Don't cut, run

As I write Birmingham City Council is debating making swingeing cuts to its budget as years of government underfunding and a catastrophic £1billion equal pay error risk bringing council provision to its knees.

I was a local councillor in a London borough between 2014-2018, during the first two years of which I represented the Labour Party. Even at that point, government-imposed cuts to services (estimated at 40%) were taking hold. I suggested, in all seriousness, that if things got any worse, and local democracy were to be further eroded, we should resign en bloc as councillors and refuse to implement the Tory government's will. We had not been elected on a mandate of cuts to vital services, I reasoned, therefore the honourable thing to do would be to refuse the act as the goverment's henchmen and women.

To say my proposal went down badly with my party colleagues, especially the leadership, would be an understatement. A bucket of cold sick would have gained a better reception, and it marked the beginning of the end for my brief period as a Labour councillor. I eventually resigned the whip and sat as an Independent councillor for the remaining two years of my tenure. But I had made the proposal with the best of intentions and would have willingly foregone my meagre councillor stipend (at some personal cost at that time) to make the point that I had not been elected to cut services to my already seriously deprived ward.

Eight years later and things are immeasurably worse. How, in all conscience, Birmingham's councillors will feel able to impose such drastic cuts to services is beyond me. Perhaps, in their specific case, they feel quilty about the error of oversight (I'm being charitable here, some might say negligence) that left a gaping hole in their city's finances - in which case they should probably resign anyway. The counter-argument to my suggestion was that our resignation would be a dereliction of duty which would leave our residents to the less than tender mercies of central goverment - and there would probably have been some merit in that argument if ours had been the only council to take such action.

However, if a significant number of councils the length and breadth of the country, of whatever colour, acted according to their consciences and mandates and refused to implement government dictat by resigning, government commissioners would be unable to run local services. They simply wouldn't have the capacity to hold the line and the cost would be astronomical anyway. Commissioners were sent in to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to run services in 2005 (and it appears may be so again, after alleged mismanagement by council leader, Lutfur Rahman, and his Aspire party group) but this is a one-off situation which could not possibly be replicated nationwide.

The full enormity of expected cuts will be revealed in Jeremy Hunt's budget tomorrow but he has already suggested that councillors could find savings by cuttiing diversity and inclusion services. The BBC Verify service has estimated such costs would amount to 0.02% of total council spending. This gives a whole new meaning to the concept of cheese-paring. Meanwhile, services to the young, elderly, vulnerable and poor will be slashed while discretionary funding to arts and culture, a huge contributor to the economy of a city like Birmingham, will be fatally and possibly permanently impacted. And all for what? So that Hunt can cut 2p off National Insurance as a Tory pre-election gimmick!

If that's what this morally bankrupt government wants, let them do their own dirty work.

Update 09/03/24: Shout out for Cllr Shuguftah Quddoos, a Labour councillor who holds the ceremonial position of Sheriff of Nottingham, for standing up to Labour Party bullying. She has had the whip suspended for voting against budget cuts.
She said "Local democracy has been completely undermined. I don’t want to be a cog in the wheel. It felt like a complete and utter sham.” I know how she feels.

Further update 15/03/24: It's catching on. Former Crewe and Nantwich MP Laura Smith says she has quit the Labour Party after being suspended by the local Labour group on the council she serves. She was suspended for not voting with her party to support a council budget she described as an austerity budget.

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