Labour Launches its Manifesto

What is surprising about this ‘manifesto’ is just how lacking in ambition it really is. We are not going to go through all 48 pages of it, but Labour have helpfully edited the highlights, (by cutting out pictures of the mayor, the Labour Party could have reduced its length by half!). It seems to be largely lacking in firm commitments and is full of ‘plan to’, ‘will do’ process commitments. A case of ‘shifting the deckchairs’. In the event that any of the other parties bother to publish a manifesto, we’ll have a look at theirs as well.

You might miss the verbal sleight of hand in this one. In the first paragraph, Labour states that the mayor’s promise was to start 1000 new homes. It wasn’t. The mayor’s promise was to BUILD 1000 new homes between May 2018 and May 2022. 

By her own admission, she hasn’t done it. 

And they would be council homes at council rents. Now they will be ‘affordable’, that is at higher than council rents.

Also, we are left in the dark as to what ‘start’ means. Foundations dug? First bricks laid? Signed off at planning? Plans submitted for approval?

This is despite LBN having received £100m from the Tory government (via Sadiq Khan’s Office) just to spend on housing.

New homes are a public good. How about some honesty to go with them, rather than the smoke and mirrors we are given instead.

We see what the agenda is here. Talking to people is the alternative for having a reliable and effective strategy to keep the borough clean. If they ‘talk to people’ it gives the impression of being caring and doing something, when in fact they are failing.

If they don’t know that residents want their streets kept clean, they haven’t been listening for the last four years, during which Newham was branded in a national poll, the dirtiest borough in the country.

Good news about the enforcement officers. That will surely help. It was a shame that Mayor Fiaz sacked so many of them when she came into office in 2018.

This one really adds insult to injury. Well done on the tests. It is a matter of shame on the council  that Newham had some of the lowest vaccination rates and highest death counts from COVID in the country. What were they doing?

They really should be ashamed.

£100k to be spent across eight areas. £12,500 per community from a budget of £1bn. Frankly, this is a sop to community involvement. It smacks of the benign-leftist tokenism of the 1970s and gives the illusion of inclusion at virtually no cost.

Of course there should be consultation, but this is spending money to do what some of the 66 councillors should be doing anyway.

It would be nice to know if there are indeed fewer young people going into the criminal justice system and whether this is because they have genuinely been diverted from criminal activity or whether the CPS is simply no longer prosecuting low level offences of dishonesty, (we know that they are not because it is their published policy).

However, the mayor’s promise was not simply to spend more money, which she has done, but to reduce the level of knife crime as a result of that spend.

As to whether this has happened, we don’t know and we don’t know because she has not published any data. This lack of transparency suggests that her lavish spending has not had an effect.

Spending on young people must be a social good. But as to whether this will reduce murder and  knife crime, we are a long way from being convinced.