SEND in the clowns! The twice-yearly circus known as the Chancellor’s Financial Statement and Budget Report took place in the House of Commons on Wednesday. As usual, it was a mixture of pre-scripted jokes, the usual bawling across the chamber and playground cheers — an archaic ritual that mimics debate. It was true “palace of varieties” fare, as Dennis Skinner used to say.

 
In all that hot air, it’s sometimes difficult to understand what the announcements will mean for ordinary people. The truth is, not a lot. In a week that has seen Birmingham and Nottingham councils make huge and devastating cuts to their vital public services, the urgent issue of local authority funding was buried in vague talk of “efficiency savings.”
 
Instead, as with his last Budget statement, the Chancellor laid great store by a cut in National Insurance, with a 2 per cent reduction, supplemented with lots of talk about future tax cuts. “Conservatives know lower tax means higher growth. And higher growth means more opportunity and more prosperity,” he proclaimed.
 
Except that growth and prosperity haven’t happened — at least not for most of us. In the 14 years that the Tories have been in power, both private and public-sector pay has declined in real terms, job insecurity has ballooned, while the services that provide a safety net for those struggling have been slashed, as more and more workers try to get by on poverty pay.
 
Wednesday’s Budget sums up almost a decade and a half of Tory government: desperate so-called “giveaways” that do little or nothing to help ordinary people, whose pockets have been picked by the government of the rich for the rich.
 
Councils in crisis
 
Meanwhile, right across the country, councils are in crisis — a crisis generated by relentless central government cuts to their budgets for over a decade. Whatever the local circumstances, we are here because of a 27 per cent reduction in local government funding since 2010 — a wholly ideological attack on the local state and local democracy, which has operated by stealth.
 
One in five councils face bankruptcy within five years, many are teetering on the edge of it right now. Birmingham City Council, the largest in Europe, declared itself bankrupt in September and has just voted for a range of cuts that will take a wrecking ball to statutory services and cultural resources alike. The people of Birmingham deserve better, as do all communities that rely on those services, not only to meet essential needs, but to enjoy a quality of life through sport, leisure, and culture.
 
But none of this featured in the Chancellor’s speech, or that of the opposition leader for that matter. A crisis that has been 14 years in the making is now being allowed to take its final twist — which is to plummet local councils into financial catastrophe, pulling the rug out from the most vulnerable in our communities — and making life appreciably worse for the rest.
 
Watching this spectacle, I was reminded of Tony Benn’s famous words in the same chamber: “I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis for political liberty. Every time I see a homeless person living in a cardboard box in London, I see that person as a victim of market forces. Every time I see a pensioner who cannot manage, I know that (s)he is a victim of market forces.”
 
The Chancellor set out to bribe people with a 2p National Insurance (NI) cut based on that same Thatcherite fundamentalism: tax cuts are good, spending on public services is bad; the small state is lean, local government is wasteful; the private sector is efficient, the public sector is profligate.
 
The NI cut was the rabbit pulled out of the hat on Wednesday, but if the Chancellor thinks that will persuade people to vote Tory at the general election, he’s surely living in an alternate reality. Because, unlike his government, most people value their local services, understand what happens when they disappear, and see the importance of society and community.
 
Fighting austerity
 
Austerity isn’t “back,” because it never went away. It just became absorbed into the daily grind of council business and year-on-year cuts to valued and vital local services. Ask campaigning organisations like Disabled People Against the Cuts, who have been prominent around Westminster all week, highlighting the impact of welfare reforms and the cost of living on disabled people.
 
The People’s Assembly was founded more than a decade ago as a coalition of unions, community organisations and social movement groups aiming to stop austerity-driven cuts to public services, with all the devastation that accompanied it. That need has not changed one bit.
 
What we are seeing today is the “endgame” of that austerity — and local people will be at the front line of this reckless destruction. The local government bankruptcies we are seeing are a reminder that if we care about our local services and communities, we are going to have to fight for them.
 
That includes councillors. For too many years, there was a feeling among many councillors that they could “manage” the cuts. They stood apart from the anti-cuts campaigners, when in fact, they should have been standing alongside them, building campaigns to highlight central government austerity, and fighting for services locally.
 
That was a mistake. The result was not managing the cuts, but managing the decline. There are no second chances now. The crisis that councils face isn’t going to magically disappear, especially with a Labour opposition committed to arbitrary “fiscal rules,” and seemingly frightened to stand up for local services.
 
As the People’s Assembly, we would like to see councillors in the chamber arguing for an alternative to these devastating cuts — but also outside, standing with us to help build the anti-austerity movement.
 
Alongside trade unions, community groups, environmental activists, disability and housing campaigners, that would be some powerful coalition. In reality, it’s probably the only thing that can save us from a dystopian future in our cities, towns, and communities.

For more information on the campaign visit www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk.