21 Reasons to #VoteLabour on 4th May & 8th June

Join our fight for a fairer country

#ImVotingLabour on 4th May and 8th June and here's why:

1. For a properly funded and free at the point of use NHS

2. For appropriately funded safe and secure social care

3. For good education for every child irrespective of background or parental income

4. For good quality jobs across the country

5. For renationalised railway services that passengers can afford to use

6. For funding for rural bus services

7. For funding for repairs to roads and pavements

8. For funding for libraries, archives, and the arts to ensure good quality of life experiences for everyone

9. For environmental protection including air quality standards

10. For equality of everyone under the law

11. For a £10 hour National Living Wage

12. For affordable homes to buy or rent

13. For decent property standards and protection against landlord abuse of tenants

14. For the end of homelessness and people sleeping on our streets

15. For the proper financial support of those who are unable to earn an income

16. For the protection of children from harm and abuse

17. For the safety of those in domestic violence situations

18. For animal welfare standards & a continued ban on hunting

19. For the protection of women and girls threatened with FGM

20. For the retention of human rights and employment protections

21. For a sensible negotiated settlement with the EU re BREXIT that protects workers' rights and maintains the right of EU citizens already living and working in the UK

If you agree these are important to you too, then the obvious, indeed the only sensible, option is to #VoteLabour on 4th May and 8th June. 

Don't forget the local council elections on 4th May!

As a resident of the county of Cumbria this is written from a local perspective, but the same issues apply wherever you live in the UK! 

Although our attention is now focused on the General Election in June, the local council elections are very important too, as our county council set the budgets for many of the services provided in Cumbria.

Just so that you know, these are the services the county council funds, provides or administers:

• State Schools and Children's Services, including Foster placement and Education Welfare
• Adult Social Care Services
• Fire and Rescue Service (advice for emergencies here)
• Trading Standards
• Roads, footpaths and street lights (report a fault here)
• Libraries and Archives
• Blue Badge Scheme
• Public Health
• Public Safety
• Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths
• Civil Marriage Services
• Coroner Service
• Transportation
• Waste Management

I doubt there is a person in the county who is not a user of one or more of these services, yet we tend to overlook local council elections, especially when a General Election is looming as now. 

So, why should you vote on 4th May?

Currently here in Cumbria there are 84 county councillors - one each for the 84 electoral divisions the county is divided into geographically. 

The current make-up of the county council is as follows: 

Labour:  36

Liberal Democrats: 15

Conservatives: 25

Independents: 8

In the last county council election Labour won the most seats but did not have an overall majority (43 required) on the county council, so needed to form an alliance with another group, which after the 2013 county council elections was the LibDem group (presumably considered the lesser of two evils!)  

Currently county council funding is provided by a combination of central government grants, Council Tax (a locally set tax based on house value), Business Rates, and fees and charges from certain services such as "decriminalised parking enforcement."

The government's website gives the information that,

"At the start of the 2010 Parliament, almost 80% of council expenditure was financed by central government grant; by next year Revenue Support Grant will account for only 16% of spending power; by 2019 to 2020 only 5%."

A current example on the East Sussex council website gives the following proportions for funding: 

Overall, local government spending is paid for by three main sources:

• Central Government − 61%
• Business rates − 17%
• Council tax − 22%

Some of the money is what is classed as hypothecated (i.e. ring-fenced) meaning that it can only be spent in a very specific manner - in essence, it merely passes through a council's accounts on its way from the funding source to its intended destination, e.g. Dedicated Schools Grant, Health and Wellbeing grants, fines and charges related to vehicle parking and local road restrictions; whilst the other main central government grant - the Revenue Support Grant - is not hypothecated, and can be spent as the council wishes.

Additionally revenue is raised by means of the Council Tax levied on every household in the county. The level of Council Tax is determined by county councillors after consideration of funding needs but they cannot just set it to any level they choose. The county's portion forms part of the annual Council Tax bill sent out by the district councils before the start of each financial year. Currently Council Tax contributes only a small proportion (25%, on average) of local government revenue.

