Petition calls on Polanski to make no-cuts stand

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee has welcomed a new petition launched by leading trade unionists calling on the Green Party leader Zack Polanski to mobilise his party in the struggle against local council austerity.

The petition – launched by 20 current and former members of trade union executives – makes an opening appeal to Zack “to ensure that in this year’s local council elections no candidate shall appear on the ballot paper on behalf of the Greens in England who has not made a public commitment to vote against all cuts and closures to council services, jobs, pay and conditions should they be elected as a councillor on May 7th”.

Sign here:

These are the first set of elections being fought since Zack Polanski won the Green Party leadership last summer denouncing the ‘system rigged for the rich’ – and, with local public services still facing an unbearable funding squeeze, opposing all further cuts and closures should be a no-brainer.

As the petition says, while “we cannot expect Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, the Lib Dems, the Tories or Reform to join the struggle to defend local public services… we should not expect anything less from those who have spoken against the establishment’s austerity agenda”.

The trade unionists’ petition further asks that Zack Polanski “instructs all current Green Party councillors to make the same commitment for future council budget-making meetings, including in the 40-plus local authorities where the Greens are presently part of the council administration”. The Greens do have a substantial presence in local government and if their hundreds of councillors were to take such a stand – and a protest movement organised to back them up – who could categorically say that Starmer and the chancellor Rachel Reeves wouldn’t be forced into another U-turn?

The central battle remains to get the trade union leaders to build on the heroic resistance of those like the Birmingham council bin-workers fighting wage cuts and poorer services, but a widescale councillors’ rebellion would open up a new front. That’s why the trade unionists’ petition to Zack Polanski deserves all our support.

But can councillors resist the cuts?

The main argument made by councillors from the establishment parties for why they ‘reluctantly’ go along with the devastation of local public services is that it would not be ‘legal’ for councils to resist. Firstly, that’s not a good argument from those who say they are ‘fighting the system’ – only not now apparently, and not in their local town hall in defence of public services! But also, it is just not true.

Since its inception, TUSC has pioneered an anti-austerity strategy of councils using their prudential borrowing powers and reserves to set needs-based budgets as part of building a mass campaign for proper government funding for local services, explaining exactly how that was possible. Not by ignoring the legal requirement for a council to set a ‘balanced budget’ each year before it is able to spend money or issue council tax bills, but by formally ‘balancing’ it by the use of borrowing powers and reserves.

What powers councils have and how they could be used to this end has been detailed in previous TUSC documents, including the 55-page briefing Preparing a No Cuts People’s Budget, available from the TUSC website. What is very relevant is that the alternative budget amendments moved by TUSC-supporting councillors and explored in this briefing were not recommended by council finance officers when they were presented – but they were not ruled as ‘illegal’ either. There really is no excuse for any councillor to go along with local austerity policies.

The latest developments on local council funding and the law were addressed in a TUSC discussion document arguing for a clear anti-austerity stance in the 2026 elections from any candidates selected by the newly formed Your Party (see ‘Ideas about the next local elections’ at tusc.org.uk). But the same points apply to Green Party candidates too.

It is clear that local austerity will not be defeated by votes in the council chambers alone but by combining such defiance with building a mass movement. But it is also absolutely clear that austerity definitely won’t be defeated by councillors voting for it!