Tom Barker, Leicester Socialist Party
In less than 30 minutes, Leicester’s Labour city council voted through a series of massive cuts to local spending on 20 February – destroying lives in record time.
From 2010 to 2020, the city council’s cuts will have totalled 62% of its budget, excluding social services.
Leicester Socialist Party helped organise a lobby of the budget-setting meeting, where we called on the council to instead use reserves and borrowing powers to launch a fightback against all cuts.
Leicester Socialist Party is contesting May’s mayoral and council elections, on a platform of using the city’s reserves of over £100 million to set a legal no-cuts budget.
This would buy time to build a mass movement of Leicester trade unions and residents, and put pressure on a very weak government to give us more money.