Liberal with the truth
Article published: Tuesday, May 3rd 2011
Chances are that throughout Spring you’ve had dozens of election leaflets drop through your letterbox, and it’s quite likely they haven’t been very welcome – particularly if they belonged to the Liberal Democrats.
Faced with an unanticipated level of hostility from the public over the past year following their amalgamation with the Tories and their accessory to the unmandated raft of cuts and privatisation, the Quisling party have desperately tried to scrub their fingerprints from the crime scene.
The only choices for local Lib Dem activists and Councillors, generally more left wing and progressive than the Orange Book faction currently in control of the parliamentary party, is to either leave the party or actively resist the cuts – or both. In some parts of Greater Manchester, they’ve done the honourable thing. Yet their strategy in Manchester has been to present themselves as the anti-cuts party, resisting the Labour Council while making no mention of their superiors in Whitehall. They evidently possess not only no self-respect, but a conspicuous lack of respect for their electors’ intelligence.
The central claim in the leaflets being distributed around the city is that Labour controlled Manchester City Council have made huge frontline cuts in order to foster anger against the coalition. According to leaflets distributed in Withington, “Lib Dem councils like nearby Sheffield and Newcastle, as well as Lib Dem/Conservative run Birmingham are protecting the frontline services Labour in Manchester has chosen to cut.”
This is not true: the Lib Dems in Sheffield have only made a budget for 2011-12. The local government settlement – the cuts imposed by the coalition on local Councils – was made for 2011-13. Since the defection of a Councillor from the Lib Dems to Labour in September last year, the Lib Dem majority in Sheffield has been only one Councillor, and they are unlikely to remain in power after the local elections. Figuring that Labour are on the way in to power this week, they’ve simply opted to ignore the cuts and make it their problem.
In the same leaflet, the Deputy Leader of Birmingham Council, Paul Tilsley, is quoted as saying: “Manchester may be closing public libraries, public toilets and leisure centres. But [our] budget does not include anything like that”. Tilsley is being extremely economical with the truth: Birmingham Council have stripped £212 million from their budget, including £118 million cut from adult social services and £69 million cut from children’s, with 10,000 jobs to go by 2015. Notably, they refused to cut the salaries of the highest paid members of the council.
The leaflets are also disingenuous about the amount that is actually being cut. Claiming that only 8.8 per cent of Manchester’s budget was cut by central government, the Lib Dems then go on to list the library, youth centre, leisure centre, public toilets and the closure of Manchester Advice as making up part of this figure. In reality, all are being closed to make up for two years of cuts. Since the 2012/13 fiscal year will see a 6.7 per cent cut to Manchester’s spending, there will by then be a 15.5 per cent cumulative total. On top of this, there are several further cuts that have nothing to do with the cuts to the main grant, most importantly the £33 million Area Based Grant. In short, the Council isn’t lying when it claims it has to make total cuts of 25 per cent, but the Lib Dems are when they claim it’s only 8.8 per cent.
They are telling the truth, however, when they claim that the Council has a poor record collecting Council Tax. This is most likely because there’s previously been very little point in collecting tax from some of the most deprived wards in the country. Before the cuts, Manchester got £430 million from central Government, and just £143 million from council tax. For Tory Trafford, £70 million came from the Government and £88 million from council tax. Manchester therefore makes a quarter of its budget from tax, whereas Trafford makes over half, which is why Coalition comparisons of Manchester to Trafford are deliberately misleading. Manchester gets more money from central government because Manchester has more deprived areas, unlike affluent Trafford. To demand that the Council better tax some of the poorest people in the country is not only not a valid way of making more money – with £12 million uncollected it would only make a dent in the total cuts – but it seems a perverse principle, especially when the coalition has taken such a lax line on corporate tax avoidance and bankers’ bonuses.
Their literature also overstate the extent and sincerity of local Lib Dem campaigning. They make much of John Leech’s campaign against the closure of a walk in health centre in Withington, but Leech voted against a recent parliamentary motion criticising the coalition’s plans to begin the privatisation of the NHS. Similarly, despite Vince Cable pressing for the privatisation of the Post Office, a Rusholme leaflet claims that the “Lib Dems in government have reversed decades of Labour cuts in the Post Office network”. They also recently angered locals who had campaigned against the Levinshulme Baths closure and those involved in Save Manchester Sure Start by publicly taking credit for the campaigns, despite having little to no actual presence – and being responsible for the national cuts in the first place.
