12 June 2010
A senior Liberal Democrat councillor has insisted there are ‘no cracks’ in the coalition – despite an outspoken attack on the government by another LibDem councillor over the Building Schools for the Future row.
Last week, the leader of Liverpool City Council’s LibDem group, Warren Bradley, said Education Secretary Michael Gove’s decision to axe the Labour government’s national school rebuilding programme was ‘unforgiveable’ and made him ‘physically sick’.
The coalition government’s cuts policies would destroy the LibDem party, he warned.
‘I will not be toeing the national party line, just because we're in a weak coalition. That will deliver nothing to the LibDems except total electoral decimation,’ Bradley said.
‘I give you that absolute guarantee, we will be wiped out by Labour in the North and the Tories in the South.’
But Richard Kemp, leader of the Liberal Democrat group at the Local Government Association and a fellow Liverpool councillor, said Bradley was speaking only for himself.
Out of about 100 LibDem councillors present at a meeting at last week’s LGA annual conference, only Bradley called into question the future of the coalition, said Kemp.
Kemp told Public Finance: ‘There are no cracks in the coalition, except rather regrettably with Warren Bradley. We had around 100 Liberal Democrat group leaders and 99 of them pursued the line that I took.
‘The only thing that distresses me about working together is the Labour Party fighting every budget reduction without saying what they would have done. It is dishonest for the Labour Party to carry on in the way that they are.’
He added that Bradley’s comments reflected teething problems because the LibDems were not used to being in government.
He said: ‘There are nerves out there – we are learning how to be a party in government in the national sense for the first time in 90 years. We have to learn how to do this and put appropriate pressure on our government and our LibDem ministers.
‘Many of us did not expect to come into office having to reduce our budgets by 25%. We are all nervous and we will just have to work through how we will deal with that nervousness. These are growing pains for the coalition, which we would expect.’
See PF interview with Richard Kemp
