I have, in my hands, a leaflet from the local Lib Dems proclaiming the headline,
“THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SACKED!”
Well, powerful stuff. But who’s ‘they’? ‘They’ are two local councillors, one in charge of refuse, and another the ex-chair of the Health and Social Care scrutiny panel.
No, please, don’t fall asleep. It gets better.
Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, you see, have (probably? allegedly?) broken EU law in awarding a £50 million bin collection contract to French rubbish giants Sita. It’s the council officials that broke these rules, and it’s believed to have cost Calderdale voters something in the region of £6 million.
The controversy comes from whether or not elected politicians – especially the Cabinet that rubber stamped the official’s decisions – should be held to account for this. Is anyone politically responsible? The Cabinet have collective responsibility, so theoretically if the buck stops somewhere, it should stop there, shouldn’t it? £6 million is not small beans. £6 million is an absolute disgrace.
The local Labour Group agreed. They’ve resigned from chairing their scrutiny panels and, on the 1st October, there was a big Council meeting, where they called for a vote of No Confidence against the Tory Cabinet.
Now, considering there’s a leaflet with, “THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SACKED” as the headline from the Lib Dems, you’d imagine this same Lib Dem group voted in favour of Labour’s coup attempt, calling those Tories to account for costing the local taxpayers millions.
Sadly you’d be wrong. They actually abstained, saying that both the Tories and Labour were to blame for the scandal, and therefore it would be wrong to just punish the Tories… and so they helped the Tories stay in power.
And the quote from the Lib Dem group leader explaining this masterpiece of political tactics?
We are not prepared to plunge Calderdale into civic chaos by calling for the entire cabinet to resign.
It’s important to stress here that the ‘civic chaos’ would have been the Lib Dem group taking over. As the second largest group after the Tories, they would have been asked to put together a Cabinet, such is the tradition in Calderdale. Having said that, they would then have had to work with Labour and the Independents to get anything done, in a Town Hall that renowned for a complete lack of productive working relationships between the groups.
Perhaps having everything blocked would be civic chaos, but at least they’d have tried, at least they’d have shown what they could do even in the worst possible situation – and importantly someone would have been seen to have taken the fall for robbing the local taxpayers of £6 million.
Perhaps, just perhaps, having to work with other parties to get things done is a good thing, isn’t it? Isn’t that the point of PR, after all?
The local paper that reported the sorry affair in the Town Hall is full of comments from angry locals that, no matter what the intentions or reasons for the decision, the end result is that Councillors have collectively voted themselves off the hook for responsibility for the mess (leaving it all on the unelected officials). They’re singling out the Lib Dems – here’s an example:
…it is not gratifying to say I told you so about the useless Liberals,what we have lost here, was a chance for a clear out, of all that is wrong with the corrupt system, that seems endemic at the moment in Calderdale,this was a chance for the Liberals, to resemble some sort of credible alternatives to these accusations,but they simply have no backbone of their own unfortunately.
Will Calderdale’s voters pick up on the subtle nuance of the Lib Dem’s position – “sack just those two, not the whole cabinet”? Will they appreciate that they’ve left it up to the voters to decide whether or not to boot out those individuals responsible rather than using Town Hall shenanigans to override the democratic choices people made before?
Or, like me, will normal people see the headline “THEY SHOULD BE SACKED” and gasp at what looks like hypocrisy? My immediate reaction to seeing, was “BUT YOU SAVED THEM!!” and I’m a paid up party member. What about everyone else? Perhaps it’s only because I read that particular story in the local paper that’s caused me to spot anything wrong here. Most people won’t have, and the odds of people having read (and remembered) the story in the paper and then reading the Focus leaflet are extremely low. I’m reliably informed that Lib Dem groups are advised to avoid taking over minority control, too.
Presumably this is why this sort of thing works, no matter what I happen to think about it, and so, in the end, this is why I don’t (normally) get involved on the ground.
Stu said...
15 Oct 09 at 6:18 pm
So, the Liberal Democrats abstained on a matter of great significance where they would have had the deciding vote. As an explanation, they gave a nuanced position which suggested it would be better to settle this matter in a different manner, and they’d rather throw away the opportunity to change something in the vague hope thy maybe at some undefined point in the future they might be able to change everything. In the process, they wasted an opportunity for democracy to work effectively and achieved pretty much nothing in the process.
