“The real choice we have is whether disparate local groups angered by service closures campaign against Labour cuts by themselves, or whether those groups are linked into a wider, national anti-cuts movement with broader, long term goals.”

Surely the actions of labour councillors are irrelevant to this. A Wider national anti-cuts movement is not going to be hampered if labour councillors set legal budgets. It could even help it if the councillors explain how limited their powers are, and the campaigns need to be national.

Surely the imperative here is to be united in our opposition to the Tories. Historically, the left have excelled in being divisive and setting up disparate groups that fail to communicate.

This time we do not have that luxury

I think both Paul Cotterill’s article and this response are very valuable indeed. Both have been thoughtful pieces, intelligently and sensitively argued. I think I lean more towards Jon’s side personally, but Paul’s case is a compelling one and can’t be lightly dismissed.

We flagellate ourselves a lot on the left for our propensity to argue amongst ourselves – even indulging in self-caricature from time to time. But these issues are serious and require serious discussion, which includes disagreement. There will always be a few who descend into petty squabbling and name-calling. But for the most part, internal debate is a very healthy activity. It sharpens our thinking and helps us correct collectively for the limitations of our individual perspectives. It is socialist in the very best sense.

You only have to look at the intellectual quality of the right-wing to see where forelock-tugging and marching in lockstep gets you.

Good article.

I’d add a fifth reason, which follows on from the last point, which is that lefties can help anti-cuts campaigns by researching and sharing information and coming up with some winnable demands.

One reason why I find the strategy of demanding councillors resign so frustrating is that it ignores the lesson of most successful anti-cuts campaigns, which is that campaigners need a realistic alternative if they are going to be successful.

Particularly when campaigning to persuade councillors around specific local services, there is a massive difference between “here’s one hundred of us who think you shouldn’t close this youth centre and should instead do x” and “here’s one hundred of us who think that you should resign and if you don’t it is because you are a spineless sellout”.

There’s clearly a need to hold specific councils to account for specific decisions where those decisions are wrong – about the priorities that those councils are taking into account when making these choices. Providing costed alternatives of the form “don’t cut X here, cut Y + Z there instead” is clearly to be encouraged.

But on the wider “no cuts, oppose everything or you’re irrelevant traitors” angle – What do you propose the Labour councils do? Set illegal budgets that will just be overruled? Focussing ire on the people making choices with little or no power to raise additional revenue (particularly in Scotland due to the SNP Local Government Concordat) is surely misdirecting time and energy from where it should be focussed: on the central government that’s using the language of localism to avoid responsibility for their spending decisions?

‘Surely the imperative here is to be united in our opposition to the Tories.’

Only if you are a tribalist who thinks cuts falling in Tory areas are of greater concern than cuts in Labour areas – where they’re more likely to hurt vulnerable people.

I think I’d look at it like this:

There are cuts, and there are cuts: cuts to local government funding courtesy of the Coalition, and cuts to services implemented by local councils on the basis that they have less money to spend this year than last year.

We should hold councillors (of any party) responsible for making bad choices on service cuts – e.g. making the most vulnerable bear the brunt of them. And we should support protesters who are trying to ensure they make the best possible choices. But it’s senseless to blame councillors who have less money to spend simply for spending less money.

The Tories’ whole gameplan is to hope that public anger over cuts ends up being directed at councils (especially Labour councils) rather than them. Rather than playing into their hands, shouldn’t we be doing our best to focus anger on the Coalition?

And there’s another risk in focusing anti-cuts action on councils: it provides councillors with an incentive to make populist choices on where to cut (i.e. to protect the services of vocal, visible groups like road users at the expense of relatively voiceless, vulnerable groups).

Thanks Jon. A useful contribution.

On my own piece from yesterday, I should first try to make clear that, beneath the slightly racy headline, I’m not arguing for acceptance of cuts either as a good-thing-that-Labour-should-do or as ineivtable consequence of being under a Tory government.;

What I’m arguing for is narrower: an acceptance that councillors have a legal duty to set a legal budget. In the second part of my piece (available at my blog) I argue that by accepting this legal duty Labour councils do create some considerable ‘wiggle room’ around intelligent use of reserves and other quasi-accounting mechanisms to reduce the scale of the cuts in the shorter term.

What I’m definitely NOT arguing is that people in Labour council areas should forgo protest, and any other form of action e.g. Judicial Review to try and stop the cuts being implemented. As you rightly say, it wouldn’t happen anyway, and no-one, least of all councillors, has the right to object to legitimate concerns being expressed in public and public meetings.

