We all know that Love is the answer, but maybe not if the question is “Would you mind breathing into this please sir!” Satisfied that the crystals hadn’t turned green and that I was totally innocent the Police Officer directed me out of the duckpond and back onto the main road. It was Somerset Council’s budget meeting, and I not only had to get there to vote but I wanted, this year, to tell you good people, and my mate Dave, exactly how it works.

Somerset Council has been in existence since 2022, and it hasn’t had a single year when it’s not scraped through by the seat of its pants. Like Muchelney, St Austell and the Casa de Leyva in Colombia it was built on Clay. Basically, the Tories that had run it as Somerset County Council had in fact run it into the ground by raising far too low levels of council tax and then planning for a ‘Unitary’ authority which would essentially pool the resources of the much more successful district councils (by scrapping them). It didn’t work out. The Tories even fell out with themselves as they tried to forge ahead with the Unitary project or slam the brakes on.

Wriggle

In 2022 the Lib Dems won the election for the new Council and have been firefighting ever since .

This time each year the Council has to set its council tax naturally blaming the former Tory administration for the mess it inherited and the former Tory government for landing it with statutory services it had to deliver giving it very little wriggle room.

The budget meeting was a long one. Starting at 11am the meeting didn’t finish till nearly 6 in the evening.

There are 110 councillors.

Thank the lord they didn’t all HAVE TO speak.

Feudal

If you live in a rural county like Somerset and you no longer want to vote the way your feudal ancestors have done since 1066 these days you’re now allowed to without being nailed to a tree. Mostly around the county that seems to be Lib Dem or if you live in Bridgwater Labour or Frome Green. Then there’s 3 independents, another independent who doesn’t want to call herself independent, so she calls herself ‘no party’ and then there’s 3 ReformUK newcomers. Well, they’re not newcomers, they’re all ex-Tories who crossed the floor. They almost had a fourth when Burnham Tory Councillor Hendry joined them for 4 days then decided he’d made a mistake and quickly rejoined the Conservatives.

Somerset County has 62 Lib Dems and 46 opposition councillors. So even if all the opposition united the Lib Dems would still get their budget passed.

Social

If a Council can’t balance its books, then a section 114 notice is declared, and the Government sends in the commissioners to run the council for them. Each year the Lib Dems narrowly avoided this and this year’s budget was the same. The new Labour Government helped them (and us!) out by preventing them raising the council tax to 11% and providing funds to cover some of the statutory elements, the longest piece of string that couldn’t be measured being the money for children and adult social care.

This year was the final chance the Lib Dems would have to prove they had managed the county budget because 2027 is election year. Once more they pulled off a fingernail scraping solution as their long promised ‘transformation’ project seemed to see lots of workers lose their jobs and possibly over paid consultants replacing them.

Labour wasn’t happy. But there was only 5 of us. So, Labour leader Leigh Redman scolded them for the cuts, the selling off of assets and storing up problems for the future. We voted against.

The Greens weren’t happy. But there was only 5 of them. So Green leader Dave Mansell chastised them for a heavy reliance on consultants and losing a lot of good officers. They voted against.

ReformUK was in an odd position. A week ago, on BBC Politics West their leader Bente Height when asked what they would cut to make the budget balance said, ‘I don’t know because if you want services you have to pay for them”. So, at the meeting resorted to saying County had ‘too many employees in the first place’. And so voted against.

The Independents were independently minded. And all voted FOR the budget, Gwil Wren saying the budget was ‘robust but fragile’ and ‘but probably won’t survive contact with reality’.

Financial

So, it was down to the Tories. With their 32 members they took a surprising position to not just oppose the budget but put forward an amendment of their own. Which, naturally they’d put all over social media in the days running up to the meeting. Sadly, the finance officers of the council pointed out that if the Tory amendment was passed it would then become the county budget but would then cause a financial crisis which would likely lead to the issuing of the section 114.

The Tory leader then asked if he could still propose it anyway ‘knowing full well everyone would vote against it’. Well, ‘technically’ advised the monitoring officer. He did and it was voted down by everyone else. As he’d expected. And allowing Lib Dem spokesman Mike Rigby to say “in my 13 years of seeing some ham-fisted stunts by the party opposite this one takes some beating”.

Several hours after the meeting started, Somerset Council voted. 56 for and 34 against. And that’s democracy. In action.

I went and had a haircut.

PS:- Note to self. Stop being so obsessed with bloody AI!!