A year’s a long time in politics

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

There’s been enough written about what last week’s results mean for Labour. Instead I want to congratulate the 800 plus councillors who gained seats from the opposition, and all new and returning councillors wherever you’re flying the flag for Labour.

I want to particularly congratulate those of you who retook control of your local council from the opposition. We did the same in Camden last year, and I thought I’d share a bit of what our first year’s been like.

I was a new, first time, councillor this time last year. Camden Labour had been campaigning against ConDem cuts since they took control of the council in 2006. But we overturned their majority and are back running the borough.

Turnover of councillors meant I ended up going straight in to cabinet. I had strong credentials having worked in central and local government as a civil servant, and special adviser, I’d also been Frank Dobson’s agent and had run our successful local campaign.

But going straight in to cabinet as a new councillor was still a challenge – there’s a big difference between providing the counsel to senior politicians and stepping up to take and defend the decisions yourself. Particularly decisions of the magnitude being faced by councils, mostly Labour, targeted for cuts by this Tory-led government. But it’s a challenge I’ve thoroughly enjoyed despite the hard times and tough choices.

The key difference between the position of the Camden’s new administration last year and those of you taking up the reins this year is that we took charge not fully knowing the scale of the cuts we’d face. Camden’s officers had reckoned on around £60m of cuts over three years.

The government’s decisions to specifically target both local government and Labour councils particularly for truly devastating cuts mean we now face closer to £100m in three years. It’s close to 25% of our budget and some valued, well used and effective front line services will be lost as a result. The scale and speed of the cuts – front loaded to boot – was difficult to get to grips with. For a while I found myself regularly wondering how the secretary of state responsible for local government could seemingly hate councils so much. And seemingly reserve special dislike for those councils with higher levels of deprivation.

The nasty party might not be at the fore of the Conservative party at the moment. But it’s not very far beneath the surface.

Taking over this year, you know the challenge. But your budget for your first year of cuts will have been set by the now opposition, not you. You’ll have to pretty much live with it and work out how you can improve it between now and next year’s budget setting.

Starting last year we didn’t ring fence any service area or demographic to be saved from the cuts at the outset. It’s the one thing we learned from the coalition government. They tied themselves in knots by committing to lower cuts in some departments, it just meant deeper cuts elsewhere.

We decided to look at each budget on its merits at the outset. I’d recommend it. Because your first year cuts are done, you’ve got time to see the big picture, take it.

In the end some areas did get less of a cut – like our early intervention grant, it was cut by a whopping 22% but the services it funds have only been cut by 10% for example.

We made a massive effort to talk to as many people as possible, from November until early March, if there was a public meeting, there was a cabinet member there, trying to explain the financial pressure we faced and choice we’d made.

In some ways that’s easier for you now. When we started talking to people, the public were still coming to terms with the scale of the cuts. Now people get it, and are angry, but the anger is normally reserved for government not us as local councillors.

The financial challenge is only one half of the picture though. The Tory government’s vision of public services, set out by David Cameron in the Telegraph in February, leaves a trail of devastation and leaves people to fend for themselves. They’ve published, bill on white paper, on policy paper. They display a revolutionary zeal for dismantling our public services and privatising everything.

As you can tell it’s easy to get caught up in the money – the challenge is colossal – and not give yourselves time to think about how to face these policy challenges and respond to them.

If councillors can rise to this challenge we really can provide the platform for victory in 2015. We see the impact on the ground and if we can come up with the answers and alternatives to this Tory destruction then we can play a vital role in providing the platform for victory in 2015.

This is why I’m so grateful there’s now more than 800 extra people, working to fight Tory policy and develop an alternative.

Welcome comrades. My first year has been tough. It’s literally made me cry. But fighting on the frontline against this Tory assault makes me proud. It’s great to have you on board.