27th June, 2007: Speech: adoption of the Labour Party manifesto by Nottingham City Council. This was a speech I was due to give as part of moving the adoption of the Labour Party manifesto by Nottingham City Council, because the leader of the Council was on council business elsewhere.
The speech wasn’t given however when the debate was rescheduled.
The Labour Party manifesto is an ambitious manifesto.
An expression of traditional values in a modern setting.
Traditional values in a Nottingham setting.
A manifesto with a thumping mandate.
42 Labour Councillors, up 6 from 4 years ago. At the expense of 5 Liberal Democrats and 1 Tory.
The best performance by any ruling Labour Group this year.
And – Alex - not one Labour chicken run in sight.
Many Labour councillors lost their seats this year. They were judged on many things, including national policies. So were we.
But in Nottingham we had enough to say about what we’d done. Including the tram and the new market square. The better exams results and more suitable care for older people & those most in need. The reduction in crime and the cleaner streets.
And we had enough to say about what we want to do more of - extending the tram, improving services further, getting crime down further and doing more on climate change.
In Nottingham, our achievements and ambition and confidence gave us the strength and determination to do the work necessary to share the message across the city.
With larger volumes of leaflets than ever before. Direct mailshots. Web-sites. Even blogs.
A renewed co-operation with our brothers & sisters in the trade union movement. And with huge numbers of visits to people at their home.
And whatever the national circumstances, confident to ask the voters to decide how to vote on 2 key questions -
- who do you want to represent you on the Council?
- Which political party do you want to see running the council?
Ambition. Achievements. Hard work. Election nous.
Yes, even the Tories recognised our election nous.
The former Tory candidate for Gedling, Anna Soubry, lives in my ward. Remember her? She was ashamed of Nottingham.
Despite that, she was the Tory party's foil for the media questions at the count. Questions such as - why were the results so bad for the Tories?
So it was that on TV, she proclaimed the reason for Labour's victory was our well-oiled campaign team.
Labour was better organised.
John Heppell MP said it plain - “Labour runs the City Council and the Gov't in the same effective manner that it runs its campaigning”.
So we are very proud of our election campaign and pleased with the results.
We have some regrets, the most significant of which was the defeat of Gill Haymes. The Labour Group loves Gill dearly and we valued her contribution for the people she represented and in the field of health.
We were also sorry not to see the election of Sarah Piper who we think will be an excellent Labour Party representative one day, and of Toby Neal, to whom many of us owe a great deal.
Thanks too to the Leader, Jon Collins.
Jon put so much of his heart and soul, and body into this campaign and I know he’s disappointed not to be here today to launch the debate. We hope he will arrive soon to make a contribution.
But in the meantime, we say thanks to Jon for his efforts in the campaign.
I too was recognised by the Labour Party for my efforts. I was awarded “author of most inspirational e-mails in the campaign”. A unique award. I don’t think anyone else has ever won such an award. It was, I think, shorthand for “geek of the campaign”. La de da.
Of course, it was enough for me and my colleagues in Mapperley ward to have been returned at all.
Cllr. Cowan made it clear in the March meeting that it was a given that Mapperley ward was lost to the Conservatives. Not marginal. Not in contention. But lost already.
A poor judgement by Cllr. Cowan.
A poor judgement amongst many.
Not supporting the tram and the expansion of the tram.
Not supporting Labour, at the outset, in the creation of neighbourhood wardens. Remember that shout across the Council Chamber – “It’s only the number of Police officers that matter”.
And claiming that maggots climb up the outside of wheelie bins and lift the lids to get access to the food waste inside.
Not Cllr Cowan’s finest calls. And so in contrast to the eighties when he used his intellect & determination to raise taxes to expand the capacity of public services and to boost the quality of new public buildings. Emphatically tax and spend.
We didn’t see a Tory party manifesto but we did see an election address with promises that would have required huge increases in spending.
I suspect he knew he wasn’t going to get in to have to deliver their pledges. Perhaps the same kind of thinking that led Mapperley Tories to say they would eradicate street prostitution in Mapperley.
We look forward to the budget proposals that would achieve such changes in due course.
Actually, we’d quite like to see the Tory party manifesto.
I don’t see why we shouldn’t. The Tory party go on about openness. “No secrecy!”
