What to make of the results?

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Published: 13 May, 2010

REGAN SCOTT
YOU can logically argue that the national result showed that people are so frightened politically and economically that they didn’t want a lot of change. You could see the local result as a response to change. People have had a taste of it with the Lib Dem and Conservative coalition and they don’t like it. It is nothing to do with Gordon Brown and the national scene. It’s people saying: “if you muck about with community services and old-fashioned Labour things we won’t bloody vote for you”.
I think they’d done so little about people’s ordinary grievances. They just haven’t done very much – I hope the local Labour Party will now behave differently.
I think the national coalition will hit local government very, very hard. The new Labour council will have to think very carefully about what is genuinely fat – do you need all these massively overpaid bureaucrats? The council appears to be massively overstaffed. Do you need consultants all the time?
The new national coalition will be desperate for practical ideas from the local authority. Let’s have some creative thinking. For example, the community charge stopping at Band H is iniquitous. Let’s put a surcharge on the big houses, that was what the Lib Dems said they’d do but they dropped it – but why don’t we do that locally?
I hope that if there is an attempt to rebuild the Labour party it will now not be on New Labour grounds. If the Party is no more than an election machine it doesn’t have a future.
• Regan Scott  is a former national trade union official