Is there a cabinet maker in the building?

There was a time when Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman was painted as a young firebrand. His opponents have branded him as a radical – and dangerous – extremist.  At Tower Hamlets’ Cabinet on 14th March, Lutfur deployed a new tool in his armoury.  No one saw it coming but, put simply: he intends to bore his opponents into submission.

Lutfur Rahman is an Executive Mayor: he takes most of the decisions about what the Council does and has a Cabinet to advise him.  He was directly elected by Tower Hamlets voters, and he is accountable to them, not to the other councillors.  All of this leaves the political parties wandering round the Town Hall like lost sheep and spewing vitriol at Council meetings as they hunt in vain for mayoral excesses they can use their few remaining powers to curb. If Cabinet meetings continue like the last one, perhaps their energies would be best spent making sure the coffee machines don’t run dry – or we shall all fall fast asleep. And then where would we be? Lutfur could tiptoe past the slumbering masses and get his Grouped Schools and Mulberry School PFI Contracts Progress Report, his Completion of the Supporting People Joint Framework and the like through with no one watching and the world would cease turning on its axis (or whatever calamity it is that Labour predicts will happen if we don’t all watch him carefully).

So how does Lutfur do it, the crafty old so and so?  He spots the decisions that have to be made in public at Cabinet meetings.  He gets officers to write a traditional Council report, padding out the substance with observations from all the other officers.  The reports are moved formally (without speaking) or briefly.  To liven matters up, Mayor Rahman allows councillors to ask questions from the councillors’ part of the public gallery.  Periodically Cllr Jackson presents pre-prepared questions from the Overview & Scrutiny Committee – a remote and whimsical body that has never found its feet.  And when the questions come, Mayor Rahman fires his big salvos.

First, he lets officers reply.  Officers speak a strange language, similar to English but containing no words of fewer than four syllables – most of which are drawn from the Lexicon of Unintelligible Jargon for Bureaucrats.  They speak this language to each other, which is why they can understand each other – but it is not a language designed for communication between human beings.

Second, Mayor Rahman lets Cabinet members read to us.  Last cabinet we had to endure the sound of Cllr Oliur Rahman (the people’s Oli, our Nye Bevan in the making – if you had a tub that needed thumping, who else would you give it to?) reading a paragraph of carefully measured pre-prepared answers.  Again, communication it ain’t.

And it’s over within the hour. What a missed opportunity!  For all these reports with their bureaucratic titles actually conceal real political questions.  Who should pay for the financial hole in the PFI scheme which did up most secondary school buildings in Tower Hamlets so our kids could study in 21st century surroundings?  Should it be the schools that got the buildings or should all schools chip in?  That’s important – especially if you’re a mum wondering why your kids aren’t bringing text books and library books home from school.  The Supporting People Framework deals with how our Borough supports young people leaving care, people with disabilities and women fleeing domestic violence: it’s real frontline stuff.

Yes, if Labour and/or the Labour dominated Overview and Scrutiny Committee is asking questions designed to trip the Mayor up, there may have to be some carefully prepared answers: but why can’t there be more than just the prepared stuff?  The Mayor hardly gets a look in at meetings of the full Council, so why can’t he use the Cabinet to showcase the innovative policies which his Administration is busy putting into practice? There’s an audience of half a dozen for the current charade.  There’s a potential audience of hundreds who are affected by Cabinet decisions. 

Put Oli on his feet and let’s hear his passion for building a better youth service, because the youth service matters.  The Mayor knew it was International Women’s Day last week, because he told us he’d been to an event. So why wasn’t Cllr Rania Khan livening up Cabinet by telling us how she persuaded her nearest and dearest to become talking books to mark the day?  Bengali Heritage Month passed the Cabinet by: again, Cllr Rania’s laid on a magnificent programme of events which can both enhance the Bangladeshi community’s feelings of self-worth and shake up non-Bangladeshis’ perceptions of our biggest ethnic minority community – but she had no chance to share her passion with us.  The Mayor reminded us at the start of Cabinet that his Administration protects the most vulnerable residents and told us he’d been to a Budget Congress on the Government’s welfare benefit cuts.  That Congress was led by Cllr Rabina Khan – the woman the Tories try to belittle at every Council meeting.  Cllr Rabina has a thorough and practical understanding of how those Government cuts will affect a huge number of the Borough’s residents.  Cabinet could have been a chance for her to paint a real picture of the damage this Government’s doing.  That’s the stuff that the crowds will come to hear; that’s the stuff that could showcase this Administration.

So come on, Lutfur, how about it?  Nod those reports through if you have to.  Tell those officers it’s Plain English from now on.  It might deflect Labour from its twee questions and get them thinking about whether they do have any political disagreements with you.  Above all: you have some star performers in your Cabinet and we want to see them perform.  Let’s find out what your Administration’s all about.  If the Cabinet’s advising you, let’s see some of it in action.