After a week of two budget debates, one in the House of Commons, one at Croydon Town Hall, ANDREW FISHER reckons it is time that our politicians stopped pretending…
British politics are in a dire state, nationally and locally, as demonstrated with this week’s budgets at Croydon Town Hall and in the House of Commons.
When I was a child in the 1980s, there was an entertaining television programme called Let’s Pretend. I thought of that when reading Inside Croydon’s write-up of the council’s dismal budget meeting on Wednesday night.
In a bankrupt borough that is cutting vital services for vulnerable people, Conservative Mayor Jason Perry pretends he has some autonomy and that the decisions are not being made for him. And the Labour opposition pretends to be an opposition before capitulating and nodding through a budget to which only a few minutes earlier they had recited all their principled objections.
In Westminster earlier that same day, a similar farce played out across the Commons Chamber. Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative Chancellor, regaled us with talk of growth (we’re in recession) and “the progress we’ve made”. What’s that then? Record NHS waiting lists? Increasing levels of child poverty? The numbers of homelessness and rough sleepers going up?
Still, Mr Hunt did cut higher rate capital gains tax for owners of multiple properties like… Mr Hunt.
The Chancellor continued with words even more detached from reality: “More investment. More jobs. Better public services.”
The Chancellor’s Budget speech is just the parliamentary Punch ‘n Judy Show. The real stuff is contained in the Treasury “Red Book”, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s “Economic and Fiscal Outlook”, and the analysis of independent think tanks like the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Scroll through the pages of those reports and you find “business investment is expected to contract by around 5% this year”; unemployment, currently at 3.8%, will peak “at 4.5% in the last quarter of 2024”; while public services will face yet another round of austerity with £20billion of cuts facing public services (outside of the NHS, education and defence) from 2025-2026.
On and on Hunt went, for well over an hour, reading out news that had already been passed to the press in the days before.
‘We don’t want to oppose for opposition’s sake’
Unkind souls say that politics is showbiz for ugly people. That’s unfair, and imprecise: politics is increasingly a pantomime consisting of people who aren’t very entertaining. Nor very honest.
Talking of which, up next was Keir Starmer with similarly flat, scripted jokes, which I’ll spare you. The Labour opposition leader described Hunt’s Budget as “the last desperate act of a party that has failed”. He accused Hunt and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of “stubbornly clinging to the failed ideas of the past, completely unable to generate the growth working people need”.
No opposition: Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow chancellor
Starmer claimed the British people would “recognise a Tory con when they see it”, just as they did in November’s autumn statement.
And then just like the Labour opposition in Croydon – all that was solid evaporated into thin air. In a press huddle afterwards, a spokesperson for Starmer told journalists there was nothing that the Labour Party opposed in the Tories’ Budget: “We don’t want to oppose for opposition’s sake.”
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, confirmed this in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, “We’re not going to oppose things just for the sake of it.”
Labour is like someone who claims to be a vegetarian, but only between meals. The awful Tories will be attacked, their policies derided, their failings traduced. But when it comes to it, Keir Starmer and his shadow ministers can’t actually say what they would do that is any different.
In Croydon, the council is in massive debt that has been run up over the past 15 years by parties of both stripes, and receives significantly less government funding than it did in 2010, yet has to cope with increasing demand for services.
The books cannot be balanced.
The situation is unsolvable without outside intervention – a point made by Mayor Jason Perry who told Croydon’s budget meeting, “Croydon cannot fix this on our own.”
Perry made the same point last year. He also said last year that he was in conversation with government. That resulted in a 15% Council Tax hike for us (Pay More, Get Less) but, like this year, no debt write-off.
No power, no money, no idea: Croydon Mayor Jason Perry. Pic: Paul Harper
One year on, Perry and his cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, have achieved nothing. No bailout, no restitution for decades of structural underfunding of Croydon, and no debt write-off. They are still having “conversations”, though they refused to say with who, or when, or how often.
Perry and Cummings have no money, no powers, and therefore no chance of solving Croydon’s problems. So they pretend, as they draw their generous council allowances.
Croydon will have unbalanced budgets for years to come, with capitalisation directions (upfront loans from government, while the council flogs off public assets) to make up the shortfall. The frontmen may be Perry and Cummings, but it’s now Tory minister Michael Gove and Tony McArdle, the chair of his appointed (and ironically named) “improvement and assurance panel” that call all the shots.
Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Croydon budget meetings meet that description. Really, it’s just a grand old game of dress-up and let’s pretend when a room full of people with no power and no money put on a not-very-entertaining panto.
The situation is different in Westminster, though not any better. The Government has powers to raise revenue, borrow, to do things differently. It’s just that neither frontbench, Tory or Labour, has either the will or courage to make the case.
In Croydon, they impotently grandstand to cover up for the fact they can’t do anything. In Westminster they grandstand to disguise the fact they won’t.
From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher, pictured right, was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes regular columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- It’s the same in Croydon and Birmingham: Pay More, Get Less
- It’s an F grade for Keegan over nation’s apprenticeship failings
- Gove’s extra cash barely touches the sides of Croydon’s debts
- Perry struggles with numbers to offer us: Pay More, Get Less
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
All of this explains why you shouldn’t vote for Labour or the Conservatives
Thankfully there is a far better alternative available Vote Green
But you ARE a politician Peter! Don’t pretend
That’s a fine example of a straw man argument
He didn’t say he wasn’t. There’s actually no point in voting for anyone while the Council remains run be Westminster beyond symbolism. Worse, none of the systemic problems that caused the Council to go bankrupt – lack of proper audits and chronic underfunding – remain addressed.
We’re putting NI down 2p and your Council Tax up 21%
Whoopde doo
Excellent summary. Worth mentioning that the only councillors who have consistently voted against the Council Tax rises in Croydon have been the Greens and Liberal.
Thankfully some politicians respect and represent their electorate.
What are Councils taxes for? Is it a slice of the cake for everyone who pays the tax or just as the Council or Government decide.
If Councils have no control over demand why should they have to keep cutting services we pay for. More for less seems to be a current rule. Perhaps it should be less for more?
Some good points here but does Red Andy think Socialism is the answer? He is after all part of the political establishment
Why are statutory services such as adult social care and children still the responsibility of local councillors? It must be time for this to be taken over and funded by central government and leave our councillors to sort out things like emptying the bins and cutting the grass in the parks, which is probably about all they are capable of.
Looking at the trees outside my windows that are nearly banging on them like something out of Wuthering Heights I don’t think they’re even capable of that. I asked my local Councillor but although she meant well she was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Getting the Council to tell you anything now takes several FOI requests and follow up letters to the Information Commissioner. And getting them to do anything now involves getting in the Council Ombudsman.
If you believe in local democracy, you will know that local people know their communities better than remote bods in Westminster. Or, at least they should.