If the Labour Party really wants to fight the cuts, it should return to the militant, radical anti-Toryism that made them a vital progressive force in the first half of the last century, and not assume, as they are now doing with Blairite arrogance, that they are the Government in waiting. But criticism of them should not distract from the venality, moral bankruptcy, and complete absence of principle that defines the Lib Dems. If their Council members really want to represent progressivism and support their constituents, then rather than spreading lies they should resign from the party en masse. After all, they’re losing their jobs on Friday anyway.
Tom Fox
More: Election, Manchester, Opinion
Comments
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Great article and to hear it from the horses’ mouths:
http://www.youtube.com/user/grahamgrahamson
The Hustings from Levy. Ashley says he is not ashamed of the coalition. Part 5 is very good for how desperate they are!
Comment by Kate on May 3, 2011 at 11:41 pm -
You Tube grahamgrahamson
Comment by Kate on May 3, 2011 at 11:43 pm -
As someone who lives just outside Manchester now – with lots of LibDem Councillors – I’m not sure what to make of this article. All I can tell you is that no front line local services are cut, libraries are open, free legal advice is in place & the local Liberals have worked hard to apply for grants for a new state of the art skatepark for the kids, the town hall building and picture house have been transferred to local community ownership and they seem to want to find solutions to keep everything open. The Town Hall has just received a grant of over a million to be refurbished as an enterprise hub for (mainly) young people. There’s a new swimming baths being built nearby I think I read the other day as well.
I don’t know what to make of it all??
The cuts around here are all the same as the rest of the country direct from Whitehall – not the local councillors doing. Looking at it as an outsider now – I’d have to say it does seem like the Labour Councillors are playing party politics with local services under their control. Local LibDem Councillors do seem to be working hard unlike those in Whitehall, at least where I am anyways.
Comment by CM on May 4, 2011 at 8:09 am -
This article is spot-on. National policies and cuts affect local people. EMA? Tuition fees? NHS? Job losses? And their local budgets are a nonsense. Resign!
Comment by sue on May 4, 2011 at 8:30 am -
CM – depends where you are. Chances are the Lib Dems in your council can afford to do that because their council makes most of their money from council tax (as with Trafford) rather than central government funding. This is not something that Pickles & co care to admit
Comment by tom on May 4, 2011 at 9:07 am -
@tom
You’re probably right xxx
Comment by CM on May 4, 2011 at 1:57 pm -
It’s amusing to watch the lefties getting all nasty about the LibDems especially as so many of them voted for the party, perhaps encouraged by the likes of the dismal Polly Toynbee and other clueless pundits.
Meanwhile in my part of town Labour are trying to scare me out of voting Conservative. Their leaflet says ‘If Altrincham is allowed to deteriorate further, the entire local population will be affected. House prices will fall’.
Come the revolution house prices will never fall!
Should I vote Labour to protect house prices in my town? I don’t want working class oiks moving here so perhaps I should.
Comment by simon on May 4, 2011 at 7:31 pm -
Correction!!!
It’s the LibDems telling me not to vote Tory, not Labour.
Sorry.
Comment by simon on May 4, 2011 at 7:34 pm -
Excellent article.
A couple of points however. You say:
“The central claim in the leaflets being distributed around the city is that Labour controlled Manchester City Council have made huge frontline cuts in order to foster anger against the coalition”
I wouldnt disagree with this contention, especially when viewed in light of the cynical nature by which Manchester City Council announced 2000 job losses on the morning of a nearby bye-election.
Secondly I agree that the alternative proposal that the Lib Dems presented at the full council budget meeting was preposterous, finding sacks of cash from fantastical schemes such as lending out works of art that the gallery doesnt even have. They were clearly clutching at straws.
Yet the council still has a lot to answer for answering closing the entire youth service and Manchester Advice – this latter which saves the council millions of pounds each year.
Lesson: both are as bad as each other. I agree that radical Labour activists need to reclaim the local party, fight against the government and refuse to implement these cuts.
Comment by MP on May 5, 2011 at 9:04 am
The comments are closed.