As to increases in Council Tax, historically, central government retained the right to cap an increase in Council Tax, if it deemed the council to be increasing it too much. During the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition govt of 2010-15 a change was made so that councils can raise the level of council tax as they wish, but must gain permission from their electorate in a local referendum on the matter, if they wish to raise it above a certain threshold set by central government, currently this is set at 2%. However, some councils such as Swindon in Wiltshire have found a legal loophole and have announced increases that will mean some residents paying 7.2% more in Council Tax without holding a local referendum!

Under plans put forward by the current government's Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government the amount of money raised locally rather than provided by national government grants will rise in the period up until 2020, when it is intended that the Revenue Support Grant will disappear and all money spent by a local authority will need to be raised by the council via Council Tax, local business rates, and the payment for other services, e.g. parking etc.

In counties such as Cumbria this presents huge problems, as despite having a massive geographical area (6,768 km2 or 2,613 sq miles for pre-metric thinkers) the county's population is comparatively small (498,000 as at 2015.)   Consequently the amount of revenue that can be raised in the county is considerably smaller than a smaller, more densely populated, area. In a rural county where roads are vital, bridges are many, and funds are low, we inevitably see potholes, poor footpaths and pavements. We have seen closures of a whole array of public services, from libraries to police stations, care homes to hospital units. We have poor public transport links at high costs to passengers. We have housing that is unaffordable to first time buyers, and rental accommodation that is either inadequate or that locals cannot afford to rent.  Wages are relatively low for many in employment whilst, due to the low numbers of big employers in the area, there are many people who have become sole traders or set up small businesses  of their own, to try and keep earning an income.  We simply do not have a wealthy electorate to tax to pay for council services, so the central government grants which are funded through taxation are vital for the county.

Labour councillors will continue to their utmost to protect key services despite budgetary restraints imposed on it by central government, but you can help too by voting for your Labour candidate in your ward. By having a majority on the county council it means Labour can continue to honour its manifesto commitments.  Our best hope for the county and the country as a whole is for a Labour government to be elected in the #GE2017 on 8th June, but in the meanwhile please do not neglect the county council elections.

#VoteLabour on 4th May

Polling Day is Thursday 4 May 2017

Polling stations open at 7am and close at 10pm. Use your vote - #VoteLabour for a society that works for everyone not just the privileged and richest few. 

New year, new targets...

It's almost two weeks into 2017 and I feel I have achieved very little so far, other than attending a very interesting Momentum-organised meeting in Kendal at which Julie Ward, MEP for the North West, was guest speaker.

I decided that I would review what I want to achieve politically, and then I can work out how to achieve those aims... so here goes.

My aims and objectives are

• ... to achieve a Labour government for the country,
• ... to help elect Labour MPs in by-elections,
• ... to help elect councillors to county and district councils,
• ... to raise the profile in a positive way of the Labour Party,
• ... to promote the social and economic policies for the country put forward by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell,

Next step is to work out how best to achieve these...  watch this space! 

An Open Letter to the Parliamentary Labour Party

Dear Comrades, yes I address you as such as that is what we are, comrades in the Labour Party, despite the uncomradely behaviour of some of you over the past twelve months. I realise that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader in September 2015 was a huge shock to some of you - but then so many of you have only ever known New Labour, not the real Labour Party of previous generations. Those few older MPs who were seduced by NeoLiberalism, and who moved away from the Party's founding principles as outlined in the original Clause IV, seem to have become entrenched in a mainstream media driven scenario that Labour is a party of middle-class, comfortably off, aspirational business folk in suits served by career politicians whose interest do not coincide much with those of the grassroots members and the electorate.

