Potholes? That’s your priority George?

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

There’s no doubt that in the final years of the last government Labour lost touch with the concerns of the electorate. You don’t slump to 29% of the vote on a low turnout if you’re still capturing the imagination of the nation.

Yet it took a decade for Labour to reach that point. It’s beginning to look like the Tories have lost any sense of what the voters are after. It’s easy to say that they never “sealed the deal” with the public, but regardless of the economic circumstances, this should be their political honeymoon. They should still have their fingers on the pulse.

It was with astonishment then that I read an article in this morning’s Times (£) that completely baffled me. I even went as far as checking to see that I hadn’t slept through to April 1st by mistake.

“Chancellor hopes £100m pothole fund will restore nation’s optimism” said the headline.*

I honestly thought it must be a joke. But sadly it wasn’t. The article reads like a briefing. It seems that George Osborne actually considers a paltry sum for road repair to be the answer to the nation’s doom and gloom. I must admit, after weeks of economic lunacy from the government, today was the day that I snapped. I couldn’t believe that potholes are a priority right now. I still can’t.

Not schools (“reformed”), hospitals (“reformed”), police (cut) or welfare (“reformed”), it seems that potholes are the big issue for tomorrow’s budget. And the evidence base for this? Danny Alexander saw the terrible impact of potholes in his constituency recently.

Worse still, George and Danny’s pothole fund is being pushed as “investment in infrastructure”.

Where to begin. Perhaps with the fact that £200 million is a paltry sum for any major “infrastructure” investment. Perhaps with research from Asphalt Industry Alliance that says that the shortfall in the road structiral budget is £666m. It does seem that this fund would double the spending on pothole repair, but that’s a drop in the ocean. The carriageway maintenance backlog is 11.5 years. This isn’t a quick fix, or even a fix at all. It’s a sop to motorists.

More importantly than that, it shows what confused priorities the government has. It’s hard to believe that even the most avid NIMBY considers the pothole outside their house to be of higher impotance than so much of what is being cut. And after all, local authorities would be able to afford pothole repair themselves if their funding hadn’t been cut…

Tomorrow we’ll know the full extent of what Osborne plans, and whether this ludicrous story about potholes being the source of renewed optimism is a cover for something greater (or lesser) than expected. If this is the best the government can do by way of pre-budget briefing though, I won;t be expecting any giveaways. It looks like full speed ahead for Osborne. Be afraid.

* The headline has since been updated to say £200 million fund. It’s not clear why.