Dennis Jones: Labour leader has no personal 'lust for glory' but says his party is 'ready to serve'

Peterborough’s Labour leader says he doesn’t have a personal “lust for glory”, but will lead the council if it’s the will of the electorate.

Cllr Dennis Jones (Labour, Dogsthorpe) added that, “if everybody votes overwhelmingly for Labour next week then, of course, I’d take control, with the Labour group, of the council, but that’s highly unlikely to happen.

“It isn’t about naked ambition; it’s about being ready to serve.”

Voting for this year’s local elections will take place on 2nd May.

Currently, Labour is the second largest party on Peterborough City Council (PCC) behind the Conservatives, although the Peterborough First group is currently in control.

Cllr Jones has suggested that an agreement between Labour and Peterborough First, currently the third largest group, is “the most likely scenario” after the elections, but isn’t ruling every other scenario out.

“We have to look at every possible scenario to see which is best for the reputation of the Labour Party that I represent and also the interests of the city,” he said.

General election looms

The upcoming general election – date not yet confirmed – is of course in local politicians’ minds.

Asked if it’s more important than the local elections, Cllr Jones said, “nationally, yes, locally, no”.

“The Labour Party is campaigning hard in the local elections so we can’t and won’t say the local elections don’t matter, but the Labour Party itself has to look at the national picture and there is only a finite amount of resource to allocate and I happen to think that Andrew Pakes will make an excellent MP,” he said.

Mr Pakes will compete with the current Conservative MP Paul Bristow and other hopefuls at the next general election.

After that, unless PCC moves to all out elections every four years, there’ll be another local election next year, when the balance of power on the council could change again.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have a Labour council and a Labour MP?” Cllr Jones said.

But what would a Labour council look like?

'Why get carried away with grandiose ideas?'

Cllr Jones said he’s keen to be involved in the “transformation of council services” so that they “align with Labour values, while making sure we’re financially sustainable and viable”.

“Before we spend money, we’ve got to save money.”

Or, to put it more bluntly: “we haven’t got a pot to p*** in, so what’s the point of getting carried away with grandiose ideas?”

Raising funds includes raising council tax by the annual maximum – 4.99 per cent – as the Conservatives have done themselves in recent years.

“We’ve seen the folly of not doing that,” Cllr Jones said.

“Nobody likes their bills going up but everybody wants essential services paying for, so what we need to do is take in the amount we need and spend it wisely.”

Labour blames the Conservatives, which ran the council for more than two decades before Peterborough First took over in November, for the state of the council’s finances.

But Peterborough First is made up largely of ex-Conservatives, so – if a power sharing agreement is made – what will change?

“It’s not a marriage of convenience, it’s a marriage of – what the city needs and whether they and we can deliver it together,” Cllr Jones said. “That’s a real paradigm shift.”

“After the 2nd May, if things go as is widely anticipated, then what we have to do is regroup and redraw the lines to see exactly what it is we want to do,” he continued. “It could well be business as usual.”

The most recent independent report on the council’s finances says PCC has a budget gap of around £3.3m next year and £6.9m the year after and that it has “a high level of historic debt” which sits at £462m.

Conservative leader Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald (Conservatives, West) has defended his party’s record, however, saying that the “debt position is deliberate and is not as a result of any financial mismanagement or overspending”.

“The council usually borrows money mainly from government to fund capital projects such as the building of new schools and other public buildings and to fund other major capital projects around the city,” he wrote in his Peterborough Telegraph column.

“This enables us to do things in the here and now and pay back the borrowing over a longer fixed period.”

The council also holds around £630m in assets, he added.