We often hear the refrain that the political parties need to break out of the ‘Westminster village’ and actually take a look at what’s going on in real people’s lives around the country. Only rarely do we hear that newspapers should do the same.
Thursday’s Times leader, singing Nick Clegg’s praises on the occasion of the publication of his pamphlet ‘The Liberal Moment’, was a prime example of commentators having their heads stuck firmly in SW1. Only someone who blithely accepts without question the Liberal Democrats’ fluffy image as a ‘party of the left’ could have written that article – someone who hadn’t taken the time to examine the party’s record in local government.
The Times’ correspondent did acknowledge that it may seem ‘presumptuous for a party scoring only 18 per cent in the latest poll to claim that it can overhaul Labour and become the main party of the Left’. Indeed – especially considering that the great untold story of the last five years is the Lib Dems’ stagnation as a political force and their failure to advance at election after election.
In 2005, they told us that they were headed for 70 or 80 seats and that they had a ‘decapitation’ strategy against the Tories. They managed 50 seats and lopped the head off of a grand total of one Conservative. In 2007, they barely trod water in the Welsh assembly (six AMs) and their representation went down in the Scottish parliament. Their ludicrous London mayoral campaign (described by Brian Paddick as ‘little money, even less strategy and a great deal of frustration’) saw their vote in the capital drop by 5%. The 2009 local elections saw them running to stand still – with a net loss of a council (losing Devon and Somerset to the Tories) and ending up with two fewer councillors in total nationwide.
In the light of these results, the notion that this electoral juggernaut could replace Labour as ‘the party of the left’ should be laughed out of court. Except that where the Lib Dems do get their grubby mitts on power locally, their record is anything but a laughing matter.
In Cardiff, they provoked outrage when they tried to sell off the city’s historical books and cultural treasures at auction. In Hull, they tried to axe free school meals. In 2008, their time in power in Liverpool meant that the council was given an ‘inadequate’ one-star rating and was officially the worst in the country.
If you want real evidence of the Lib Dems’ incompetence, though, just take a look at Sheffield. In the space of just a couple of years, they have taken power away from people by abolishing local area panels and replacing them with massive, unaccountable ‘community assemblies’ covering vast patches of the city with different needs; have been forced into U-turns on gang dispersal orders which the community and the police wanted, but which the council leader Paul Scriven tried to say were unnecessary; and rejected government cash for free swimming and to buy homes from families facing repossession which could then be rented back to them.
Most shockingly, they have abandoned the previous Labour administration’s ‘Closing the Gap’ strategy, which targeted money at the poorest areas of the city, and are instead distributing cash to all areas, including the wealthiest, equally – regardless of need.
Nationally, they flip-flop on everything – from changing their tax policies twice in six months, to wanting to keep, then scrap, Trident. Getting 50% of young people into university is ‘simplistic’; the Child Trust Fund a ‘gimmick’. They were in favour of scrapping tuition fees, then against it, then for it again. They voted against indeterminate sentences, increasing the penalty for causing death by dangerous driving and five-year minimum sentences for carrying a gun. Their ‘progressiveness’ would come at the cost of our insecurity and lost opportunities.
Let the last word on the Lib Dems rest with their one of their own or at least, someone who used to be one of their own. Councillor Frank Taylor, who represents Gleadless Valley in Sheffield, was a Lib Dem councillor – until he quit, saying that the party was prioritising funding towards certain areas of the city in order to attract votes at the next general election. ‘People are being cynically used and manipulated’, he said. The Lib Dems’ response? Councillor Taylor is a man who suffers from ‘erratic mood swings’.
Progressive, indeed.
Well said Rob. Our experience of the Lib Dems in Lambeth is that they’re they’re values-free political opportunists prepared to embrace any hypocrisy as long as they think it might net them a few votes, but incapable of governing because – truth be told – they don’t attract very high calibre people into their party on the whole. So, we saw them form a coalition with the Tories in 2002, put council tax up 40%, cut services by £23m, lose £3m in fraud, protect one of their own councillors who was caught fiddling housing benefit, refuse to serve any ASBOs at all for three years, then close down day care centres for older people, and in an area with rising youth crime they left Lambeth with the worst funded youth services in London when we finally defeated them in 2006. Since going into opposition, they’ve campaigned against bringing in £250m to upgrade the 10,000 most sub-standard homes with a nauseous appeal to residents in better homes to oppose money that’s targeted at the worst-off, then they opposed the local partnership’s decision to prioritise tackling poverty and worklessness on the grounds it’s not the right issue in a deprived area like inner-city south London. There’s so much to expose about these clowns it’s hard to know when to stop!
Cllr Steve Reed, Leader – Lambeth Council
I’ll give you Liverpool and Cardiff – measures propounded in both cases by outrageous Labour/Tory coalitions to unhinge us. But Hull and Sheffield? Both councils had been failing for years under Labour’s one-party rule. And how many councils and councillors did Labour lose at those same elections? Oh, that’s right, more than 200. The fact that we stood our ground in the face of complete outrage against politicians and a cynically exploitative Tory party shows we can’t be written off.