My narrow point is that the actual decision making for this year will be done in the next 8 days, and then there are other things to do. It’s easier to do that with the ear of councillors and access to Labour council information than without it.

I agree wholeheartedly that Labour in Westminster needs to hear a strong message that it must commit itself to a) no cuts b) reversal of cuts when it can. At the moment the ‘too fast, too deep’ is a nice strapline, but a stronger message that cuts are simply not needed/simply harm the poorest is needed. I just think this messahe can be conveyed as effectively without calling councillors traitors.

Yes, momentum is important to the anti-cuts movement. I agree totally. But what actually happens to the movement when there are no Council budget meeting to protest at, and all it’s got left is further haranguing of councillors? Look what’s happened, at least currently, to the student movement now the set piece decision making points are gone. My piece, beleive it or not (and specifically the not-published at LibCon part 2), was about how some momentum might be gained in the post budget-setting period.

Actually, for all the venom in the comments over the last day or so, i’m not sure we’re that far apart (you may disagree). Some of the judgment comes down to whether people really believe Labour councils are committed to defending services and the poorer by using the wiggle room of legality I try to make a case for. I’ve tried to give some data from my own area proving that this can happen, and Don Paskini has done the same from his on the other thread, but that isn’t to say it’s happening in all areas. The challenge for the Left lies in holding councillors to account so that they do what they can, as far as they can, but the Left will only get to do that by engaging with councils post budget time.

I acknowledge of course, that the ‘trust’ I seek is not a gimme, as it is sought in the context of 13 years of Labour governmen just ended, when there were times when the interests of the poor were not promoted by Labour as they should have been. The ills of the centre are bound to be reflected at local level, but Labour councils and councillors have to do what thet can to gain trust. Some, like Manchester, are not doing that too badly. Others have further to go.

Paul – thanks for the response. I think you may be right that our positions are closer than might have been immediately obvious from reading the apparently opposing headlines.

I don’t have a particularly deep legal knowledge of council affairs, so I’m really taking what you say at face value in terms of the legal situation. I’m sure both of us would be very pleased if someone were to be able to come along and prove you wrong on it, but I’m not holding my breath.

You also mentioned the ‘racy headline’ – I think that yes, there was also a bit of a disconnect between the title’s premise (‘the left should support Labour council cuts’) and what you seem to be calling for, which to me seems to be a position of strong and critical but constructive approach that considers what our options are.

I think Don Paskini hits the nail on the head in comment number 4. There is a certain tone to be taken with the government, and a different tone to be taken with sympathetic councillors. As you touch on in your final paragraph here, it’s judging whether particular Labour councillors are being sympathetic or not that is the hard part.

It seems like we are agreed that we ought to be searching for the best of all possible outcomes from Labour councillors. Inevitably the situation will vary locally from council to council. In a lot of cases I don’t think that being critical of Labour councillors is necessarily something that should be ruled out.

Also, just thinking aloud at as a footnote here: in the end I suppose backstop for action by councillors themselves is the fact that a financial officer will set a budget if councillors do not. Ultimately, power over their own budgets does not reside with local councils. When you think about it, that’s absolutely a big deal.

Perhaps fire should be focused on this problem? I have no idea how this could be done. If the Labour leadership wants to be helpful then it should be pointing out the hypocrisy between the fact that the government is bigging up its localism agenda but then using unelected staff to overrule local democratically elected officials in the name of ministers.

It’s possible that Labour councils refusing to set legal budgets could make this an issue worth talking about. It’s certainly something that would make Liberal Democrats cry, because it is something that I believe that their members and probably MPs do genuinely care about. As the weak link in the coalition it would be nice to hammer them a bit.

Jon, great article.

The comment you make about local protests acting like a lightening rod for a national mass movement is exactly what I’ve been trying to convey to UK uncut people/followers.

To me the labour/tory council debate is moot. All are cutting, and different areas cutting different amounts.

Wisconsin is the best bench mark imo of where we should be heading with a mass protest movement like UK uncut. It’s timing couldn’t be better for us to take notes from. To me its what we should have been using this energy for. Once moving, tax issues could have been added in.

I applaud the UK uncut leaders for how they’ve amassed such a willing following, but the numbers for tax avoidance even from Brooks & Murphy (actual not views of possibles) leaves a massive gap still in funding shortfall. No one has answered mine and others questions on this.

