Liam redux

The Respect Party welcomes the outcome of the TIF referendum.

This might be controversial in some quarters but here is the Respect press release on the Greater Manchester vote to reject congestion charging. Despite a massive propaganda effort by the Yes campaign, the people of Greater Manchester have rejected New Labour’s proposals by a majority of almost four to one.  What the voters have rejected…

Liam
1–2 minutes

This might be controversial in some quarters but here is the Respect press release on the Greater Manchester vote to reject congestion charging.

Despite a massive propaganda effort by the Yes campaign, the people of Greater Manchester have rejected New Labour’s proposals by a majority of almost four to one.  What the voters have rejected is not the suggestion that public transport needs improving, it is the arrogant take-it-or-leave-it approach which tried to blackmail us into accepting a congestion charge as the price for any improvements.  The voters are well aware that the solution to the city’s transport problems is not to throw billions of pounds at the private operators, money we would have been paying back via the congestion charge for decades to come.  Instead we need to address the root cause of the problem, which is privatisation and deregulation.  The sooner we face up to that reality and bring public transport back into public ownership, the sooner we will be able to develop a public transport system that is fit for the people of Greater Manchester – one that is run as a true public service rather than as a source of private profit.”

The next meeting of the Campaign for Free Public Transport will be at 7.15pm on Thursday 18th December in the Friends Meeting House.  We will discuss the ramifications of the overwhelming NO vote and where we go from here.

31 responses to “The Respect Party welcomes the outcome of the TIF referendum.”

  1. Mark P Avatar
    Mark P

    The case for free public transport is a good one.

    But any suggestion that this no vote was in any significant measure a vote for free public transport, nationalisation of the transport services, a vote for radical action to reduce carbon emissions is surely dangerously delusional.

    Lets be honest about the forces that galvanised the No vote, and it wasn’t a campaign for free public transport was it? A dose of political reality in analysing the outcome wouldn’t go amiss.

    Mark P

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  2. Neil Williams Avatar
    Neil Williams

    A very good campaign by Respect in Greater Manchester and an an example to other Respect branches of a good local campaign.

    All congestion charges are regessive in that the rich and wealthy carry on using their BMW’s /Audi’s/Merceedes etc while the poor and less wealthy are crowded onto often poor and expensive public transport (Green Party take note).

    Respect is and should be PRO good quality free or cheap Pubic Transport and Not anti car which one day not too far in the future will be a clean and cheap way to travel when good affordable electric cars are developed (ofcourse we are not there yet).

    Manchester got it just right when it called for pubic transport to be:
    1. Massively expanded;
    2. Fully integrated;
    3. Publicly owned and
    4. Free at the point of use.

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  3. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    Lets be honest about the forces that galvanised the No vote, and it wasn’t a campaign for free public transport was it?

    It was a vote against regressive taxation, against road closures, against pervasive surveillance and against massive hectoring publicity campaigns. Mine was, at least.

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  4. upnorth Avatar
    upnorth

    Mark P. My Union branch of the RMT recommended a no vote as did the `Manchester and North of England regional council` of the RMT. Yes rank and file railworkers galvanised to vote no. For all the reasons you find delusional.

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  5. Clive Searle Avatar
    Clive Searle

    Mark, I have no illusions about the effect that the Respect campaign had with regard to the No vote. Our influence was tiny. I’m happy to accept that. The influence of the official No camapign was massive – they had huge sums to spend as did the yes campaign. We had a few hundred pounds spent over several months.

    But you should also be aware that many people (not all or even a majority but enough) simply saw through the false choice they were given. And for all the right reasons. Perhaps it is because we have been promised improvements in, for example, the Metrolink for years but they haven’t materialised because Labour first held back the money and then decided to turn much of the original grant into a potential loan. Perhaps it is simply that people don’t want to pay more tax when they can’t afford it. Perhaps they just don’t trust the government to deliver. I’m with them over that.

    Now the question facing those who want to see free public transport is “Where do we go from here?” We could accept that the No voters were all simply in the pocket of the Trafford Centre and local big business, in love with their cars and give up. Or we can go further with our campaign and try and win more people to the idea that free public transport and an end to de-regulation is not only necessary but possible as well.

    The Labour controlled local councils happily told us that there was ‘No Plan B’ during the referendum if the vote went against the Congestion Charge. If the Left is to have any influence or credibility now is the time to say loud and clear that we do have a Plan B – and we have a good idea what it looks like.

