Localism: Command and control
Author: The Guardian |
Disaffection takes more than one form. There are protesters in the City of London, caught behind a Day-Glo-jacketed police line, who, as one banner put it yesterday, think “Democracy is an illusion” – but at least they get coverage on Twitter feeds and TV. There are people all over Britain who do not revolt but who have also lost their faith in the system: a mass of citizens as sceptical as any G20 revolutionary about the power of the ballot box. To them, Westminster politics looks introverted and distant. Local democracy is not any better: a source of planning decisions, council tax bills and parking fines – an obtuse branch of officialdom.
There is a standard speech, given by contemporary national politicians, that praises the idea of localism but never the reality of local government. Communities are to be encouraged, but councillors condemned. Both of the big parties are guilty. Localism was one of the first causes of David Cameron’s new Conservatism, but whether he really wants to get elected in order to hand power to authorities that may quickly fall under Labour control is doubtful. Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, says she wants to disperse power, but accompanies that with a dose of scepticism about councils.
Please God, make politics local – but just not quite yet, as MPs might think, but dare not say. Councils are there to be told what to do. Last year Ms Blears actually imposed on them “a duty to promote democracy”, without appearing to see the irony in summoning local choice by central command. Yesterday, in what her department called the biggest shake-up in local government for three decades, 44 councils, covering 3.2 million people in England, became nine big unitary authorities. It happened because Whitehall believes larger councils will be more efficient, rather than because anyone particularly wanted the change.
Local government reform has been one of the half-eaten dog’s dinners of British politics, ever since Harold Wilson scrapped Middlesex and Huntingdonshire in 1965. Soon, other bodies were shunted around for administrative convenience: Saddleworth, which thinks it is in Yorkshire, was ordered into Greater Manchester and then Oldham. Rutland and Herefordshire vanished, then returned. Derby is not in Derbyshire. And the public is understandably confused. If local democracy is to mean something, it must involve local loyalties. Meddling with structures erodes them. That does not mean the district councils that died yesterday were loved – and the flag of St Piran raised in newly unitary Cornwall yesterday may be popular. But while councils come and go for central convenience, do not expect localism to come alive.