The latest column from Coll McCail, who you can read every month on Conter.
Late last month, Humza Yousaf stood on the steps of Inverclyde’s Council Chambers to celebrate his ‘fully-funded’ national council tax freeze. Having resisted the imposition of a freeze from Holyrood, Inverclyde’s Councilors eventually negotiated a further £3 million of funding from the Scottish Government. The First Minister claimed a political victory over the local authority, condemning their ‘shameful attempt to hike bills’. The entire episode, however, was everything but an achievement for the Scottish Government. Trampling all over local councils, their efforts have highlighted Scotland’s very own democratic deficit.
The detrimental impacts of the Scottish Government’s council tax freeze have been clear since the policy was announced last October – without the prior knowledge of civil servants or council leaders. 17 years after the SNP pledged to scrap the ‘unfair council tax’, the situation is objectively perplexing. Elected local authorities have now been deprived of the right to raise revenue to fund crumbling services by a Scottish Government that protests when they are denied that very right by Westminster.
For Susan Aitken however, the freeze was a ‘no brainer’. As the leader of Scotland’s largest local authority heralded the humiliation of local government, her council slashed services to accommodate the Scottish Government’s imposition. Glasgow will lose 450 teachers over the next three years, defund MCR pathways and cut its Developing the Young Workforce programme. Other local authorities favoured ‘budget consultations’. Seeking a mandate for their cuts, residents were invited to rank the services they valued the most. Would you close your local library or save the nearest swimming pool? It’s not much of a choice but does expose the myth that the freeze was ever ‘fully funded’.
Too timid to ask wealthier Scots to pay more, the Scottish Government has instead granted them a concession that further erodes the capacity of the local state. While Scottish Government ministers moonlight as social democrats, their policy has locked a fundamentally reactionary model in place and detrimentally impacted working-class Scots. Indeed, even the government’s website admits that Scotland’s council tax rate is higher for lower-value properties and lower for higher-value properties.
On the face of it, the Scottish Labour Party and the SNP support reforming Scotland’s archaic council tax system. But despite this apparent consensus nothing has changed. The political class ultimately fear they have something to lose by implementing a fairer alternative: The votes of middle Scotland. Endemic in Holyrood, this fear of confrontation plagues our politics. Hopes for the current council tax model to be trashed have been buried beneath a mountain of reports, consultations and working groups as MSPs tip-toe around this issue and many more. Consequently, the Scottish Parliament operates in a self-reinforcing doom loop. Averse to class conflict, and thus more fundamental change, Holyrood opts for sticking plasters that peel off before too long.
Such a dynamic has ensured that empty platitudes have been substituted for reasoned debate. Anas Sarwar’s faux critique of the council tax freeze is the perfect example. The Scottish Labour leader backs the policy on the proviso that it is ‘fully funded’ but has offered nothing as to how this might be achieved, all while opposing income tax rises. Outraged followed when Billy Connolly labelled Holyrood a ‘pretendy wee parliament’ a couple of years ago. But the last six months have more than vindicated the ‘big yin’.
This style of performance politics depends on Scotland’s narrow political sphere. The fiscal consensus that unites Holyrood’s largest parties is neglected amidst police investigations and phoney culture wars. Anti-politics thrives in this climate, relegated in the popular consciousness and largely free from any accountability. This very same arrangement allowed a Green government minister, for example, to sign one of Scotland’s largest-ever PFI deals with little to no outcry.
At its best, local government can provide an alternative to neoliberalism, resisting austerity and reorganising the local economy to give power to the people. Last month marked thirty years since the Strathclyde Water Referendum. Without the power to hold a statutory referendum, Strathclyde Regional Council held a vote anyway. On a 70% turnout, 97% of residents voted to keep Strathcylde’s water in public hands. John Major’s attempt to privatise water was stopped in its tracks – or at the border.
These days of defiance disappeared with the abolition of Regional councils. Furthermore, twenty-five years of devolution has cemented the decline of local government by centralising power in Edinburgh. Today, Scottish Councils have been reduced to sites of administration by decades of cuts. Underfunding ensured politics left most council chambers long ago. In all too many cases – besides essential services – the local state has receded from our everyday lives. Where once councils defended prized public services, now they invite constituents to choose which provisions they would like to be axed.
The Scottish government’s absurd undemocratic council tax freeze is symptomatic of a more general conspiracy against local government. Passing the most devastating impacts of austerity down to councils has the convenient consequence of absolving the Scottish Parliament’s lack of political ambition. When defanged of its radical potential, local government cannot then present a challenge to the Scottish Parliament’s failings. MSPs of all stripes thus avoid class confrontation once again and the doom loop continues. The result is that, while those who can afford to pay more don’t – and aren’t even asked to – essential services slip ever closer to collapse. Under the cynical guise of capping household bills, Holyrood has sacrificed democracy out of loyalty to Scotland’s middle class.
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