It might just be down to the fact that their principles are driven by their campaigning – and not the other way around. Whatever the reason, when they get into power their record is a miserable one.
Last December I visited Newcastle with Cllr Paul Brant, the deputy leader of Liverpool. We met with the fantastic Newcastle Labour team led by Cllr Nick Forbes. In Newcastle the Liberal Democrats are slashing wardens and closing day centres for adults with learning disabilities but they’ve found money to buy a new limousine for the lord mayor.
As we boarded the train home Paul and I shared tales of Liberal Democrat misdeeds. The Liberal Democrats left Liverpool in a mess: 23,000 people on the housing waiting list while 13,000 houses in the city were boarded up. Their own leader said they had turned the city into a ‘War Zone’. Under the Liberal Democrats Liverpool was labelled ‘The worst authority in the country’.
Before long, our train pulled into York. York’s Labour leader Cllr James Alexander has put up with a dirty tricks campaign from the Liberal Democrats – but this will be easier for him to deal with than the problems he will have to fix if Labour gains York from the Liberal Democrats in May. The Liberal Democrat record at running councils in Yorkshire is poor. In Leeds, Labour led by Cllr Keith Wakefield, took power in May after the Liberal Democrat administration failed to collect rubbish for 11 weeks. In Sheffield Cllr Julie Dore’s Labour group hopes to win in May; certainly the Liberal Democrats don’t expect to stay in power, which is why they are one of a handful of councils who set a one year budget and left a £220 million financial gap.
Paul and I parted company as he left to catch a connection to Manchester. Three days before, the Liberal Democrats in the Greater Manchester council of Rochdale were unable to face up to the mistakes they had made, refused to continue running the council and walked out. The council’s new leader Cllr Colin Lambert is picking up the pieces, budget out of control, books unbalanced. Next door is Oldham, the Labour group led by Cllr Jim McMahon have done a great job in holding the Liberal Democrats to account but will have a tough job putting Oldham back on track if we win control in May.
My train pulled into King’s Cross on the border of Islington and Camden. It took just four short years in Camden and eight in Islington for the residents to kick the Liberal Democrats out of power. Now Labour’s Cllr Catherine West in Islington and Cllr Nasim Ali in Camden are turning things around.
My journey through Liberal Democrat failure continued as I caught the tube home, skirting through Southwark, where residents judged them incapable of running the council last year and voted in Labour under the leadership of Cllr Peter John.
My last steps home were through my home borough of Lambeth, and walking through Vauxhall I looked up a luxury council office that the Liberal Democrats wasted £26 million pounds on, at the same time as they tried to close my local pool claiming a lack of money. In 2006 I ran Labour’s successful local election campaign under the leadership of Cllr Steve Reed. In Lambeth the Liberal Democrats had hiked up council tax by 40 per cent in four years, left 500 children without a school pace and left the council on the brink of bankruptcy.
The Liberal Democrats are difficult to hold to account. I have a Liberal Democrat leaflet from St Helens attacking their own side, telling residents how hard they are campaigning against ‘Nick Clegg’s Westminster Liberal Democrats’ as if they were a different party.
This May our main opponents will be the Conservatives, but we must not forget we face two foes. We have a duty to drive the Liberal Democrats out of power all over the country because of the damage they do to services and communities.
Of course if you had continued your train journey from Vauxhall through to Stockwell, you may have seen the many hundreds of homes that are in desperate need of repair and funding. Since walking away from all responsibility for social housing in the borough, Lambeth Labour has pushed the problem on to the failed ALMO. Consultants are invoicing for £700 per hour, whilst tenants have rotting flats. A short walk then up to Brixton, and you would see how Pope’s Road car park has now been demolished. Brixton Market traders campaigned against this, claiming that it will kill of their local business and mean the end of the local Brixton economy. Lambeth Labour put in the planning application to demolish it. A short bus ride up to Streatham and you would have seen the boarded up Streatham Leisure Centre. Lambeth Labour closed this down after failing to repair the building. A short walk next door and you would have seen Streatham Ice Rink crumbling. A deal struck with Tesco was altered by Lambeth Labour shifting all power to the corporate giant. Tesco now gets to knock down the ice rink and build a new superstore, vastly increased in size from the original planning application. Any hopes of keeping the rink open as a condition before opening the new superstore were long since rejected by Lambeth Labour. It’s good to see that you had a nice road trip though. There’s a few things that need sorting out here on the ground locally first.
well you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs ,stuff does crumble and fail beyond reasonable cost to repair. But yeah, Streatham Ice Rink used to be so fab,could Tesco not build a new one just to be nice,has anyone asked them,they could certainly afford it (and some!)
‘measured speech’ from PM,yeah,measured to appeal to the lowest ..well not common denominator but errm…fear, ie.vote for us or suffer mass immigration .I mean MASS IMMIGRATION is supposed to sound like MARS ATTACK! Most immigration ,’good’ immigration will take all those 9k.per year university places yes ?
46 years in labour ended in 2005, now I live in an area which you either vote labour which I will never do again, Tory which is a joke in my area, or Liberal and I’ve never voted Liberal, but it does now look like the Liberals will be close to taking the local election seat. Then again labour lost the council four years ago to the independents Labour had held the seat since 1902 and to be honest they believed they’d hold it again. But in the end immigration is a talking point, social housing is important to some but jobs is a major talking point down by me and labour allowed many high paid jobs to leave the area, who will I vote for, gosh I will not be voting.
You cannot set an unbalanced Budget, it is against the law in which case the Council would be suspended and a Government appointed team sent in to sort out the mess. Are you either saying that the members ignored officer advice or that that was officer advice? Officers have powers under Section 151 to stop all expenditure until the Council takes measures to sort out the mess and balance the Budget. If what you say is true then Labour, when taking control in May, will need to appoint a better team of senior officers, especially in Finance, and that, of course, means offering a salary that will attract the best, especially ‘oop t’North!