CNJ COMMENT - We need a united front against the scattergun Coalition

Published: 24 February, 2011

DIVIDE and rule. Foreign powers often conquer by exploiting religious differences in the subjugated nations.

In a way, the present Coalition may be following the same tactic, uninten­tionally of course.

Not by exploiting religious differences among their opponents but by unloosing so many initiatives that the enemy does not know what is hitting them next.

While Labour in its first two years after the 1997 victory sat back and carried on the same policies as the Tories, the present Coalition – though there wasn’t the faintest hint in either of the Tory or the Lib Dem manifestos – is simply bombarding the nation with one policy upheaval after another. Free schools, the complete uprooting of the NHS, the most sweeping cuts in public expenditure seen since the 1950s – the list is endless. Now, this week David Cameron in a Daily Telegraph article announced an almost total rollback of the state – a kind of Americanisation of local government.

According to the Cameron doctrine, private companies will be able to run everything we take for granted in Camden – schools, housing, traffic, street cleaning, and all without any supervision of the Town Hall. In fact, the Town Hall would, in effect, almost disappear.

But is private best? To­day’s sky high energy bills do not suggest this. Nor do rocketing rail travel prices. 

Local governance is often inefficient. When it is, the electorate can get rid of their representatives and bring in those who will be more efficient. But who can elect new energy companies, for instance?

Bewildered, the government’s opponents – large swathes of the public, Labour, many Lib Dems, even Tories – do not know what is going to hit them next. The Tory leader of the Local Government Association, Baroness Eaton, has been bashing Cameron this week over increases in pension contributions (see John Gulliver, page 17).

Divided, opponents are clearly easier to rule. But the opponents have more in common than they think.

An alliance is needed across all parties before the Coalition, in its haste to turn society upside down, does irreparable damage to the social fabric.

In Camden, why isn’t it possible for our One Nation Tories – and there are many of them in this unique borough with its liberal traditions – Lib-Dem party members, as well as Labour, both right and left, to come together – before it is too late?