start to realise how much bad councils cost them) does not seem to have been adopted…

Long term the answer is simple – free local councils from dependence on central government (effectively shift the distribution of taxation so local councils are funded from their own revenues). Then councils are free to do what they like.

H. L. Mencken: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

The problem with this idea is that the areas with the greatest need for services are also generally the least able to raise revenues locally. This is basically how education is funded in the US, and look how that has turned out.

I’d be interested to see how this idea flies in, say, The City of London, which gets only 4.5% of its funding from council tax (£5.1 million vs £108 million from central government), because it doesn’t many actual residents.

Watchman, Planeshift (8,9): The problem with that is that if local authority spending is funded solely from local taxes, we will end up with local tax havens. We already have this to an extent anyway.

Areas with lots of rich people, who, for instance, don’t need subsidised public transport, or public libraries, or much in the way of housing benefit, will not need to collect much local taxation to fund their effort. Tax as a proportion of income will be very low.

Areas with lots of poor people who do need numerous expensive local services will need lots of local taxation to fund it … but won’t have anyone to tax to pay for it. Tax as a proportion of income will be very high.

You can already see this pattern with council tax (which I agree needs fixing, but this problem will happen with any local tax) where the Conservatives are very proud of Conservative Councils having low council tax and low council tax rises, unlike these inefficient Labour/Lib Dem councils. (Where “inefficient” means “provides services”). Make local funding the only funding and this will just get bigger.

I can’t work out a practical way to give councils financial independence from central government which doesn’t just massively increase the rich-poor gap between councils. (For impractical ways: redraw the council boundaries so that they are completely demographically balanced, but no longer geographically contiguous or comprehensible; give local authorities the power to collectively raise national taxes separately of central government, income from which is then split collectively between them according to an unalterable demographic formula)

@ 2 and 10.

Yes this can sometimes be the case. But this is partially why cuts were always going to hit the poor first of all – senior management will always be last to suffer. But this doesn’t mean services can always be protected from cuts, particularly on this scale, nor does it mean we should support cuts.

If you want to solve this problem, be advocates for participatory budgeting.

“Manchester, for example, has a ‘street wardens service’. Why for pete’s sake?”

I don’t know about what Manchester’s scheme is about, but a street warden service in Swansea – where wardens helped at taxi ranks on saturday nights – cut alcahol related crime substantially. Meaning a saving for the taxpayer on courts etc.

Some on here have asked what can be done, whilst others have questionned the option of resistance.

Could I refer readers to an excellent article on the LRC website – it miay stimulate further thought and who knows, maybe even some action.

http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/winning-the-argument-on-councils-resisting-the-cuts/

Hi Tacitus,

I thought this letter in the Morning Star was a good rebuttal to Firmin’s argument:

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/100733

@ 10 Chris

“Manchester, for example, has a ‘street wardens service’. Why for pete’s sake?”

Security, because casual criminals and anti-social types will think twice if they see someone who looks like an authority figure. And also probably feeding back information to the council that might not be reported through facts and figures – which public structure looks like it needs repairs, where it might be a good idea to install a street light to deter anti-social behaviour, etc.

Cim,

yep you are right about this problem, and solving it is the great prize. At the very least you need a redistributive mechanism at the start whereby rich areas that don’t need services pay for poor areas that do (this is already the case effectively).

But I don’t think that means the proportion of funding raised locally cannot rise over time as regions reduce inequality. We also have to combine this with local government reform and further devolution. I’d suggest in practical terms this means regional assemblies (which at the very least means more UKIP members with a raised blood pressure!!!) that take over responsibilities for more services from both local and central government, as well as raising taxes. We’d combine this with greater redistribution from central government (so effectively the south east raised and spent 100% of its income, wheras a poor area like the north east would have something like 80% of its income raised locally then topped up by CG – similar to the EU model where the wealthy nations are net donars, and the poorest nations net recipients).

