We need a unitary council!

Increasingly as I talk to Abbey residents, I become frustrated at our system of local government.

Abbey residents have many eminently reasonable concerns. Some are worried about the lack of local leisure facilities for teenagers. Many have pointed out that football fans use roads in Abbey as parking space when Cambridge Utd play at home, which makes life difficult for residents. Others have expressed their concerns about the Rat Run around the Keynes Road area. Many other concerns have been raised.

However, again and again what occurs to me is that most of these issues are the responsibility of the County Council. City councillors can press the County Council to act on issues such as transport, adult and youth services, education, libraries and so on, but ultimately the City Council is largely powerless in many crucial areas. Even if elected, in many of these areas I, as a city councillor, would have little more than lobbying power.

However, because Cambridgeshire County Council is dominated by councillors from the predominantly Tory, rural areas, many crucial services and areas of policy in Cambridge city are simply dictated by people who have no interest in the wellbeing of the people of Cambridge. The Tories do not have a single county councillor from the Cambridge city area, yet they run most important services in the city. Unsurprisingly, areas like Abbey that are never going to elect a Tory councillor are very low down the priority list when it comes to allocating resources - the Tories have no political interest in doing anything else. Labour councillors on the City Council, and indeed the City Council in general, therefore get the blame for Tory neglect and incompetence without, in many areas, being responsible. This is not to say that the City Council doesn't have important areas of responsibility, in terms especially of housing and planning. However, in many crucial areas, the services of ordinary working people are run by a bunch of right-wing Tories from the sticks who have no interest whatsoever in doing anything other than neglecting estates in Cambridge.

The solution is to make Cambridge City Council a unitary council and allow Cambridge Councillors to run Cambridge services and make Cambridge's policies in areas currently the responsibility of the County Council. This way councillors in Cambridge would have the actual power to stand up for the interests of their constituents, and resources could be prioritised at the relatively impoverished areas in Cambridge city rather than squandered by Tories who have no support or interest in the city.

But, lo and behold, the Lib Dems refuse to apply for unitary status! They are content with the status quo of being ruled by a load of Blimpish Tory Thatcherites from the Fens and elsewhere in rural Cambridgeshire, while Cambridge suffers. Why? It's crazy. Only Labour has consistently argued for a unitary council that will allow Cambridge to have meaningful control over its own destiny, and only Labour councillors will fight for this if elected.