Edited report to Group of Labour Councillors on Nottingham City Council, published 18th November, 2004. A. Government Grant.
The announcement of the settlement for local government for next year has slipped until week commencing 6th Dec. The LGA are suggesting that this is because the Treasury have found that were under-funding local government and that extra money needs to be allocated. We can hope.
Our best view is that to meet new cost pressures (e.g. equal pay, pension contributions), we need to make savings of £5.8 million to achieve a 4.5% Council tax increase. (Gov’t aspirations may be for a lower tax increase than that (2.5% would require an extra £1.5 million in savings).)
If we were to support some developments – say something like £1.1m – to support new developments in our priority areas, we’d need £6.9 million in savings, £3.9 million of which would be sought from departmental / portfolio savings and the remaining £3.0 million form council-wide initiatives.
[so] ... assess our strategic priorities, including the clear desire to do better in serving the public as customers.
Then we should assess how we might best consult the public on these matters and lobby Ministers and others.
...
B. Elections.
It is now time to get ready for next year’s General Election.
This morning’s poll showing a lead for Labour of 8% is encouraging and suggests the key seats in the East Midlands will be pretty much what they were in the last 2 elections (with the addition of Leicester South).
My notes on the recent US Presidential Elections follows -
Once again, exit polling has misled the public and raised false hopes for the Democrats, who had, in retrospect, already built too much on the idea that high turnout meant good news for the Democrats.
The turnout was up - a lead in for us to encourage our constituents to vote.
Some of the initial findings on turnout were not founded - higher youth turnout caused great excitement for the Democrats, but then it was found that all age groups' turnout had increased.
It's now clear that the Republicans were better at organising their vote to turnout, that they've been better at their use of advertising on the radio and cable TV, as well as in their use of the internet, and that they were building on years of poll leads.
Their message of fear - fear of terrorism and fear of people who don't share evangelist Christian morals - has outweighed what should be messages of hope - on what can be done for jobs, education and health.
The top issue was leadership – upon which Bush outscored Kerry.
Nationally, 22% of the public cited morality as their top issue. In Florida, the 3 main concerns were - terrorism, morals and then Iraq. In New York, which actually suffered the brunt of the 9/11 attacks, the main issue of concern was involvement in Iraq rather than terrorism!
For the British Labour Party, there is some hope in the light of these elections. We have the best leader. The British public’s agenda is decidedly domestic - jobs, health and education; although we still have some work to do on crime. We don't have the evangelical movement causing us such problems. We are strong on tackling terrorism (indeed, the British right's messages of fear are actually focussed on asylum and immigration). We're already organising nationally to be better at door-knocking and GOTV (although we have to do more on capacity building). And we've generally had the lead in the polls (only 2 small periods of exception).
It seems to be me that the Democrats have still not done the thinking that New Labour went through on how to put a winning package together.
C. An example of Tories fighting back.
Sent: 18 November 2004
Daily Headlines provided by The Local Government Association.
LOCAL ISSUES A VOTE-WINNER
As part of a larger Guardian feature on the future of the Conservative party, which leads with a front page story entitled "Tories back to days of Duncan Smith - poll", Sarah Hall profiles the work of Conservative activists in Dudley who every Tuesday night descend on one of the 24 wards in the metropolitan borough council distributing 5,000 questionnaires and leaflets. She reports that in five years, Dudley's Conservatives have sprung back from the 1998 local election when they retained just seven councillors to June's triumph of 40 councillors (up from 31) compared with Labour's 25. - Guardian p13
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