Labour’s “Insulting” Libraries Comment Needs An Apology Say Lib Dems

Nottingham Liberal Democrats are calling out a Labour Party leaflet that claims the City Council saved “libraries under threat of closure”. The libraries at Bilborough, Aspley, Basford and Radford-Lenton were earmarked for closure by the City Council itself in 2024, meaning that the Labour Party’s claim it “saved them” was, in fact a u-turn due to public pressure.

Speaking at the weekend, Nottingham Liberal Democrat campaigns coordinator, Lloydie James Lloyd said:
“There were huge campaigns against the closure of libraries, and as Lib Dems, we backed these excellent campaigns. It’s immensely insulting to everyone who put pressure on the council to change their mind, for Labour to then claim they “saved” the libraries - they were the ones who put them under threat in the first place.

“You can’t go around threatening to close local facilities and then claim you have saved them because you were forced into an embarrassing u-turn. This is the sort of thing that gets politics a bad name and Nottingham Labour need to do better.”

Lloydie is calling on the leaflet, which is currently being distributed in Castle Ward (which contains Castle Marina, The City Centre and The Park Estate) to be withdrawn.
“The decent thing to do would be to admit this was an error and immediately stop the distribution of this misleading piece of propaganda. A correction in their next publication would also be a welcome move. Campaigners fought hard to get these libraries to stay open and Labour should never have threatened them with closure in the first place.”

The Labour leaflet has a headline of “Positive Politics” - something that several local residents have commented “must be ironic”.

UPDATE:
Since Lloydie making the call for withdrawal of the offending leaflet, Labour have refused to apologise. However, in a Nottingham Post article, local libraries campaigners described Labour's claims as “a bit rich”. There has been cross-party condemnation of Labour's libraries claims despite their refusal to withdraw them. 

This is not the first time Labour have ended up in hot water over literature that they have distributed in Castle Ward. In 2024, a letter detailng the financial impacts of the council's effective declaration of bankruptcy in November 2023 was sent out on City Council headed paper. It was later discovered that the letter wasn't in fact from the council, but was paid for by the Labour Party. The council's legal department “issued guidance” to councillors after this lack of transparency.