And yet as far as I can ascertain, the only people who got to see the Tory Party manifesto was the Nottingham Evening Post. Not quite sure what the special relationship there is! Maybe the Evening Post can make it available instead?
But was it so hard to find a web-site to put it on?
Poor judgement. Secret manifestos. And miserable. Even the BBC ran a clip saying they were miserable.
Just what do the Liberal Democrats see in them? Another strange kind of special relationship.
And, as best as I can ascertain no published manifesto from the Lib Dems either, simply one shared with the Nottingham Evening Post.
I’m not sure if that’s an improvement on 4 years ago. Last time, they had one but published it 6 weeks after the election. We remember that well.
[Post meeting note – the Lib Dems made their manifesto available at the June full Council meeting. They claimed it had been on the internet, and had not realised that they’d only pout their pledges on the internet. A bit hopeless really.]
Still, to their credit, the Lib Dems don’t appear to have split into two yet.
But when we hear criticism from the opposition today, we’ll listen out for a bit of humility, knowing that we’ve published a full and ambitious manifesto for the people of Nottingham and neither opposition party has.
But our development won’t stop at the manifesto.
We’re a listening party. We’re a learning party.
My latest bit of learning was to be drawn from attending the public finance accountants’ conference (CIPFA).
The opening speaker at the CIPFA conference was John Sergeant, formerly of the BBC.
He gave a presentation of great bonhomie.
He was asked about the attitude of political journalists and, in particular, of Jeremy Paxman. He replied something to the effect that “the continuous aggressive attitude was just not always appropriate”.
“The continuous aggressive attitude was just not always appropriate, especially at election time cos the election process is ‘pretty special really’”.
He’s right. And Councillors will know what a “pretty special process” we’ve just been through.
Standing. Not knowing if you will win. Not knowing what will come up on the next doorstep. Not knowing if you’re to receive acclamation or condemnation or indifference.
The process gives us a mandate. But I think what is often overlooked is that many of us go through the most intense community and resident consultation exercise the Council is ever likely to see.
And yet of course, our findings have every chance of not being considered as appropriate evidence in corporate assessments.
A serious flaw in the Audit Commission’s inspection methodology, which is part of the reason why there is a no clear correlation between their star ratings and election results.
In essence, in Mapperley ward, we accounted for the political views of some 3,000 people in this election. From that I’ve collated and analysed perhaps 200 or so concerns and cases.
Analysis of this cannot be entirely scientific, but broad conclusions are that in general terms, a third of concerns were street-scene related, half of that crime related, then transport, then housing.
My perception is that crime as a concern is down from 4 years ago.
Many people were pleased with the progress on tackling street prostitution. That progress reflects well on Councillor Emma Dewinton in particular.
You have to treat the measurements of doorstep responses with a bit of care.
For instance, we know from a December survey that affordable housing is the second highest concern of the Nottingham public, but hardly featured at all on the doorstep. It’s clear that this concern has now reached the very top – Gordon Brown choosing to restate the new commitment to act upon this, only yesterday in his Leader’s acceptance speech.
Mapperley ward also differs from the municipality generally in its relatively low amount of Council housing, with perhaps a greater than normal concern about volumes of traffic passing through.
But I find it useful to analyse these returns as a part of the learning process.
Breaking it down a bit more, the largest concerns are -
- unclean street scene;
- poor quality social housing or social housing services; then
- traffic problems; then
- anti-social behaviour; and
- planning applications causing concern.
Surprising returns include -
- 3 households expressing concern or disappointment at lack of involvement on community meetings.
Beyond the council, issues and concerns included -
- more NHS complaints from staff and relatives of patients;
- those faced by newly arrived Poles;
- Accusations of the betrayal of Northern Ireland by Ian Paisley.
For the Council, the most distressing concerns have to be those caused by a failure in operations.
It’s why we want to do more with service planning, and with a new focus on customer care - including the new call centre, and proper analysis of complaints.
For my part, I have published on my web-site a summary of the main specific concerns raised in my ward, that I will be working to address with Emma & Mo & colleagues.
But what was reassuring was that on all of those issues, Labour’s manifesto had something to say; and something ambitious to say.
And something ambitious to say, in public.
[Due to be given on 2007-06-25; Published 2007-06-27].
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