Angela Rayner: Tories’ council fund is cynical pre-election sticking plaster

I'm kind of frustrated this is news, obviously the tories will spend this year making populist moves to get over the line.

I'm glad it's being covered, but annoyed that people can't see this nonsense anyway.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Angela Rayner has accused the Conservatives of cynically applying a “sticking plaster” to council finances to get through the next election, as local authority leaders warn that more will go bust next year.

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was forced to bail out councils in England last week with a £600m funding pot to prevent a rebellion of Tory MPs who fear losing their seats.

The warnings from the levelling up secretary will add to Labour’s fears that the Conservatives are pursuing a scorched earth policy of underfunding public services in order to spend its spare cash on tax cuts to boost Sunak’s electoral prospects.

In an interview, Rayner said libraries, sports centres and youth provision were “not a garnish” and rejected calls from some Conservatives to reduce the types of services that councils had to offer.

She said Labour would have to look at the overall state of public finances if it were to take power in the next year, but it would want to move to multi-year funding settlements to help councils plan better and make sure money was directed to the areas that needed it the most.

Roger Gough, the Conservative leader of Kent county council, said he had warned Sunak 15 months ago the government was “sleepwalking into financial disaster” amid dramatically escalating pressure on local authorities.

The original article contains 1,159 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Can someone in the UK tell me what a "sticking plaster" is? I'm guessing spackle? Or is that just the British way of saying "glue?"

Edit: Thank you. I lived there off and on for 2 years and don't remember hearing that phrase.