CNJ COMMENT - Labour’s ‘no alternative’ is at odds with the voters

Published: 3 March, 2011

POLITICS is at its best when parties reach a consensus of both opinion and feeling.

It seems as if Labour in Camden is in breach of this cardinal principle.

What else can explain the most violent scenes around the Town Hall on Monday evening – perhaps the most violent since the protests over rents 50 years ago?

Even the more volatile political atmosphere of the mid-1980s was more gentlemanly than Monday’s disorder.

One cannot help but think that the Labour councillors as a group did not give sufficient thought to how best to react to the government’s cuts.

Outright defiance would have appeared to have been out of the question considering the public mood, bending, as it has done, to the unremitting onslaught from Downing Street, as well as, in general, the media, which  blames the last government for the deficit and economic mess faced by the nation.

This is not necessarily true but it appears to be to the public and that is all that matters.

If the public in Camden thought otherwise there would have been thousands outside the Town Hall on Monday, not the comparatively small demonstration that there was.

But spurning all alternative proposals, made by both the Tories, Lib Dems, as well as the Town Hall unions, the Labour group pushed ahead with their economies.

To them, there was no alternative – shades, ironically, of Mrs Thatcher’s approach in the 1980s

But, in fact, bits of the proposals by both the Tories and Lib-Dems, spliced together with suggestions from the unions, could have softened the blows for at least this year. 

And who knows what may happen between today and  the next financial year? 

The government’s apparent intention to allow local authorities to benefit from business rates could, if applied to Camden, make a great deal of difference to the borough’s budget.