Furious council leaders warn chancellor that austerity measures could force ‘flagship blue counties’ to go bankrupt

Jeremy Hunt has been warned he will trigger a fire sale of public assets, reduce councils to an emergency service and put the vulnerable at greater risk after an autumn statement pointing to a new wave of austerity.

There will be a significant increase in the number of councils in effect “returning the town hall keys” to government because they are no longer sustainable, according to council leaders. In a furious response to the autumn statement, they said several “flagship blue counties” could go bankrupt just as next year’s election is called.

The backlash comes after economists concluded that the chancellor’s tax cuts last week in effect came at the expense of future public spending. Once settlements for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are taken into account, non-protected government departments in England face an annual cut of 3.4% for five years.

  • Darkard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    “I don’t believe that there is a conspiracy to destroy local government. But I think we are sleepwalking towards a position where councils just won’t be viable.”

    He said that while assets could be sold off in the short term, it would lead to a big transfer of wealth of public assets into private hands

    I DO believe there is a conspiracy, I think the Conservatives are more than happy for a big transfer of wealth into private hands.

    The budget is a win-win for them. It either convinces the gullible into voting for them and they stay in power, letting them continue to sell the country out from underneath us.

    Or the plan fails, they get voted out anyway, but they leave the country in a financial crisis that they can blame the following government for.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      They want a smaller and weaker state. One of Reagan’s guys said he wanted the government so small you could crush it in the palm of your hand. This is the end goal of neoliberals. They are now far more extreme than Thatcher and Regan ever were. We don’t see it because it’s been a steady boil and both Labour and Conservatives are fully paid up neoliberals.

      In part this is happening because you can’t do what Thatcher did. Once you’ve sold a part of the state you can’t sell it again. So politicians are inevitably going to sell more of the state to recreate Thatchers economy. It’s completely unsustainable, eventually there will be nothing to sell. When there’s nothing to sell and the state is reliant on private companies for service provisions there will be no room to manoeuvre. The government will be at the mercy of private businesses and continually extorted.

      This is bad for democracy. A strong state means each persons vote matters. The vote influences the state and the state imposed the will of the people. A weak state means your vote doesn’t matter. The state can’t impose it’s will, it will be at the mercy of the private business that provides state services. They will continually demand more power taking it away from the state. The state will exist to collect taxes and transfer it to private businesses for services. With minimum investment back into the state.

      We already see the minimum investment back into the state. The government can not put down a set of rail tracks that span the entire nation. The conservatives have ensured HS2 can’t be complete because they already sold the land they acquired. So much infrastructure spending done by the EU is no more, hope we don’t need a new bridge any time soon.

      The SNP are not quite so neoliberal (especially since Alex Salmond left). They’ve been trying to invest in more green energy generation in Scotland, however, national grid rules mean generators in Scotland are paid less because of too much capacity in Scotland (despite the grid being capable of distributing this power). This makes further development unfeasible. This would be okay if the rest of the UK was running at the same pace of green energy infrastructure investment but they aren’t. So Scotland will have a little too much energy in the future, but the rest of the UK will have too little. This will require massive wealth transfer from the tax payer to business to get more energy production fast and at extortionate prices. It a system designed to cripple future planning and preparation.

      Neoliberalism is freedom for the wealthy shareholders to operate how they want. It’s not freedom for the average person. It’s crippled the government they can’t build anything and can’t stop businesses for pouring shit and poison in the rivers.

      I don’t think free markets are a bad thing. They are an efficient method for an economy to be self organising. But it shouldn’t be worshipped. It’s is deeply flawed and prone to exploiting people. To preserve personal liberty there needs to be strong regulation and strong state involvement in natural monopolies. The Tories oppose both these things, that’s why they’re pushing councils to sell of assets, it’s idelogical.