Introduced in full colour dull PowerPoint by their newly minted leader, Tom “Plasticine Man’ Renhard, togged up in his wedding suit at a swanky conference room at Ashton Gate stadium on Saturday, Bristol Labour Party are first out of the blocks with a local election manifesto.
The manifesto cover features a cheery little cartoon cover of multicultural pedestrians, happy cyclists, beaming schoolchildren, helpful coppers, trams, buses, windmills and, er, dead trees plastered onto a local independent retail backdrop. Produced in shades of red, it’s a bit George Ferguson on acid with the manifesto’s title, ‘Building Bristol’s Future’ providing mild threat for the paranoid.
The manifesto itself spells a departure from the Rees years. Marvin’s manifestoes provided a shopping list of promises he would then proceed to fail to deliver. His 2016 effort contained 78 uncosted promises and 38 vague commitments. The 2021 model slimmed things down to just 91 uncosted promises. Largely undelivered.
Renhard seems to have learned from this almighty mess of broken promises and has created a fuzzy document of vague aspiration instead. Delivered in hackneyed cliche with few indicators of how he would deliver on any of it, maybe Renhard knows he won’t have to?
Our team has combed through the 28 pages of English language wreckage and identified five stone cold, nailed down actual promises from Labour. These are: ‘build 3,000 council homes in the next five years’; ‘roll out more school streets’; ‘have more visible and responsive police and embedded PCSOs’; ‘protect the 100% Council Tax Reduction Scheme’ and ‘tackle anti-social behaviour, including fly-tipping, littering and graffiti tags, by hiring more enforcement officers and increasing fines‘.
We also discovered three almost promises in the manifesto. These fall short of actual promises as there’s little detail provided and few resources committed so it will be hard to hold them to account. These are: ‘upgrading and restoring our ageing infrastructure, including Bristol’s historic bridges and harbour’; ‘invest in road maintenance and pothole repair’ and ‘reduce violence against women and girls’.
Pretty much everything else in the document is vague aspirational waffle. In social care, which, according to Labour’s own figures is 43% of council spend, the big offer is, “We are partnering with Bristol’s public services to help ensure you can access the care you need, when you need it.”
From the party that has just tried (and failed) to remove disabled adults from their homes and shove them into residential care to save money, this is a pathetically weak policy response.
On education and children’s services, 22% of council spend, it’s hard to find much concrete. Just some waffle about “Helping children get the best start in life with more school places and better provision for SEND children; improving access to education and skills in our colleges and universities.”
Another weak response from the party that fucked up SEND provision years ago and is currently fucking it up all over again having signed up to the Tories’ vicious ‘Safety Valve’ SEND cuts programme.
On the big issue of youth knife crime, the Labour offer moves beyond pathetic. Promising to “improve CCTV and partner on youth engagement projects” alongside a further uncosted promise without detail to “support and invest in youth services.”
Is that it?
On transport, Labour commit to, “exploring ways to bring buses into public ownership”. Currently impossible under existing legislation. And they will “start now on the transport solutions of tomorrow” whatever that means. Their most interesting policy may be “seeking ways to take back control of our highway maintenance work through insourcing.”
On Green issues, the offer is more of Rees’s underpowered over-publicised City Leap. Originally a promise of a ‘billion pound’ private sector investment, this promise dropped to £500m recently. The Labour manifesto now introduces a new figure of “£771m planned investment in decarbonisation”.
The reality of City Leap last year was about £23m of public sector grants and city council cash spent on overpriced heat pumps in schools and some small retrofit pilots, which Labour’s US corporate partner trousered a profit from.
The final section of the manifesto is a section unoriginally called ‘Our City, Our Future’ where the big promise is “creating a safe, attractive, well-lit and welcoming city centre.”
Does that mean neighbourhoods outside the city centre can expect to be unsafe, unattractive, badly lit and unwelcoming?
I think we should be told.
Despite being the union that campaigned for an end to tribunal fees and won. Despite being the union that strikes for hospital workers, wins equal pay claims for cleaners and tries to prevent the outsourcing of care workers everywhere except Bristol. Despite having nearly all the cuts in this round of austerity aimed at those areas only they really have members in – Bristol Unison still refuse to do anything to oppose the cuts. That is, unless Mayor Marvin asks them to go on a demonstration against his own cuts. In which case out comes the banner in what could only be described as a giant blow struck for irony.