Between 2002 and 2006 Lambeth was run by a formal coalition of
Lib Dems and Conservatives. But the Conservatives want
everyone to forget it ever happened! I’ve got a copy of the
leaflet the Tories have been putting out in the Kennington
by-election over the past few days. They remind readers just
how terrible things were under the Lib Dems – but fail to mention
that the Tories were in joint control at the time!
“Lib Dem councillors were a huge failure” announce the
Tories. “Under their leadership local housing estates went to
rack and ruin.” True enough, but the ‘leadership’ at the time
was a joint Conservative-Lib Dem leadership, with the Tory leader
himself jointly responsible for the council’s housing service in
the period running up to the election they lost so badly.
The Tories go on to tell us that the Lib Dems “oversaw a massive
fraud in the council’s housing budget”. And again it’s
true. A single fraudster made off with £3m by setting up a
fake company and awarding himself a multi-million pound contract
for work he never carried out. It was the biggest housing
fraud in British local government history. But it happened
not just under the Lib Dems, but under a joint Tory-Lib Dem
administration.
The half-truths continue into the present. The same Tory
leaflet complains about ‘tax hikes’ since Labour regained control
of the council in 2006. The average council tax rise over
Labour’s four-year term is less than 2%. Labour’s just frozen
council tax for two years with no increase at all. While the
Tories, who now find a 2% average unreasonably high seem to have
forgotten that they put council tax up 10% a year on average and by
a staggering 40% over the full term they were in power. The
biggest council tax rise in Lambeth’s history, in fact. It
hardly puts the Tories in a position to criticise a tax rise a
fraction of the size of their own, you’d think. Unless of
course you were desperate to obliterate the memory of a period
you’d much prefer everyone to forget, because it shows the Tories
up for being exactly the same tax-hiking incompetents they rightly
claim the Lib Dems to be.
Cameron's Tories in Lambeth want you to forget
they share the blame for the disasters of their four years in
coalition with the Lib Dems.
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