Younger MPs can almost, in a way, be forgiven for believing this as they have hardly known the Labour Party to be any different. How could they? After the emergence of Neil Kinnock as leader in 1983 the party began its move to the centre right, losing the 1987 General Election in the process and, after abandoning Labour policy on trades union closed shops in 1989 and the following the witchhunt and subsequent expulsion of the left-wing Militant Tendency from the Labour Party in 1991, it lost yet another General Election in 1992.  This led to a change of leadership with the late lamented John Smith whose premature death, less than two years later, precipitated the rise in fortune of Tony Blair, whose landslide General Election victory of 1997 lead to the party moving even further to the right.

Throughout the Blair and subsequent Gordon Brown years the party lost touch with a large number of its traditional supporters. Notice that I say supporters not members, as many of us who were members left the party as a result of that shift to the right. We no longer felt comfortable in a party where special advisors held sway, and where the majority of party funding was coming from rich businessmen and champagne socialists, where the voices of the trades unions who had been our traditional supporters were dismissed, and where a decision to go to war was made on spurious and unsubstantiated evidence. Where the voices of members were over-ruled by those of the Leader's Office, and where decisions such as selecting prospective parliamentary candidates were taken by the NEC instead of at local level by the membership in their constituency parties. In just 13 years the Labour Party membership dropped from over 400,000 in 1997 to just 150,000 by 2010, alongside that the party lost around 5 million voters. Hardly a success story was it? Did you ask yourself why?

Did you notice? Did you, as MPs ask yourself why that might have happened? Did it occur to you to go and talk to members about why we felt disengaged from the party? Did it occur to you to go out and and talk to electors about why they had walked away en masse from voting Labour? Did you assume it was just a blip and all would soon be back to normal? Well, that didn't happen did it?

Yet twelve months ago you had the chance to make a difference, with a new party leader, and a resurgence of support for socialist policies - so-called radical stuff, like decent housing for everyone, a properly funded NHS free at the point of use, nationalisation of the railways, improved public services, sorting out the mess that is education, making sure that our elderly and disabled do not have a daily struggle to exist, that people are not reliant on food banks to survive - food banks, in 2016! If that is not a national disgrace I don't know what is! What did many of you do? 172 of you voted within the PLP to undermine the democratically elected leader and force a leadership challenge, which is effectively spitting in the face of the 59.5% of the membership who voted for Jeremy Corbyn - those are the people who also helped to get each of you elected as MPs, so perhaps you might like to show them a little respect? You also leaked stories to the media, which being owned by hugely rich individuals with vested interests in the status quo, is hostile to the idea of a socialist government, and you worked against him and his team in more ways that we the membership will ever be able to know - but let me tell you this, we may not know the detail but we know the fact that it happened and we have long memories.

Now comrades, you have a second chance. The Labour Party membership has overwhelmingly re-elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, this time with a bigger majority than a year ago - some 61.8% of the vote for him - and he had over 50% of the votes in each category of membership, so you cannot deny that he has a mandate from the membership. The members will also expect each of you to accept and respect that mandate and not to work against the leader we have chosen. In case you have forgotten, this is called democracy and we in the Labour Party espouse it - as it says on the back of our membership cards - The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. You are also expected not to leak information to a hostile media, nor to work to overthrow the elected leader. If you can't manage to do that then you might also find that we, the members, can't find it within our hearts to forgive your betrayals and we may also not be too happy, when it comes to election time, to give up our precious free time to help you get re-elected to carry on undermining him.

Please comrades, do not take this as a threat, it is simply a statement of fact. There is a huge amount of anger amongst party members at what we perceive as treachery, disloyalty or just disingenuity and you have a lot of work to do to put things right and regain our trust. And it is all about trust and loyalty. It's about respect for members and for the democratic mandate which has been given to the leader. It's about decency and honesty. It's also about understanding that the Labour Party is a democratic socialist party and if you are not a democratic socialist then you do not belong in it!

I sincerely hope that you all will take some time to search your consciences and consider your positions. Members do not want to see MP deselections or a split in the party, we want to see a united party that is taking on the Tory government and defending those whom the party was founded to represent. We are not Tory-lite, we are not a party of austerity, we are not a party that should be funded by, and in the pockets of, businesses. We are Labour, together we are strong. Be with us now, or go.