I’d also like us to stop treating the UK economy as a whole, and move conceptually towards seeing it as a series of regional economies. Hence we could in theory have some regions in recession, and others booming. We then use regions that are booming using their surpluses to fund keynesian investment in those that are in recession.

You’d also have to factor in though that poorer areas – by being able to take their own decisions on far more matters, and with decisions taken on the basis of local needs not national, would be far more able to become rich. I’d argue the centralised nature of the british state is what keeps many areas poor, as economic decisions are usually taken with the interests of london and the south east placed above the others.

@3 Don

Pretty much correct – and by the same argument running huge government deficits, even if they can be funded through more debt, isn’t sustainable. Higher debt = higher interest payments = less money to spend = lower long term growth.

@8 Watchman

Again correct…I think people have to really question – is going back to 2008/09 levels of spending really that terrible.

In general, it has to be said that there are huge levels of waste in local (and national) government. Pay has increased far faster than inflation, and thre are cuts that could be made without affecting front line services.

I agree with watchman that freeing local government to raise its own taxes would force them to behave with more fiscal responsibility – pay would be restrained and vanity projects wouldn’t be so common. There are certain issues surrounding local taxation, but it would probably be a step forward IMHO.

Let’s be realistic though – there will inevitably be some cutting for purely party political purposes. Cutting services makes a nice stick to beat a government with. I do think though that the Coalition has made one very smart move to offset that fallout; the requirement for local councils to publish details of all spending. It makes it hard to complain about cuts when your accounts are transparent. Unsurprisingly, thats why so many local councils are so unhappy about said transparancy.

I’d also like us to stop treating the UK economy as a whole, and move conceptually towards seeing it as a series of regional economies. Hence we could in theory have some regions in recession, and others booming. We then use regions that are booming using their surpluses to fund keynesian investment in those that are in recession.

I grant you your wish. The south east, especially London and the financial sector, has been subsidizing the rest of the country for decades. Unfortunately, the political tendency of which you are a part has also spent decades trying to undermine and even demonize it for its success.

Except of course the council know really that if labour had won the last election they would have had the same cuts, I was talking to my local councilor who I’ve know from the 1960;s he has worked within council all his life, as he said to us, the problem is Labors not the Labour party anymore, and the chances are when they do finally get back in they change sod all, and in fact might well be worse then what we have now.

I mean after Thatcher labour did little to make this a better country for the poorest working hard for it’s middle class Tory swing voters.

This is the price of all those years of deficit spending. Cameron and Osborne may have agreed to Labour’s spending policies, but many others didn’t. They were shouted down and laughed out of town. And now look where we are – massive cuts in spending, and perhaps with that pretty hefty cuts in services. You were warned that one day the bill would arrive.

Perhaps next time we get a Labour government they’ll learn to manage the finances so that we don’t need to see huge cuts as soon as they’re out of office.

@17 We don’t need anyone from the council to look like an ‘authority figure’. We desperately need to take the money away from these people.

@ Chris

“We don’t need anyone from the council to look like an ‘authority figure’. We desperately need to take the money away from these people.”

Speak for yourself. Personally, I like the idea of cheap crime prevention and the council making sure it stays abreast of work that needs doing.

But if your reponse is that we “desperately need to take the money away from these people”, that kinda indicates that you’re not really interested in the pros and cons of the scheme anyway. If you’re just anti-councils in general, why not just say so?

Scooby – its a deal. Provided you give away control.

Yes, we’ll have less to spend but we’ll also have the chance of building more rational systems and services.