    Of course we should have no illusions about how easy it will be to win. But let’s face it, if we can’t win such things as a free or minimal fare public transport system that is fully integrated then we might as well give up trying to change the world altogther – climate change alone should be a good enough reason to try, regardless of the specifics of congestion in any particular city.

    The fight for this reform aint going to be easily won – but then again what social change that has challenged the dominance of big business ever has been?

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  6. Mark P Avatar
    Mark P

    Thanks Clive. A measured and well thought-out response.

    Travelling around Europe makes one aware how pitiful our public transport system is.

    In just about every European city I’ve visiited there are cycle paths as part of wide pavements. Taking cycles off busy roads by widening pavements makes cycling instantly much safer and more popular.

    When I’ve gone to football n Europe on almost every occasion you get free public transport as part of your match ticket. An imaginative idea rhat gets people out of their cars.

    And of course its much cheaper. Trams and wider pavements to accommodate cycles mean road planners see space for others apart from car drivers as key.

    Can congestion-charging help? To my mind thats a tactical not a strategic question of principle. Good luck with the campaign!

    Mark P

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  7. Clive Searle Avatar
    Clive Searle

    “Can congestion-charging help? To my mind thats a tactical not a strategic question of principle.”
    Indeed. I’m not opposed to congestion charging per se but simply to the scheme proposed in Manchester (see discussion at SU) and I certainly wouldn’t be a friend of the Trafford Centre and other out of town centres, etc as I’d quite happily put a parking charge on their car parks to help pay for public transport improvements.

    I think the big difference is that the government wanted to bring in marketised congestion charging as a matter of principal and then the councils worked back from that to develop their schemes. We on the other hand want to start for a principal of public transport as a public service and work forward from that.

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  8. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    The basic feeling I had from people at work was that it was a prohibitive tax on workers driving to work. Unlike in London the tax would have hit many ordinary people travelling into Manchester who had no alternative form of transport and couldn’t afford to pay the daily £5.
    It even hit Wythenshawe where I work, one of the poorest parts of Manchester, which was outside the CC zone as the motorway carves its way through the area.
    People were also cynical about the public transport promises, the tram was promised to Wythenshawe years ago, but cancelled after much preparatory work had already been undertaken.
    And they gambled not unreasonably I think, that the government will probably come up with most of the cash anyway.

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  9. chjh Avatar
    chjh

    Unlike in London the tax would have hit many ordinary people travelling into Manchester who had no alternative form of transport and couldn’t afford to pay the daily £5. Replace ‘Unlike’ with ‘As’, and you have a more accurate sentence. There are one or two ordinary people down here. Remember that one of the problems that Livingstone ran into was that the CC was too successful in cutting car driving, and thus it didn’t raise the sums he had budgeted for. If we were all the idle rich we would be able to afford the cost, surely?

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  10. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    Well as an exiled Londoner I can speak with two hats on. The London CC covers a much smaller area, limited mainly to the City and its close environs than the proposed Manchester scheme. That was my point.

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  11. Sean Thompson Avatar
    Sean Thompson

    Neil,
    “Respect is and should be PRO good quality free or cheap Pubic Transport and Not anti car which one day not too far in the future will be a clean and cheap way to travel when good affordable electric cars are developed (ofcourse we are not there yet).”

    You are entirely wrong in your attitude to cars in general and to electric cars in particular:

    1.Where is the electrical energy going to come from? Mainly from gas and coal power stations, so you are merely transferring from one fossil fuel – petrol/derv – to a couple of others. Even if we were to magically switch to wind/wave/tidal generated electricity overnight there is no way we could increase our generation capacity to include the 24% of our carbon footprint currently generated by the 30 million vehicles in Britain.

    2.CO2 generation is not the only problem with cars. No matter what energy source is used by those vehicles they create congestion everywhere and demand more and more road space. Cars are strangling our cities.

    3. The car is perhaps the most socially and physically destructive device developed in capitalist society. Leaving aside the millions (yes, millions) who have been killed on the roads, the car – the most perfect of capitalist commodities – has led to the erosion of town centres local communities and to the creation of ever expanding monocultural suburbs that demand car journeys in order to get to work, to the shops, even to school.

    In order to make a sizeable reduction in our energy use (whether petrol, gas, coal or nuclear fuelled), in order to rebuild vibrant and human scaled city centres, in order to establish people friendly local communities with local schools, shops and social facilities within walking or cycling distance, in order to prevent the countryside being swallowed up by ever more roads and low density suburbs, you are right to say that we need a revolutionised public transport system. But we will also need to get rid of the car – at least as a ubiquitous means of personal transport.

