Political Viewpoint

BY James Allen appointed Lib Dem Candidate for Southend East and Rochford Constituency.

 THE election highlighted a number of key problems facing the nation – Recruitment and retention in the NHS. Recruitment and retention in schools. The state of the infrastructure in both. Cost of Living crisis. Local Government budgets v’s spending requirements. The abysmal state of the transport network. The need to rebuild international trade and relations.

 I think that while many didn’t vote for Labour, we all had an expectation that a change of government would mean a change of tack, away from austerity, albeit slowly, but with a sense that we could see where the government was going.

 Oh dear.  One mistake after another Winter fuel payments, public sector pay rises. Where does that leave you and me here in Rochford? 

 Worse off; worse off since our local council will need to pick up some costs; worse off because wage rises will need to be paid for (or savings found) to cover the expenditure.

 There is a hope that general ‘growth’ of the economy will help mitigate these costs, however I suspect its cheaper to pay the extra costs to get a service working, be it the NHS or the railways, but that way only leads to bigger pay rise requests from others. 

 We have the new chancellor and Prime Minister moaning about a fiscal black hole… but when Labour published its manifesto the Institute of Fiscal Studies said that “Labour continues in a conspiracy of silence on the difficulties they would face. These challenges are already perfectly clear. The books are open. A post-election routine of shock-and-horror at the state of the public finances will not cut it.”

 Also recall the SNP in the debates.  In each one they called out a £9bn black hole and – got well ignored by the other candidates.

 Labour committed not to increase taxes on working people (specifically income tax, employee NI and VAT) and consistently said that they “had no plans” to increase other taxes.

 Given that the IFS was able to identify a fiscal black hole in public finances, it should have come as no surprise to Rachel Reeves when she became Chancellor. If it did, then that must raise questions about her ability and competence – it was obvious to everybody else who studied these things.

 If Labour had been honest and said we will need to raise taxes and reduce reliefs and allowances on things like capital gains, pensions and inheritance, then people would have known what they are voting for. But they didn’t – they kept silent or were disingenuous by saying they had no plans. Then they get into power and it is highly likely that is exactly what they will do, having already started by removing winter fuel allowance for most pensioners without a proper impact assessment.

 I find the whole thing lacks honesty and integrity, is incredibly dispiriting and may result in significant suffering for many of the poorest and oldest people in our local community.

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