‘Putting the party before the city’

Two farcical episodes of Full Council have put the achievement of a Bristol Low Emission Zone in jeopardy, and I am honestly shocked that Labour have chosen to derail an initiative that otherwise enjoys cross-party support. I’m writing this because underneath all the party politics is a life and death issue that will only grow over the coming years. It’s not too late to salvage a Low Emission Zone, but doing so requires Labour to be the best of themselves and to work with, not against, the Greens.

So what has happened?

The long-story-short version is this: Labour joined the Conservatives to defeat a Green budget amendment at February’s Full Council that would have begun the implementation of a Low Emission Zone in 2017. They then amended a Lib Dem motion calling for commitment to a LEZ to this week’s March Full Council, removing the deadline of getting one in place by 2020.

In a nutshell, Labour have prevented a Low Emission Zone from happening. 

Under the bizarre slogan, “action not activity”, Eastville Councillor Mhairi Threlfall led Labour’s charge to ensure Bristol City Council commits itself to the principle of establishing a Low Emissions Zone… without a deadline, and without an allocated budget, by specifically blocking the allocation of any budget, and by specifically removing any reference to a deadline. And of course, Labour relied on Conservative help to do it.

That’s a whole lot of activity whose end goal is to block the very action for which it calls.

One of my sisters nearly died of an asthma attack when we were children. Air pollution is thought to be responsible for up to 200 deaths a year in Bristol, with the poorest neighbourhoods the most disproportionately affected. This issue is right at the heart of what Greens are passionate about: the overlap between environmental and social justice, and how the poorest people pay the highest price for the environmental exploitation committed by the wealthiest in society on a global scale.

Labour’s reasoning for this activity is an objection to paying money to consultants, one of the outlined uses of the £50k the Greens identified in their budget amendment. This is a straw man argument that relies on the more sensational media reports surrounding misuse of public money on large consultancy fees. 

What Labour’s reasoning misses is the fact that it is not possible for Bristol City Council to implement a Low Emission Zone without paying consultants at some point. Because when you pay an expert from outside your organisation to advise you on matters for which you don’t have in-house expertise, that expert is a consultant. And Bristol City Council doesn’t have the in-house expertise to implement a Low Emission Zone. 

In effect, Labour are arguing that the Council should never pay world class academics from UWE or the University of Bristol for their expert advice. Because that would mean paying consultants, and consultants are by definition a waste of money. The nonsense of this reasoning is self-evident.

Of course, to those outside the political soap opera, all of this looks like just another instance of political Parties bickering instead of working together. If it helps, I join you in your frustration; I’m mostly writing this post so I don’t have to beat my head against a wall until I can’t feel the sheer bloody mindedness of it all any more. 

Time and again, I see Bristol Labour putting their own party before the interests of Bristol, then publicising what they’ve done as a great triumph. Especially so with environmental issues, where they’re most vulnerable to losing votes to the Greens. 

It’s not too late to rectify this, but doing so will inevitably require setting timescales and allocating a budget. And the Greens aren’t precious about this issue, we are more than happy to share the credit for getting a Local Emission Zone in place if Labour will just extend a hand in co-operation and set aside Party differences to make it happen.

So when you hear Labour councillors saying they’ve taken action on a Low Emission Zone, be sure to ask them when that action will happen, and what that action will cost. They won’t have concrete answers right now because they specifically removed both those elements from Council’s commitment to a Low Emission Zone. 

Bristol Green Party did have answers to both those questions (2017 & £50,000). But as things currently stand, Bristol Labour only have empty promises, and 200 people a year will continue to die as a result.

Labour, please be better than this.

Simon Stafford-Townsend is one of the Green Party candidates for Ashley ward in May’s elections, blogs at Psycho Politico and tweets as @RedBristolGreen

Read more: ‘Smogmobile’ measures Bristol’s air pollution