Opinion: ‘We have monuments to folly like Fletton Quays’

By the time this article is published, America will have been through the pomp and ceremony that accompanies a Presidential Inauguration.

I hope that it will have happened without any difficulties or ruckus. At the time of writing, the armed demonstrations which were due to occur in America’s state capitols on January 17 were apparently a damp squib. This is a hopeful sign.

The inauguration of Joe Biden represents a significant international political milestone. The tumult of the Trump years is now behind us. Biden has made a point of hiring experienced, competent people to help him. He has put forward thoughtful, well-conceived plans for ensuring the coronavirus vaccine is distributed and creating the conditions for a broad-based economic recovery. If his predecessor was a violent emetic for the body politic, Biden represents a far more soothing balm.

Biden’s inauguration reminds us all of a political truth: at some point, history turns the page. The passions and rage of yesteryear, no matter how endless they seemed at the time, fade into dusk. Perhaps one of the unspoken emotions which drove the rage of the pro-Trump mob on January 6 was the sense that their time was up. They were trying to crash through their feeling of obsolescence; they created a lot of damage, they shocked the conscience of the world, but in the end, they engendered disgust, which only seals their doom.

By the time this is published, Trump will be back in Florida, a diminished, politically bankrupt figure with an uncertain future.

If certain political figures in America or Europe decide to make a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, it will look like they are kissing the ring of a mad king who lost his throne long ago.

Things pass.

diminish and disappear on both a grand and small scale. We have seen our city administration fading into the background for some time. They and their allies in Parliament launch broadsides against Labour whenever they get the chance, but the very vehemence of these utterances show their desperation against time. We have seen the quality or lack thereof of Conservative administration on both a national and local level. We have a

Brexit deal which has tied businesses in red tape. The coronavirus vaccine rollout in the East of England is behind that in the rest of the country.

The city administration is more focused on managing the latest disaster than plan for the future. We have monuments to folly like Fletton Quays. The coronavirus period has shown the strength of the Peterborough community; the administration’s response has indicated they don’t know how to leverage it.

Help is on the way.

Between now and the next election, most likely in May, my Labour Group colleagues, and I will be campaigning on the basis that it is time to turn the page and seize a better future.

We have the people, we have the spirit, we have the community.

We will find a means by which we can work together.

We will make Peterborough a far better place to live.