Political View: Shifting sands of the Local Election position

Whist only being delivered to residents over the past week or so, with the Governments about Face, an article about cancelled local elections is already out of date!

Obviously, the government’s U turn on “CANCELLED” local elections took the current Labour led City Council administration by surprise! They can try to spin it how they like but even the PM in an interview said the elections were “cancelled” by local leaders. So, for the record it was indeed Councillor Qayyum the Labour leader of the council, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrat’s and most members of Peterborough First that drove the decision to cancel here in Peterborough.

Voters should keep this in mind at this May’s elections.

Currently they are also bragging about having a balanced budget! This however is not that simple. With a recent welcome win from the long overdue fairer funding settlement the coalition administration is still reliant on the government for emergency funding to close a £6 million in year budget gap.

The council has always had a balanced budget as it must do so by law. So, the current outcome has been achieved only by the City taking on more debt. Indeed, we expect them to rack up millions in losses on bad disposal deals on the TK Maxx building and the Hilton Hotel - the way these have been handled are just poor business decisions. It can be claimed with a cabinet short on business acumen and little experience of real business that they are way out of their depth.

Whilst a new a new swimming pool is of course very much needed for the city; this will rely on even more borrowing - circa 20 million. More debt on the council. Surely there are other options to consider including from the private sector using partnership options to get this project over the line.

We might agree that social media is a barometer of public opinion and often what is expressed is not well informed; but in the case of cancelled elections the public response was unequivocal and damning. Whatever the reasoning for cancellation and of course the empty defence of the elections merely being postponed – the public were not buying it.

The reality is the Government should have owned the decision from the outset. Kicking the metaphorical can down the road for a local decision – this position reinforced by the Prime Minister in several interviews – has only seen hapless local politicians having to defend decisions they were nudged to take by a government fearful of the likely outcome of a particularly challenging mid-term poll.

The Conservatives stand ready in May this year to defend our position and the success of our achievements over the last 25 years or so. It will be interesting to see and hear the from the latest addition to the Council - Andrew O’Neil, a Reform councillor. We eagerly await to hear what he may wish to say about the budget which comes to council this week for approval. We are also keen to hear what savings he thinks we can make following his remarks shortly after being announced as the winner in Fletton & Woodston.

He said Reform will be “cutting waste and stopping vanity projects” We are on the edge of our seats to hear more on this.