John Harris’s excellent article paints a desperate picture of the upcoming financial catastrophe that’s about to explode across the country (One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt – and nobody in Westminster wants to talk about it, 14 January). If Labour wins the next election, then serious radical thinking is required to fix the mess that 14 years of Tory rule has inflicted. There is always money within the political system, as can be demonstrated by the billions that governments are able to find when required, from the furlough scheme to the funding of wars around the world and vanity projects such as HS2.
As Harris notes, not all the blame should be placed at the government’s door. Council leaders are responsible for managing their funding, and there are numerous cases of mismanagement that have resulted in money being wasted.