A closer look at Lib Dem policy would reveal you to be right on tax – we changed our policies to fit the changing facts, in case you haven’t noticed there has been a serious recession over the last couple of years! But none of those other things are true.
Then again I would not expect an aide to a New Labour minister to be averse to a little spin and games now and then.
As a Lambeth resident and leaseholder I take great exception to Cllr Steve Reed’s framing of the Lib Dems’ opposition to the ALMO Lambeth Living as “campaigning against £250 million”.
We don’t have the cash, we do have the ALMO Lambeth Living – or should that be Lambeth Living dead?
Lambeth Living is totally unresponsive and unaccountable. It’s flogging off council homes to property developers at knock down rates and all the leaseholders have had huge bills this year for repairs that have not been done.
I’ve had to use Freedom of Information to get simple information out of them because they don’t respond to queries. If it were not for a Lib Dem councillor in my ward, Brian Palmer, who put some pressure on I’ve no doubt I would still be coping with 10 squatters living above me.
I am not a member of the Liberal Democrats.
Melanie Newman (no relation to Rob Newman)
PS it was also Labour in Lambeth who voted to exclude contract workers from a motion by the Greens to pay council staff a living wage rather than the minimum wage. Very progressive!
Don’t forgwet in Hull they cut the trial for free school meals and in Birmingham they prop up and regressive Tory administration that haqs abandoned women leaving their family home due to domestic voilence and stopped nearly all regeneration in the city.
Without wishing to get too Lambeth-centric, Melanie’s comments need a response. We don’t yet have the £250m because the ALMO hasn’t yet reached 2-star rating, but without the ALMO we would have zero chance of ever getting the money. In all conscience how could we turn that chance down (well, other than to scaremonger a few votes like the Lib Dems tried)? If any homes are sold, it is only on the basis that they are too expensive to repair AND more homes are built with the receipt than the number sold, so we end up with a net increase. One of our first acts on taking control from the Lib Dems in 2006 was to put all those staff on wages below the London Living Wage up to that level – so I don’t take your point there either. The fact is Lambeth was a basket case under the Lib Dems with a one-star rating that made it the second worst in London. Today it’s the fastest improving in the country with a three-star rating and services that were failing under the Lib Dems – like benefits and planning – now in the top quartile and our school results above the national average.
I don’t know what world Robson is living in, but it’s not this one. Sheffield could not be described as a ‘failing council’; it’s difficult to reconcile that with its Audit Commission ‘excellent’ rating. That’s not to say it couldn’t have done things better.
However, It is worth noting that the previous LibDem adminstration emptied the coffers. Adam Davison (LibDem MP Phil Willis’s political assistant) described “the disastrous period of Lib Dem leadership between 1999 and 2002”. This time they’ve inherited a near £20m revenue cushion – maybe it’ll take them longer to fail.
More importantly, the LibDems have already broken just about every election promise they made in Sheffield:
They promised
* to “stop the massive increases in highly paid (over £50k) managers”. They’ve increased by more than 30% in just 16 months, and more such posts are being advertised at the moment
• that, if elected, they would stop the merger of Wisewood and Myers Grove Schools and ensure that those schools continued independently. When they came to power, they ditched the promise and have continued with the merger.
• to support the completion of the Decent Homes Programme. As soon as they got in power, they tried to ditch the promises that had been made to more than 2,000 families to improve and modernise their homes.
• a ‘public inquiry into the history of decisions about Sheffield Airport’. As soon as they got to power, they ditched their promise.
• the tenants of Arbourthorne that they’d do everything in their power to stop the proposed demolition of houses. As soon as they got to power, they changed their mind. The Chair of the local Tenants Association, George Day, said: “He just wanted our votes so that he and his colleagues could rule the city”.
• to support local businesses. Since the LibDems came to power, the City Council has slowed down the payment of undisputed invoices to local businesses. Further, it has refused to act to cut the payment time to local businesses for such invoices to 10 days.
• Local income tax to replace council tax in full knowledge that the LibDem Leader Nick Clegg MP has ditched that promise “because it could not be delivered in any reasonable time-frame” (BBC R4 16 June 2009)
• listen to local people. LibDem Leader Councillor Scriven personally refused the application by the police, totally supported by other local agencies and local residents, for 6-month Dispersal Orders in Fir Vale and Low Edges
• devolve power to local communities. The LibDems abolished the local forums which were supported by and involved local people and replaced them with remote assemblies involving just council officers and councillors. Terry Wright, chairman of Gleadless Valley Tenants and Residents Association, said: “This meeting was all done, dusted and decided beforehand. There was no public consultation on any of the decisions or how the money to be spent was decided. There was no community group representation on the panel, just politicians and council officers.”
Not Left. Certainly not progressive. But full marks for broken promises and opportunism.