I prefer cuts of taxes.

Jon @9 and @10: I think it’s true to say that Sunny’s headline (and the one at my place) were deliberately designed to be a bit eye-catching, even at the expense of being slightly out of kilter with the main article.

Clearly it caused some venom and vitriol, but if I’d called the piece ‘Five slightly dull tecnichal points about the consequences of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 and the Local Government Acts 2000 and 2003′, we might not how have started to develop what may be a more constructive debate about an important issue. So on the whole, no regrets, despite the bile I’m still wiping from my cybershirt.

Yes, I agree that Labour centrally might be doing more to point out the disjuncture between localism rhetoric and the law forrbidding local decsions on budgeting through the ease of intervention of the Sec of State. I’m not convinced that setting illegal budgets would allow that debate to emerge, given the opportunity the press would seize to revert to 1980s loonie left attack mode, and I think the messages can be get out as effectively without running that risk.

Centrally, though, my main point remains that setting illegal budgets would make things worse for people on whom Picklesbudgeting is then imposed. But as earlier, asking people accept that is, I acknowledge, a big deal.

Can I just point out that your terminiology seems wierd – Labour cuts are surely a result of the reduction in central funding and not the choice of the party, so the term is rather pointless.

I’m sure Mr Cameron would be delighted at the debates using it though.

I might support the cuts, but I’d prefer the opposition to stop shooting themselves and concentrate on an honest debate – the cuts reflect central spending (unless any Labour councils are deliberately trying to cut their spending beyond that they are forced to do by the reduction in central grounds). If nothing else it should make people see the wisdom in more local control of taxation.

What about

(5) It is the morally correct thing to do. If the ‘Left’ are unable or unwilling to defend people from the attacks of the wingnuts, then who will? If the Labour Party (and/or) the ‘Left’ are silent against cuts than mean people are losing services, then what is thepoint of them existing? If the ‘Left’ are willing to see a school for children with special needs close for ‘tactical’ reasons have we lost sight of what we are about?

The more pragmatic reason being that if we are not seen to be conerned with the degrading of the public services, don’t be suprised to find yourselves from charges that you are ‘all in it for yourselves/immigrants/gays or whatever. No-one wins when we are seen (rightly or wrongly) to be siding with one group over another.

Watchman at 14 makes a very good point.

Labour councils are not cutting for the sake of it. They, like all councils, are reacting to the central settlement handed down by Westminster.

The issue shows up the ludicrously centralised nature of the British State. Which, contrary to their promises on localism, the Coalition are not addressing.

If Liverpool wants to maintain services while Tunbridge Wells, say, wants to cut them, then it should have a degree of autonomy to do so. But under current local government funding structures all councils dance to central government diktat.

Truly ridiculous in this day and age.

I think this article is largely correct – cuts made in Labour Party controlled areas must of course be opposed just as much as in other areas – but it doesn’t address the most contentious issue, which is what left wing councillors should do in the circumstances, and whether left wing councillors who don’t resign (or set an illegal budget) should be regarded as enemies.

I continue to believe they are powerless to prevent the cuts, and that if they did use the measures demanded the practical result would be catastrophic (worse cuts locally, massively fewer left wing councillors nationally) and therefore they shouldn’t be viewed as traitors for not preventing them.

It is actually possible to protest against cuts in a local area while blaming the real culprits – the national government – for those cuts. I’m certain most people are intelligent enough to see beyond the Borough boundary and realise that their local council didn’t actually ask to have huge chunks of their central government grant removed.

Jim (15): “It is the morally correct thing to do. If the ‘Left’ are unable or unwilling to defend people from the attacks of the wingnuts, then who will? If the Labour Party (and/or) the ‘Left’ are silent against cuts than mean people are losing services, then what is thepoint of them existing? If the ‘Left’ are willing to see a school for children with special needs close for ‘tactical’ reasons have we lost sight of what we are about?”

The school will be closed anyway, no matter what any left wing councillors do. If they set an illegal budget, then they will be overruled and the school will be closed. If they resigned then the school would be closed by the other councillors.

Probably more such schools would also be closed because the distribution of the cuts would then be decided either in Westminster or by the remaining right wing councillors, who would tend to prioritise frequent bin collections and new roads instead.

The national government has closed the school, not the local government. It may be their choice on paper, but it’s not their choice in reality, so condemning them for “being willing to see it” is really very unfair, and deflects blame from the real cause of the problem.