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Lambeth Liberal DemocratsNews, views and contact information for the
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COMMENT: Calling Time on Labour’s Licensing Free-for-All
November 1, 2011 4:42 PM
With all the predictability of night following day, Lambeth Labour's cabinet is now finally recommending a ban on new or extended Licensed Premises in Clapham with a so-called Saturation Zone policy.
No doubt this will please some badly affected Clapham residents who have had to suffer all of the attendant crime, anti-social behaviour and drunkeness on the High Road and streets beyond that followed in the wake of the Labour Government's high-profile relaxation of drinking laws only as recently as 2003.
There may be other residents in other parts of Lambeth, though, who may be wondering why only Clapham gets special treatment. Or they may be wondering why it has taken Lambeth quite so long to react to Coalition Government measures to give Councils even more control over Licensing arrangements - especially as neighbouring Southwark was embarking on its third such saturation zone as long ago as 2009?
Lambeth Liberal Democrats, of course, objected to Labour's original Licensing Free-For-All and were roundly castigated for their trouble in the local Press for being 'Party Poopers' - notably by local MP Tessa Jowell who steered the legislation through Parliament. There was more than a suspicion back then that Labour was openly courting the 'yoof' vote in advance of the 2005 General Election. Indeed they were uncovered texting them to 'Vote for the Party Party'.
This cynical move may have got them re-elected but even former Labour Deputy Prime Minister Roy Hattersley was moved to write last year that Jowell's Law was Labour's Ghastliest Mistake - though we're tempted to say not perhaps quite as ghastly as Tony's trumped-up War in Iraq, or Gordon's colossal tally of national debt left behind when he was finally evicted from Number 10.
All these wild excesses have left our country with a monumental hangover of one sort or another that will take some years of careful nursing to get over.
Perhaps when Labour locally finally introduces their much-hyped if tardy saturation policy they may also reflect on the damage they unleashed personally, financially and sociatally, putting undue and unnecessary pressure on health services, policing and local residents whose lives they have ruined just for a cynical round of binge voting?