Trams and votes and plans

Last Friday, there were private talks between councils across three counties that effectively killed off the idea of a congestion charge in Nottingham, Derby and Leicester.
Yesterday, just three days later, Nottingham City Council voted through a legal order allowing it to impose a Workplace Parking Levy on city businesses instead (provided it gets Government permission).
Hold on a minute - only THREE days later? That’s a bit keen isn’t it?
Certainly is. And I can guess why.
It isn’t because the council worries that Nottingham businesses think a Workplace Parking Levy is the most constructive contribution to the city economy since the Blitz (though you could understand councillors wanting to push it through before the bomb that is business resentment explodes).
No. Park your tax madness anti-business conspiracy theories right there (but don’t park them at the office).
This is the story of a simple political calculation, one not entirely unrelated to the bloody slaughter exacted on Labour nationally in the local government elections a couple of weeks back.
Truth be told, I reckon some at the council have been worried for a long while that if they didn’t get funding in place for the next stages of the tram before the end of this Parliament then they might not get it at all.
So, the WPL – or Tram Tax, as some disgracefully cynical journalists have called it – must be pushed through, even if the process is starting to resemble that Biblical tale about heaving a camel through the eye of a needle.
The worry is that if Gordon Brown limps onward to disaster at the next General Election, that nice David Cameron may turn all nasty when he sees the bill for the next stage of the tram sitting in his in-tray. And refuse to cough up.
If, however, the theoretical tram heading for lines two and three has already left the metaphorical financial depot he might not have a choice.
At least the Tories would-be Prime Minister would be in good company. There would be a city full of businesses commiserating with his plight.