COMMENT: LABOUR COUNCILLORS are having a hard time of it lately – looking for new ground to occupy now that their party is in national government but is still giving local government a hard time.

For many voters, the die was cast when Starmer refused to call for a ceasefire in the early days of the Israeli state’s war on Gaza: they withdrew support from Labour and will not return. For many more, Rachel Reeves axing the Winter Fuel Allowance from all but the poorest pensioners was an unwelcome surprise.

Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor Lutfur Rahman has a record of stepping in to make up for national cuts in public services. Tory Governments cut support to young people from poorer families staying in education post-16 and/or going on to university: Rahman replaced the payments for local students. The start of his third term of office, in May 2022, was also marked by setting up various hardship funds designed to help families strugging with the cost of living crisis. It was hardly a surprise, then, when he announced a local scheme to help pensions with winter fuel costs.

What was a surprise was Labour’s reaction to their own Chancellor’s cut. They didn’t like Mayor Rahman’s education funds so much that Labour Mayor John Biggs axed them. They didn’t like the re-elected Mayor’s hardship payments so much that they tried to amend his budget to show that they would do things differently. But when it came to their own, their own “Labour” Government, they called on Executive Mayor Lutfur Rahman… to replace the cut funds with his own local scheme.

Their wishes were set out in a motion to the Council proposed by Labour Group Secretary Cllr Marc Francis and seconded by his colleague “Cllr XX” (that well known Labour colleague who is preoccupied with her chromosomes). Cllr Francis dimissed the Chancellor’s axing of Winter Fuel Allowance as, in Tony Blair’s favourite phrase, a “difficult decision”.

Labour has castigated Rahman for his financial priorities in the past: in particular, for allegedly squandering on frontline services the massive, unaudited reserves run up by John Biggs. Now Cllr Francis and his mystery colleague have come clean about the reserves and admitted they left there was plenty of cash there to be spent on a new frontline service: a replacement Winter Fuel Allowance.

It is unlikely that this is the last we have heard from Cllr Francis, who has an ongoing interest in the Council’s finances, it seems. Last AGM Cllr Francis had a burning desire to “lead scrutiny of the Council’s finances” – a desire which was thwarted by the majority party, apparently. On X (formerly Twitter), Cllr Francis points out that he was in charge of offical scrutiny of the finances “under Labour’s Mayor – asking questions without fear or favour”. One of the questions he forgot – or was too fearful to – ask back then was “why won’t our auditors sign off the Coucil's accounts for the last seven years”. Now things are much more out in the open. Where is the public’s money going now? It’s going to the borough’s pensioners, making up for the Labour Government’s cuts.

●To catch up with the news in East London, go to:
East London News