It‘s hard to think when politics was more divided. We live in a world where ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ seems the norm whether Iran, China and North Korea supporting Russia or the Israeli and Palestinian flags that feature as protestors hold stand offs in the UK about immigration. Too often knowing someone’s views on one issue is used to assume their view on something entirely different.
The recent murder of Charlie Kirk was yet another demonstration of the dangers of people unwilling to debate. The reaction to the news with some mocking the death, others saying they disagreed with him but thinking they were generous in saying he ‘didn’t deserve to die’, just shows the problem. Whether I agreed or disagreed with Charlie Kirk, he put his points across politely and in a reasoned way, which is what his opponents feared most.
At a debate, a Labour councillor once said I was a decent guy (let’s watch the letters page now say otherwise) but he ‘disagreed with me on virtually everything’. There are lots of things we disagree on but that is politics. However, I would state that when it comes to running City of York Council, to paraphrase the shockingly murdered Jo Cox, I believe we have much ‘more in common’. Despite this, virtually everything is forced through by Labour on wafer thin majority while adding wrecking amendments to opposition motions and using formal meetings to ask colleagues simple questions to run down the clock to avoid scrutiny.
York is the most amazing city, where I’ve lived all my life, but does it have the most amazing council? It starts from a hard place as with 200,000 people in the authority, which is accepted as being too small with the government looking to reorganise all local authorities to at least 400,000 as an effective minimum. In recent years when North Yorkshire Council was being reorganised, local Conservatives favoured an expanded York area, which would have meant a more workable geography, reduced duplication and shared management while keeping issues like planning would still have been local. The need remains and is costing us with City of York Council’s directors on similar salaries to North Yorkshire Council’s, but with wages being funded by a third of the number of taxpayers.
The biggest problem York faces is the absurdly tribal nature of politics, made more ridiculous in my view because the Labour and Lib Dem groups which currently dominate seem inseparable in their focus on high spending, meddling inefficiently in things and keen to use the council chamber to virtue signal on national issues. Labour has a majority of one but like the previous Lib Dem administration (helped to a majority only with the Greens) they behave like they are all powerful.
As a result, York continually loses out as there is never long-term planning. Look at the farce of the back-and-forth to adopt a Local Plan (coming in 50 years late), the building of a new Community Stadium that took vastly longer than any other UK stadium (the new Wembley included), and the renovation of the Guildhall. All of these jerked back and forth depending on who was in power and were years late and therefore very over budget. Do you think there should be a multi storey car park at St George’s Field? Yes, said the Lib Dems, no said Labour. The cost of the multi storey car park to York was £1 million which may not sound bad for a car park but that it simply the cost for it to be aborted – about £15 for every single York household to build absolutely nothing!
Like every council, York has a revenue budget for day-to-day spending and a capital budget for investment, with the latter all borrowed money that has to be paid back. The capital budget is increasing every year to new record levels of £400 million. Much of this borrowing, for tangible products like York Central, we support but much has not had sufficient consideration, and it is by definition long-term but will not when initially allocated meaningfully involve anyone but the then majority group. This means we will see more and more write-offs as policies are changed. Far, far better would be if councillors disagreed where they had to but worked together where possible. We are blessed with an amazing history in York, but too many are complacent about the future.
If councillors started working together on the vast majority of things we could agree on, we might soon find the people of York find councillors a far more agreeable offering.