Never heard that one before…
Have they been watching the parliamentary party and taking notes, or something?
Jennie said...
15 Oct 09 at 6:19 pm
As the (theoretical) press officer for the local party, my only response is: you might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.
Incidentally, do you have any idea how one is supposed to write press releases when only one person ever sends you any updates and you don’t have psychic powers?
Joe Otten said...
15 Oct 09 at 7:15 pm
Jennie, have you considered taking the lead on some local policy issue that interests you, circulating it to councillors saying “give me some content or I will have to send this out”.
Charlotte, yes I agree, yawn. But hang on the “news” is Lib Dems don’t support a Labour motion, when Labour is the 3rd party? Was there a Lib Dem motion to sack the 2 and did Labour support that? They should have been sacked but Labour saved them? Hardly creditable I agree, but this sounds like brass necked attempted shaming another party into supporting your position when they don’t. Bread and butter politics.
Bryan said...
15 Oct 09 at 7:17 pm
To Jennie,
You just bloody well make it up, like every other press officer! Do it a couple of times and upset a few people, and then they’ll make sure you’re briefed…
Malcolm Todd said...
17 Oct 09 at 6:10 am
“I’m reliably informed that Lib Dem groups are advised to avoid taking over minority control, too.”
Are you sure that’s reliable? If so, it’s the most appallingly short-sighted, lily-livered, anti-democratic nonsense. If only that meant it couldn’t possibly be true …
Leon Greenwell said...
18 Oct 09 at 11:45 am
It is becoming obvious that, once more, “England is like a family; with the wrong people in charge of it” (Orwell)
The ‘Region’(EU) needs going over, with a nit-comb, from Windsor Castle to Winchester Cathedral, by something not too dissimilar to Jim Hacker’s Department of Administrative Affairs
MatGB said...
18 Oct 09 at 7:20 pm
Malcolm, like Jennie, I can’t comment fully (although the much better worded explanation is due for the party website soon, I’ll link it here if people want), but it isn’t anti-democratic.
In order to form an administration, the LD Cllrs would need the support of the entire Labour group plus the Independent group, which includes a BNP expellee, two rentagob loudmouths and a strange selection of malcontents. The votes on the council simply don’t add up.
Forming an administration is simply not a viable option without the Tory group being involved as things are, and I don’t think any of the three party groups handled this at all well.
Malcolm Todd said...
18 Oct 09 at 10:31 pm
MatGB – I didn’t mean the situation in Calderdale, which I don’t know enough about to comment on. But Charlotte’s remark seemed to be about a general policy that LDs shouldn’t seek to take minority control. Is that right, or is somebody misrepresenting/misunderstanding something?
MatGB said...
19 Oct 09 at 2:45 am
Definitely not a national policy, the advice was very specific to this situation and the maths on the Council, and came from locally based activists with experience elsewhere.
Despite my intense loathing of the way Calderdale is currently wrong, I agree with that advice, to an extent; there is no way we could form an administration without the Conservative group. Which is why we need to win a fair few seats next May, then vote.
Voter said...
19 Oct 09 at 4:01 pm
I wonder if collective responsibility comes into play here. If the position is just to sack the two, why not the whole lot? 6 million is a lot of exposure to just be handled by two people.
If it is so vital to get rid of two and the only way is to press the destruct button, then surely you go that route.
Otherwise it makes the original criticism weak.
The whole thing smacks of one of my general problems with politics: guesswork.
Instead of getting people who want to get government working and are willing to learn how to do it, we get people who are looking for the easy way to bash other parties.
Nick Clegg made a speech blaming red-blue but not allowing for the failure of yellow in providing a decent alternative.
Duncan said...
19 Oct 09 at 10:53 pm
I realise that it’s hardly the point, but is that a verbatim quotation from the local paper? It if is then the grammar is truly terrifying. Hardly any of those commas ought to exist and, strangely, the comma which should appear before unfortunately is missing. With all the useless English Literature graduates in the world, could they not find people vaguely competent to write, or at least copy-edit, the local news?
MatGB said...
19 Oct 09 at 11:57 pm
It’s a quote from the comments below the linked article, or from one of the related stories, I’ve definitely read it previously.
The Courier itself is slightly better than that. Slightly.