Where to start, the reason there are cuts now is the Tories are exploiting the budget defecit to get rid of some needed organsiations that deal witht he sort of people they don’t care about (the poor) Now we all realise ther has to be big cuts and fast,

the reason that Militant had to get rid of so many staff though theatrical redundancies was tehy had emplyed those people in the first place knowing that there wasn’t the money for them, Yes lambeth on the other hand was Militant led and full of Torts who were asscoatied with extreme unions, but here cuts were directed towerds people in 2.4 children families where they would fund exttremist groups who would finacially benefit themselves, as for “grotesque chaos” of extremism, LAbour lost both Hackney and control of ahringey as a result of Bennites in the early 90′s

@2, 10,14 and 19:

Yes, you do have to question why reducing funding to 2008/09 levels is resulting in such apparently severe cuts. Undoubtedly, public sector bosses are looking after their own interests rather than the people they are supposed to serve – and this applies across the political spectrum. Some examples (quoted from memory):

1. Tory Suffolk County Council is cutting £421,000 (out of a budget of £480m!) on rural footpaths, yet the the CEO, Andrea Hill, earns a massive £225,000pa and all the directors earn over £100K…

2. South Gloucestershire Council is reducing respite care for severely disabled children to 6 hours a week. Meanwhile, the CEO, Amanda Deeks, is paid £186,590pa. If she took a pay cut so that she was paid the same as the PM, this would largely fund (ignoring on-costs, presumably) an extra 6 hours of respite care a week for 10 families with severely disabled children. And let’s not ignore the £31m spent on a new council offices in Yate…

3. The London Borough of Newham criticises the cuts in a publicly-funded video when it spends £547,000 on a Council magazine, has an £81,000pa elected mayor, a £241,000pa CEO and has recently spent £111m on a new HQ with some designer lights costing £1800 each.

4. 19 staff lose their jobs at one school in Gosport (some working with kids with learning difficulties), while the local council has sent four(!) councillors on a junket to Spain to check out a company bidding for local waste services, yet the company has a British subsidiary on the IoW.

5. Renfrewshire is closing public halls, but spent £15000 on hiring an X-Factor contestant to switch on some Christmas lights

6 Tory Barnet Copuncil is proposing to cut school-crossing patrols, though last year it voted to increased its Leader’s allowance by 55% to £54,000pa…

7. West Sussex (Tory?) is likewise proposing to cut its crossing patrols (who are on a max of £6.91 per hour), while its CEO was paid £218,000 in 2008/9.

Some of the details above may be inexact or just plain wrong; but, nevertheless, the point is that many public sector bureaucrats are generally protecting their own interests rather than the interests of the people they are there to serve! About this, there can be no doubt: the only dispute is about the details

So…is it too much to ask that Council CEOs are paid the same as a Cabinet Minister — viz £134,565pa?

And why are UKUncut and similar campaigns not organising local demonstrations about these scandals? Many important public services can be preserved if public bodies reduce top salaries and rein in unnecessary expenditure.

In Newcastle …Managers are setting forth proposals which will see them retain their jobs ..whilst cutting frontline workers salaries in half putting the frontline workers on reduced hours ..yet still expected to work a fulltime rota pattern ..thereby restricting their ability to work elsewhere …nailing them down to a much reduced income …the managers proposing all this ..almost to a man and a woman are Union members ..and Labour voters ….Dont anyone expect the Labour Party ..or the Unions for that matter to ride to the rescue anytime soon ..they are too busy securing their own futures whilst selling everyone else down the river …

Oh ..and Ed Miliband will be well happy with a cheaper welfare state ..dont expect any help from him ..hes too busy praising the war effort in afghanistan …
Labour voting /Union member managers are implementing these cuts with glee and gusto …

For a start councils could follow Liverpool’s lead and say the Big Society is a complete sham and pull out of it…

Furthermore, rhetoric like that of Joe Anderson (L’pool council leader) – that he is being forced to make impossible choices, and NOT that it’s not his fault and everyone should just get on with it (like others), would also make people concentrate their rage on the gov’t's doorstep, where it belongs.

Hi donpaskini,
Apologies for not replying beforehand. Interesting article and one I feel should be discussed far more widely by those on the Left. It wouold be interesting to see this stance elaborated further.