Budget sense from the Tories

THE talk is all of grown-up politics but, for some, the journey through political puberty is proving tortuous — and never more so than at budget time.

True, we had no foot-stamping, dummy-spitting, walking out tantrum from the council leader — but then he did get his way — but the threat of it hung over the playground for the best part of four hours.

Collectively the Labour lot were hardly any better, verbally digging, nudging and name-calling across the chamber all night until the mayor, whose deep well of patience finally ran dry, threatened to send the miscreants into the naughty corner. It would have been pretty full.

In the end it was the Tories who emerged as grown up and mature. Even though John Hudson can sound like a five-year-old with a hurt knee, he manned the barricades manfully to stop a rather nasty little ploy by the Lib-Dems to slam the lid down on all debate.

And when the Tory group leader Jack Hulme finally rose to support Howard Sykes’s budget because, on balance, he thought a 2.5 per cent increase in council tax was better for Oldham in the short, medium and long term than Labour’s “risky if appealing” strategy of no increase, his was one of the most measured contributions of the night.

But while backing the Lib-Dems’ budget and possibly saving them from being turfed out on their ear and letting the civil servants in to run the show (what a shock they’d have had looking at the borough’s books) he gave Howard six of the best for causing what he called a “constitutional crisis” by threatening to walk out.

Long before we got to this stage, however, there were some pretty rum goings on.

Howard put forward an amendment to his own budget (odd enough in itself) and the legal brains on the top table ruled that if was accepted no further discussion on the budget would be allowed.

This was no attempt to stifle debate, said Howard, and there are people out there who probably believe him, but most of them are in secure accommodation and if they’re not, they ought to be.

The Labour lot, not averse to dirty tricks themselves — and everyone believes that — feigned indignation and accused Howard of trying to set aside £2million (only 1 per cent of the council’s budget) to build a war chest for the next local elections in 2010 or to stick in his back pocket.

We are talking big trousers here and, therefore a big back pocket — big enough probably to garage a small family car — but Howard came over all wounded innocence.

“It is to bring clarity to the budget,” he said when in fact what he intends to do with the £2 million is as clear as mud.

“This is no attempt to stifle debate” said Kay Knox tongue so far in cheek that it looked as though she was eating a giant gobstopper, but the mayor allowed the debate and the Lib-Dems lost it 30-31 (no nil-nil draws here).

And then it was Labour’s turn to dig into the wizard box of sneaky ruses and, instead of presenting their own budget in full, put it forward in three bits (salami slices was a pithy description) but as the first slice was the nil rise in council tax that failed by 37 votes to 23, thanks to the Tories, we didn’t need to listen to any more.

We knew we had heard enough and that it was past some people’s bedtime when Labour’s Peter Dean, talking grown-up politics and co-operation to the Lib-Dems said: “We’ll work with you to make sure things go wrong.”

Enough said!