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  12. Strategist Avatar
    Strategist

    Well good luck with your campaign, Clive.

    I am not surprised by the referendum result although personally I think it is a shame. I think it is wrong to paint it as a victory for the working class, it is a victory for the Clarkson car lobby and for people who don’t believe that we can or should ever act collectively to solve real social & environmental problems.

    I expect – not hope, I very much wish it was otherwise – that
    *this will see the car lobby within Gtr Manchester triumphant, the councils will not take them on again for some years;
    *the ghettoisation of the bus service will continue, and the day when they are brought back under public control will be set backwards;
    *much as they are needed, there will be no parking charges levied at the Trafford Centre (they do not have the legal powers to do this);
    * Manchester will remain the mediocre environment that it is and will wait ten years to see the kind of money that couldhave been spent become available again.

    Your campaign means that the above need not be inevitable, but it remains my expectation. The people have spoken, and the fact is they have voted against collective solutions to collective problems. I yield to no-one in my contempt for New Labour, but in my view this proposal wasn’t one of their crimes.

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  13. Clive Searle Avatar
    Clive Searle

    “The people have spoken, and the fact is they have voted against collective solutions to collective problems”

    No Strategist, they have spoken against a privatised solution to collective problems. The TIF bid would have made regulation of the buses harder not simpler. I really don’t see why someone who would have contempt for City Academies, Poly-Clinics and all the other range of privatised, marketised ‘solutions’ on offer from New Labour goes all dewy eyed at the same type of offer over transport.

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  14. chjh Avatar
    chjh

    bill – no argument about the London scheme covering a much smaller area. But it covers parts of Southwark and Lambeth, and goes as far west as Marylebone – it’s not just the City and its environs. And it does discriminate aganist workers and the poor, just as the Manchester scheme would have.

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  15. Alan Thornett Avatar
    Alan Thornett

    I seem to have a minority view in both organisations I am a member of — Socialist Resistance and Respect — on the issue of congestion charging. I think it was a mistake to campaign for a NO vote in Manchester and the result has been a victory first and foremost for the car lobby.
    My approach, had I been in Manchester, would have been to support it and propose improvements. We should not oppose everything until we get the ultimate solution. We could have argued against the flat charge and in favor of higher charges for the big gas guzzlers and exemption for small low-emission cars along the lines that Livingstone was proposing and which Johnson has now scrapped. We could have argued for employers to pay the charge for workers within the zone. We could have argued for the kind of exemptions which are built into the London charge for residents, essential workers, hospital attendance etc. Getting the scheme defeated amounts at this stage to a green (or not so green) light to carry on polluting with all its consequences in CO2 emissions and air pollution.
    I fully agree with the alternative vision of a car-free Manchester with free public transport which the left campaign against the charge embraced, but I can’t understand why the congestion charge would have been an obstacle to campaigning for this. Surely it would be a small step in the right direction – and would have reduced congestion and CO2 emissions at least to some extent.
    Given the scale of the climate change problem I think we should in some cases support even modest and flawed improvements and argue for them to be made more effective and equitable. Of course they are not the solution even then. But they do improve things to some extent and they do not stop us putting our own far more radical vision forward, in fact they can be a platform for doing so.

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  16. upnorth Avatar
    upnorth

    I agree with Clive. This is a kick inthe teeth for the pro privatisation policies of the new labour authority. The discussion now has to be widened in Manchester to oppose the attacks in the health service, education and a return of all transport systems to public ownership. Pensioners get free travel on trains and buses in off peak times, we want this to be extended to everybody.

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  17. PhilW Avatar
    PhilW

    I want to agree with Sean Thompson on the issue of cars in general: the idea of taking a tonne of metal with you to move 70kg of human being is plainly ridiculous and unsustainable. Car are one of the biggest drivers of inequality on a world scale. They directly kill 1.2 million people per year, mainly pedestrians and cyclists in developing countries. They make our cities into alienating urban wastelands. Finally, it is not possible to devise a renewable energy system that can fuel cars without having a major environmental impact and depriving people of energy for socially-necessary uses.

    I think Clive Searle’s arguments against congestion charging are very valid. In response to Alan Thornett, I think that while a more “equitable” system of charging could be devised, the argument against privatising anti-congestion measures (and devolving the responsibility onto individuals) is a very strong one. I don’t think you can call on employers to pay the charge: that could even encourage those currently using public transport to drive!

