Voters in the local government elections on Thursday will be ready to consider paying higher council taxes to halt the “rundown of the fabric of society”, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said.
Speaking on the eve of the poll, with Labour hoping to make strong gains in London, McDonnell said that seven years of Conservative spending cuts had primed the public for a different approach.
“What people are saying is, the fabric of our community isn’t what it was and it needs addressing,” he said. “The council tax issue is interesting. People have raised the issue of council tax on the doorstep. There’s often Tory councillors saying they’re freezing them. We’re getting on the doorstep, ‘I’d rather pay a bit more to get a decent service’. I think there’s a wisdom of crowds, people are saying, after eight years you can’t carry on like this. You can’t just throw a bit of tarmac over a pothole. It’s got to be repaired properly and that takes money.”
With 4,350 seats being contested across 150 local authorities in England on Thursday, Labour’s campaign has focused on Tory cuts to schools budgets, policing, social care and other public services.
“It’s the general rundown of the fabric of society, both physically, but in terms of support mechanisms as well,” McDonnell said.
However, he played down expectations that Labour could seize the Conservatives’ flagship boroughs of Westminster, Wandsworth, and Kensington and Chelsea.
“It will be a good night, but we’re being set up by the Tories and the media, so if there’s a single Tory councillor left in this country we’ll have failed,” he said. “Taking individual councils is difficult - I think it’s really difficult - I know that in my own patch. In Wandsworth there’s a real grassroots campaign going on there. But we’ll have to see how that goes on the night.”
He added: “Local elections are idiosyncratic, in a way that others aren’t. And I’m worried about the weather, too – today’s absolutely freezing. It all depends on turnout.”
In London, Labour also hopes to take control of Barnet council, but McDonnell acknowledged concerns about whether the recent crisis over antisemitism in his party could hit votes in strongly Jewish areas such as Golders Green, Hendon, and Finchley. Having canvassed in Barnet recently, he said: “I’m concerned about the whole issue, I have been quite tough on it all the way through. I’m worried that people have been turned off.”
McDonnell blamed the sluggish implementation of the Chakrabarti review on antisemitism for issues such as the backlog of outstanding cases, including that of Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London and close ally of Jeremy Corbyn.
Asked about the Livingstone case, he said: That will come. That’s why some of us got quite angry about why it hadn’t been dealt with before now, why the resources weren’t in place.”
Despite the focus on London, McDonnell said Labour was taking its anti-austerity message outside the capital. “Where did we build up the votes last time? It was London and the metropolitan areas, basically. So the issue for us is how do we consolidate that, but in the other areas, those small towns, coastal towns and rural areas, how do we start connecting again on any scale?”
He said local campaign organisers, currently being recruited, would help. “They will be working alongside our candidates - parliamentary candidates, local candidates - so we get back to a situation where every councillor, every parliamentary candidate or MP, every member if we can, becomethe community leaders. It’s deep, deep, campaigning.”
McDonnell said whatever the results Labour hoped to use them as a springboard for the next general election. “I think they will be pretty good. Then we get back to the detailed work, constituency by constituency, and that’s what we’re aiming at now. We’ll use use these results as a platform to challenge the government.”
