Vicious personal attacks on opposition councillors is a keenly honed skill in which Labour takes a particular pride - not just in Ipswich, but across the political spectrum, nationally and locally.
They like to dish it out, but even the mildest and most gentlemanly admonishment of this behaviour is rebutted with further personal abuse. That’s politics, you will say, but it is not how Conservatives do business.
These tactics were much in evidence during Full Council’s Budget debate on 26th February.
Cllr. Ellesmere’s claims to major achievements during his last 3 years in charge of Ipswich would even embarrass Pinocchio, whose nose would have grown so fast and so long that it would have filled the council chamber!
Allotment usage up to 98% from below 70% in 2005?? That was just a few months after Labour previously lost control.. and in the intervening years the Conservatives invested in the allotments to bring occupancy up to nearly 100% with a waiting list by 2010… The Holywells HLF project? Whoops, he forgot that it was started by the Conservatives!
Then there was the City Deal, which was actually won by the Conservative controlled County Council and Local Enterprise Partnership because the Borough’s bid ‘lacked any substance’ according to the Cabinet Office.
He talked of bringing jobs to Ipswich – but didn’t say where, and he failed to mention the 900 jobs lost due to his administration’s intransigence over the £70m redevelopment of the former B & Q site in Grafton Way. The developer has now given up and is selling.
But, Cllr. Ellesmere is buying up ‘key sites’ around the town, although without any strategy, and whilst leaving St. Margaret’s plain, the above mentioned B & Q site, and the redundant sites around the Waterfront to rot. Whilst building 50 new council houses each year at public expense, Cllr. Ellesmere ignored the fact that we could have had 227 new private and social homes on the St. Clement’s site if Labour had supported the application after years of negotiation.
In his weekly rantings in the Ipswich Star, Cllr. Ellesmere refers to the ‘cost of living crisis’ but that hasn’t stopped him from increasing council house rents for the third successive year, adding £600 a year to tenants’ bills, and that’s without the third annual increase in Council Tax, and 3.5% rises in fees and charges – so a swim or a game of football will be even more expensive.
The future is bleak in Ipswich for those of us who believe in low taxes, individual aspiration and entrepreneurism, encouraging inward investment to create jobs, and the importance of a vibrant retail offer to generate a broad-based local economy.
Ipswich is run by Old Labour: high taxes, unsustainable borrowing (which they admit in the budget papers has to be repaid) and a dependence on the public purse for everything.