    I don’t think it is possible to say “this is a victory for the car lobby” (and thereby a defeat for equitable, collective anti-congestion measures) as the latter has not had a proper airing. Indeed, if significant numbers of people were listening to us, saying the car lobby won would be counterproductive, because it looks like what the various local authorities are saying now “well, you’ve said you don’t want public transport and other environmental measures, so you won’t get them”.

    The result is due to a whole series of contradictory sentiments coming together. Although it is perhaps the clearest example, it is not the only time that people from all classes have expressed an unwillingness to pay for the environmental crisis (e.g. fuel and energy prices) and it was therefore predictable. Given that, the task for socialists is to relate to the fact that this is how working class people respond to inequitable environmental measures – and to devise a strategy that understands that underneath what might look like selfishness is an “instinctive” class response. This was something that Hans Magnus Enzensberger discussed in an article published in 1974 (see the end of my article at http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=459#more-459).

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  18. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    Clive: the government wanted to bring in marketised congestion charging as a matter of principal and then the councils worked back from that to develop their schemes.

    Bill: they gambled not unreasonably I think, that the government will probably come up with most of the cash anyway.

    Yes. The deal on offer was £2.7bn of central government funding, £1.2bn of which would have to be repaid from the proceeds of the charge. Nobody ever explained why the government couldn’t just give the region the £1.5bn with no strings attached.

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  19. Strategist Avatar
    Strategist

    Clive: “I really don’t see why someone who would have contempt for City Academies, Poly-Clinics and all the other range of privatised, marketised ’solutions’ on offer from New Labour goes all dewy eyed at the same type of offer over transport.”

    I don’t about “dewy-eyed”! (he says, gazing lovingly at the map of the M60 cordon…) I don’t see the congestion charge as analogous to city academies or private polyclinics. I’d see the closest analogy as being with Pay & Display on street parking.

    I honestly don’t think this scheme was a PFI. I consider PFI to be a scheme where the government is paying a private company to borrow money on its own behalf, so that the debt doesn’t appear as public borrowing. PFI is completely mad, but the TIF wasn’t that. Phil has supplied the numbers – a govt grant of £1.5bn and a govt (public) loan of £1.2bn.

    Would Respect campaign for all on-street parking in Manchester City Centre to be provided free at the point of use as a public service? Short of banning all on-street parking everywhere, how would you ration it? (This is a genuine question, not some kind of smartarse trick.)

    Clive: “The TIF bid would have made regulation of the buses harder not simpler.”

    Genuinely interested in this, please tell us more – how come?

    Phil: “Nobody ever explained why the government couldn’t just give the region the £1.5bn”.

    The government wants congested cities across the country to bring in congestion charging, and the £1.5bn was a sweetener for Manchester to go first.

    “they gambled not unreasonably I think, that the government will probably come up with most of the cash anyway” Well, I guess that we’ll see about that. That’s what Clive’s campaign needs to try & do now, I suppose. I’d have rather had a bird in the hand than 1.5 billion in the bush…

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  20. Clive Searle Avatar
    Clive Searle

    I’ll respond to some of the other points later but on ethe question of one street parking. Some years ago the city council sold off the on street parking to the private sector. the result has been a massive increase in parking charges, an increase in car park charges and the extension of double yellow lines where there used to be single ones that allowed free parking on Staurday faternoons and sundays. The result has been massive profits for the private car parks. Do i think that was wrong – yes.

    And strategist. The grants and loans wouuld have been used to fund private sector buses and private sector congestion charges. It’s a private finance deal – of a different form – as polyclinics are different to academies, but it’s giving public funds to the private sector for private sector profit. Simple.

    you write “The government wants congested cities across the country to bring in congestion charging, and the £1.5bn was a sweetener for Manchester to go first. ”

    well if you think withdrawing previously promised funds and then linking them to a regressive tax as a ‘sweetener’ then please never offer me a cup of tea.

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  21. upnorth Avatar
    upnorth

    I don`t think some contributors realise just how pissed off workers are with the increasing amount of tax they pay. This along with the massive increases in food, gas, electric and water etc. the prvateers now want to charge us to drive into our city. Workers at my depot were solidly against another excuse to be made to cough up again. Let the private companies pay for the transport improvements and if they don`t want to then bring it back into public ownership. B****cks to the shareholders dividend.

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  22. Roy Avatar
    Roy

    The most prominent supporters of the YES campaign were Stagecoach and First Group – they carried YES posters on every bus and tram in the city. Not surprising really, since they would have profited directly from the new facilities (such as extra units on the trams) that the TIF would have given them gratis.

