FORUM: The Town Hall honeymoon’s over
Published: 9 December, 2010
CAMDEN’S financial strategy isn’t exactly like a stick of rock with ‘Camden Labour’ running all the way through it
As angry protesters flooded Camden Town Hall last week, Labour’s honeymoon period came to an abrupt end when grim-faced Labour councillors adopted the borough’s financial strategy for the next three years.
The deputations and protesters calling on the Labour cabinet to refuse to adopt the strategy must have guessed their calls would fall on deaf ears, as most trooped out before the actual decision was made.
Well before the May election it was clear that painful cuts were on the way for the country as a whole and local government in particular.
Then chancellor Alistair Darling admitted back in March that Labour’s planned cuts in public spending would be “deeper and tougher” than Margaret Thatcher’s in the 1980s, while outgoing Labour chief secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne left a stark handover note to his successor: “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.”
And let’s be clear, while much of the pain – as we all acknowledge – is because of the global banking crisis, this country faces the additional challenge of coping with the aftermath of what The Economist this week called the Labour government’s “financial incontinence”.
Here in Camden what is remarkable is that Labour’s plans for dealing with the cuts have so little in them that is distinctly “Labour”.
The mantra of councils all over the country is to “protect front-line services, particularly for the most vulnerable in society, and find new and more efficient ways of doing things” and Camden is no different.
Camden’s financial strategy isn’t exactly like a stick of rock with “Camden Labour” running all the way through it.
Continuing the food metaphor, it bears all the hallmarks of “salami slicing,” doing a little bit less of everything rather than making bold and imaginative decisions about what to stop doing altogether and what to do differently, for example, by greater use of volunteers to protect discretionary services.
Nor does it feel like the new administration has a firm grip at such a critical time in Camden’s history. Just this week we have seen two embarrassing about-turns that leave Labour with egg on their face.
The plans for a joint Camden-Islington chief executive, which I have said from the outset would distract Camden’s chief executive from our own affairs at such a crucial point and lead to an even more remote council bureaucracy, have been abandoned amid much embarrassment only months after they were launched with such fanfare.
And after Labour council leader Nasim Ali made such a point of immediately scrapping Your Camden after the election, Labour have now admitted they got it wrong and are reintroducing a council magazine, recognising that it is an important source of information for residents without internet access.
Only whereas our Lib Dem-led administration insisted that Your Camden should only exceptionally feature politicians, Labour have refused to give any such guarantee – welcome back Pravda!
What’s more, the new administration smacks of incoherence on policy. After Labour worked tirelessly over the last four years to obstruct the new UCL-sponsored academy, last Wednesday night they mumbled their agreement to it, while their promise of a new primary school south of Euston Road seems to have evaporated.
And key aspects of Camden’s Lib Dem-led administration’s plans are being dressed up and presented as new.
The “new” area action groups are turning out to be pretty much the same as the popular area forums we introduced to give local people a say, and the “community investment programme” looks strikingly like our ground-breaking property review.
Our estate regeneration programme, which creates new social housing and releases money to improve existing homes, doesn’t even get a name change.
And after years of fruitless pressure on the Labour government to come up with direct investment in council housing, the “fourth option”, the coalition government has announced decent homes backlog funding that will include councils like Camden that refused to go down the arms-length management organisation route. Sadly, Labour’s housing cabinet member Julian Fulbrook has been slow off the starting blocks in securing Camden’s share.
None of this suggests a firm hand on the tiller.
Camden needs strong political leadership at this pivotal moment, and it’s far from clear the Labour administration is up to the job.
• Keith Moffitt is a Liberal Democrat councillor for West Hampstead and former leader of the council.
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