When things start to go against you, and when you think things simply can’t get any worse, you often find you’re nowhere near the bottom. This is what’s happening to Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party at the moment. Barely has one crisis hit its peak than another one begins to rise to replace it, giving the appearance of a government that seems to exist by surfing the crest of a continuing wave of crises, constantly battling against damaging headlines splashed across the media.
The RAAC issue and the closure of 100 plus schools the day before the new term started seemed to take the government by surprise last week.
The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, looks as if she would be totally out of her depth boiling an egg, let alone handling what looks like an unmitigated presentational disaster for Sunak and for Michael Gove, who as education secretary in 2010 took the decision to scrap Labour Building Schools for the Future programme. If historians ever look back and rate British politicians in our long history for the damage they have inflicted on their own country, Gove will certainly find himself in the top ten.
As the fury over that row peaks in the public consciousness, another one surfaces. Birmingham, Britain’s second city, has issued what is apparently known as a section 114 notice. This arcane piece of local government law means the city is essentially bankrupt and can't balance its budget:
Birmingham City Council - Europe's largest local authority - effectively declares bankruptcy.The crisis in local govt is yet another bomb ticking beneath the British state: starved of money, tied to a broken tax system & facing ever more urgent demands.https://t.co/9f2B3FcgWt— Robert Saunders (@redhistorian) September 5, 2023
That Europe's largest local authority should lose control of its finances is quite a surprise but note that Croydon, Thurrock and Woking have already issued section 114 notices and according to The Guardian, another 26 are at risk of having to do the same over the next two years.
I must say you do get inured to it after a while and these sorts of national scandals cease to shock. The government is staggering around like a punch-drunk boxer taking more and more heavy blows. It's time for either the towel or the referee to intervene and put them out of their misery.
Tory-controlled Thurrock announced a £496 million black hole in its finances in November after some disastrous investments. Croydon has a £130 million deficit for 2023-24 with the Tories having taken over from Labour in May this year. They are (naturally) now arguing about whose fault it all is.
And Woking Borough Council in June this year did the same after its debts were revealed to be a completely unmanageable £2.6bn and have now halted all spending on non-essential services. Woking Council CEO Julie Fisher said: "There is no prospect that the council will balance its budget in 2023-24, 2024-25 or the successive years without external intervention on a very large scale." The Council was controlled by a minority Tory administration until May when the LibDems took over.
Some Tories suggest it’s down to financial mismanagement, and no doubt there has been some of that, particularly in Thurrock and Woking, but to think there has suddenly been an outbreak of financial shenanigans among councillors of both political colours and all over the country at the same time, is really not credible.
There have apparently been ten Section 114 notices issued in the four years between 2019 and now, compared to just one in the eighteen years before that. It says something about the way local government has been systematically starved of cash over the last decade or so. Chickens are coming home to roost.
Taxes are at a 70-year high yet Councils are going bust. The country needs a lot of extra money spending on just about everything you can think of, but the government finances are in a perilous state with interest on borrowing set to reach a stunning £110 billion this year. Where is the money to come from?
Those who are calling for growth are right, but there seems to be no plan to get it going and the government's own major policy plank Brexit, is the single biggest reason for the lack of growth. Sunak can't ditch it and can't admit it's the main issue and so we are caught in a conundrum, with the PM like Mr Micawber waiting for something to turn up while he presses on with the policy in as least damaging way as possible. That something is a massive electoral defeat.
The Brexit problem isn't going to go away when a Starmer-led Labour government comes to power, probably next year, and it will be interesting to see how he faces up to it. We won't have to wait much longer, but there are more horrors to come between now and then, brace yourselves.