    In many ways the TIF was worse than a PFI. With a PFI at least the public get a hospital, school or fire station which will provide them with a free service. With the TIF, the private operators get extra facilities, provided out of the public purse, which they will then charge the public to use, and which the taxpayer, not the company, will have to pay back over several decades.

    As a sweetener we were offered a freeze on fares for one year. Big deal. They freeze the fares every year anyway, and then put them up at the end of the year. This would have been no different. We weren’t even offered free bus travel for kids, which they’ve got in London. Children in Manchester pay 70p per journey. If they want to travel from say Crumpsall to Chorlton they must pay First group 70p to get into town then Stagecoach 70p to get to Chorlton. And the same again coming back, as there are no return tickets.

    All in all a Yes vote would have made it much harder to bring our buses back into public ownership since it would have strengthened and further enriched the private operators. Plus it would have strengthened the argument that all is well under private ownership, and that public transport can even be improved under private ownership. A momentous multi billion pound public subsidy for the private operators is not the way to end privatization.

    If the yes vote had gone through it would have made it much harder for us to fight for car free zones in the city. Having allowed them to ‘invest’ £300million in erecting giant number-plate-recognition gantries across every road into the city (at two points – the inner and outer zones), how much harder would it have been to get them to kill the goose that lays the golden egg? And if motorists are paying a congestion charge they will feel even more convinced that they own the roads they are paying to use!

    Manchester Respect was right to campaign for a NO vote. The GMPTA has always proclaimed that it has no Plan B. We do have a Plan B, and now we are in a much stronger position to fight for it.

    And here’s a further thought, just by way of putting the astronomical figures into perspective. If instead of throwing the £2.8bn at the private sector to get them to implement a range of grandiose schemes, if instead that money was invested in treasury bonds (or perhaps in government owned 12% preference shares in the partially nationalized banks,) the income stream would be sufficient to provide a fully comprehensive zero fare bus service across the entire conurbation in perpetuity! (Assuming of course that the buses are taken back into public ownership.)

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  23. Clive Searle Avatar
    Clive Searle

    Roy’s points are well worth noting and more importantly the need to step up our campaign – Forward to the Plan B!

    (Must think up a better slogan ……)

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  24. Alan Thornett Avatar
    Alan Thornett

    I would like to think that PhilW is right when he argues that the vote against the charge was an “instinctive class response” and not a victory for the car lobby. Unfortunately the message from the vote is that the argument has not been won to curb the car by popular mandate. It will be even more difficult after the Manchester vote, which was indeed a test case. It is also likely to be the case even if far better alternatives were on offer. The car culture is very strong. It is in this sense that the vote was a victory for the car lobby. It puts this kind of restriction on the car on the back burner for a long time. It goes alongside Johnson’s rolling back of the western extension of the congestion charge in London, though he won’t touch the central zone since the result would be a return to even worse gridlock than existed before.
    No one supporting the YES has addressed my point that the practical upshot of the NO vote is to carry on polluting with all its consequences for the worlds poor — since unfortunately we are not on the verge of getting free, nationalised, public transport and car free cities.
    In any case we have to get away from a situation where the economic issues are seen as more ‘working class’ than environmental ones. Clean air and a sustainable biosphere are just as much working class issues as wages and working conditions. In many ways they are the ultimate working class issues.

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  25. Clive searle Avatar
    Clive searle

    But alan – the Manchester congestion scheme only proposed to reduce emissions by 6%. Surely you can see that we need more than this. A solution that locks car use into the city’s finances for 25 years years – with no reduction in fares or a serious integrated public transport system was not something you could support as a ‘lesser of two evils’

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  26. Alan Thornett Avatar
    Alan Thornett

    Yes Clive, it was a flawed and inadequate scheme. But it was a modest step in the right direction as far as the domination of the car and emissions and pollution is concerned. It would have made Manchester a healthier place to live. A 6% reduction is not to be sneezed at (as it might be said). But potentially it was more because it would have created a momentum beyond Manchester as far as restricting car use was concerned. What has locked the city into car use is the NO vote — which sets any restriction on the car back for the foreseeable future. I am 100% behind the campaign for free public transport, and for a car free city, but all this is unfortunately more difficult since the NO vote.

