My letter to the Times and Star and the Whitehaven News:
Sirs,
While I enjoy spending less time on social media these days, I had the misfortune this weekend to stumble across a Facebook post from the Labour MP for Whitehaven and Workington claiming that Cumberland Council had seen a £23.5m ‘funding boost from his government’ in reference to the government’s approval of a request for ‘Exceptional Financial Support. He went on to claim to a constituent that his council tax was lower this year than it should have been, due to this ‘funding boost’.
Mistakes happen, especially when you take your eye off the ball and try to be a constituency MP based in London - or even sometimes on a Brazilian beach.
But when it was pointed out to him that in fact, all the government had done was to approve additional borrowing of £23.5m to fund the daily running costs of the council - something that is normally illegal for very good reason - and that council tax had in fact INCREASED to pay for this borrowing, he took to deleting and hiding comments, before blocking constituents.
He went on to double down, claiming that “unlike under the Tories, those councils choosing to borrow won’t be penalised with higher borrowing costs, which put councils in more debt and pushed higher costs on to council tax payers”. There is only one problem with that statement, that it’s blatantly untrue.
Council borrowing rates are at the highest sustained level since 2007. If you’re a council, your rainy day is here. Now is not the time to be borrowing money that the the next three generations will be paying off.
Mistakes happen. Spin is part of politics. But there is no spinning the financial mismanagement of this Labour council, or the fact that they’ve had to beg to be allowed to do the equivalent of you or I taking a loan to pay for this weeks’ shopping.
But we’ve seen this week that Labour cabinet ministers are happy to attempt to throw their staff under the bus for their own untruths, even when caught red-handed. Our local MPs are only taking their lead.
The truth matters. Constituents deserve honesty from their politicians if nothing else. A litany of broken manifesto promises is not helped by barefaced outright lies.
Kind regards
Mark Jenkinson
Former Member of Parliament for Workingto
