COMMENT: Trouble at Mill

1.09.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 9th Sep 2008

Poor old Steve is looking and sounding more and more like a grizzled Victorian mill owner than a trendy young thrusting New Labour politician these days.

After all, the Leader of the Council believes it's not where you come from but where you're going that counts. And according to him, he's really going places. Or so he thinks. Conferences, talks, anywhere in fact to get noticed and spread the tarnished New Labour message.

Unfortunately, back at the mill, the workforce is getting a tad restless. Not least because he wanted to put up heating bills in their tied homes by a modest 162% this winter. Our Steve really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Such ingratitude considering all that he's done for them. After all didn't he fix it so that the ALMO would take away all his responsibility for future maintenance?

More pay for less work, that's his motto. Less work and more pay for him, that is.

Steve, though, thinks it's all a conspiracy and that actually he's doing a grand job - well several grand if you look at his bulging pay packet. First of all he attacked the Lib Dems for telling porky pies and stirring up trouble.

Odd then that the plan to raise heating bills by 162% was all there in black and white for everyone to see in his report to Cabinet. Maybe he doesn't read them? After all, he's away a lot. The oddest thing, some thought, was that this had even been considered a viable option by Labour in the first place - hitting those on the lowest incomes with punitive bills just to keep warm this Winter.

And to add to the surreal nature of it all, our Steve then had to publicly reverse what he'd said was a lie in the first place and then attempt to make a virtue out of necessity. It's only a 65% increase - for now.

Suddenly his image as Labour's super hero is looking about as duff as the product he's selling.

There seemed an unusual amount of restlessness among his normally sycophantic Labour crew, too, at the nervous Cabinet meeting that decided on the dramatic U-Turn. Sally Prentice gave a less than helpful David Miliband-type speech about core values, while acolyte Mark Bennett sported a new beard looking uncomfortably like Charles Clarke's.

Several speakers called for heads to roll. And with the staggering £14 million and still rising temporary housing budget overspend and Labour's dastardly attack on other vulnerable groups through soaring care charges, one is left wondering not so much whose but how many?