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  27. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    But the “car culture” as you put it, addresses a real issue – people need to drive to work. The Manchester scheme covered an area 10 times larger than the London congestion charge and would have meant it was impossible to drive to work without being hit. In effect this would have meant a £25 a week surcharge on predominantly working class commuters. That is a very significant wage cut.
    In London the CC covers a much smaller area, and those who work in the City generally travel in by bus, tube or rail. If you put the Congestion Charge in a ring through Southwark, Brixton, Lewisham, Greenwich etc. then see what your chances of getting that passed would be.
    The overwhelming defeat of the proposal reflects these simple facts. In a sense that may mean it was a “victory” for the car lobby, but what is that? Unless people have an alternative to the car then what else are they supposed to do except drive?
    Even if the public transport measures of the Manchester scheme had been implemented in full, they would still have not amounted to anything like as comprehensive a network as say in…London.
    What’s more its almost certain that the government will have to come back with some other proposal to improve transport links, which will no doubt produce a similar drop in emissions to those originally proposed, but without the onerous poll tax of the Manchester scheme.

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  28. Alan Thornett Avatar
    Alan Thornett

    Bill J think’s its “almost certain that the government will have to come back with some other proposal to improve transport links, which will no doubt produce a similar drop in emissions to those originally proposed”. I would not hold your breath on this one Bill J, nor would I be so complacent. If they do come up with something the chances of it matching the (not insubstantial) £3 billion on offer in the referendum is pretty remote — as is any reduction in emissions without restricting the car.
    I have no illusions at all about restricting the car by referendum. Livingstone would not have won a referendum on it in London in my view. He did it via an election pledge which meant that it was one consideration amongst many. It is hard to get people to vote for an increased charge even if it is a progressive and equitable charge — though that would make it somewhat easier. Add to this the car lobby the Tory Party and the right-wing bias against most things ecological and there is no chance.
    I think to call it a poll tax shows how the argument has lost a sense of proportion. The £25 applies to those who drive into both zones at rush hour at both ends of the day Monday to Friday — a tiny proportion of the population of Greater Manchester I would think. I would still be in favour of getting away from the flat charge and making it more equitable as Livingstone was doing in London, however. Vote YES and then press for improvements in the system would have been my position.
    But in any case we cannot see the working class only as drivers of cars and thorough the interests that this generates. Most people in the streets and living next to the streets are also workers and for them a better environment, less noise and congestion and cleaner and safer air to breathe are also important.

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  29. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    Its not a matter of complacency, its just likely that’s all.
    You might say its only a small proportion but at my workplace it probably effected getting on for a third of everyone there and that was somewhere on the periphery of the centre. It would have amounted to around a 10% pay cut for those low paid workers.
    I bet in fact it would have been a considerable proportion of workers in Manchester, as many thousands of workers who work in Manchester, live in outlying towns, Wigan, Rochdale, Leigh, Stockport or even Wythenshawe etc.
    What’s more the new public transport on offer would not have materially altered that fact, they would have still had to use the car to get into town.
    That’s not to say that everyone against it did so for anything other than selfish motives, lots of businesses opposed it too. But you cannot fight climate change by punishing the working class.
    As this farrago proved.

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  30. Prinkipo Exile Avatar
    Prinkipo Exile

    There is a presumption by people living in London, that Greater Manchester is the same – one large conurbation with a big city at its heart and an already established publiclty owned rapid transport system. In fact although overwhelmingly urban, Greater Manchester is really a series of large towns all connected by a relatively poor system of privately owned public transport with little in the way of cross area connections (both rail and bus companies are private sector with little state regulation or oversight).

    Because of this the car is often the only means of transport. In addition it is poorer.

    The charge was never going to work in the way it could have worked in London – an alternative approach is needed and Respect was right to stress that.

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  31. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    If they do come up with something the chances of it matching the (not insubstantial) £3 billion on offer in the referendum is pretty remote

    Actually £2.7 billion, of which £300 million (on the scheme proponents’ own figures) would go on establishing the toll network and administering the scheme. £1.5 billion was on offer as a grant – on condition that charging was introduced to cover the cost of the other £1.2 billion.

    As for whether the charge was a poll tax, I think the label fits well enough – despite a bit of tinkering to cater for the lowest income levels and for people doing certain kinds of job, this was essentially a flat-rate tax. It’s a hangover from the fading New Labour mindset, according to which raising progressive taxes is political death, but raising flat-rate taxes was seen as legitimate and fair. Obviously serious politics goes a bit beyond chanting “Make the rich pay for the crisis”, but I think payment for public services out of progressive taxation is a principle worth hanging on to.

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