The future is local... if we’re brave enough!

Dr Paul Harvey, Leader of the Council, Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council

Local Government’s relationship with Central Government remains a tense affair. Issues prevalent in the national news such as funding and the ongoing crisis in social care leave a bitter taste for councils up and down the country, as they seek to stay afloat and cope with the fallout in their communities of the multiplicity of complex problems we’re living all through.

This is not a party political battle, nor is it necessarily ideological. This is one born of a fundamental imbalance of power between local and national sovereignty. Central Government simple does not understand nor does it want to learn about Local Government. It dominates the relationship with contempt and ignorance for Local Government.

That councils are forced to lay out budget proposals before government has decided what their central funding may or not be is ludicrous. We need a far more mature relationship. 

Back in 2014 the Localism Act appeared derived of a policy paper that sought to begin to redress the imbalance. It failed because Central Government cannot help itself from interfering. 

I remember a debate in the heady days of New Labour when Tony Blair was accosted outside a hospital by an angry voter. He personally took responsibility for the failings of the health service that voter had suffered. Government has come to represent the focal point for the failure of all forms of governance and service delivery in the country. There is no local accountability anymore. Our national political discourse has become transactional, from the living room direct to Downing Street.

There is a fundamental failing at the heart of our democracy. We can talk about broken public services, stretched national finances, a BREXIT fallout and post pandemic economic malaise, but the essential point is that the root cause of so much of the failure lies at the heart of our ailing democracy. 

We need to reinvigorate our democracy. From that renewal we can find solutions to some of the most intractable problems society faces. From health, education, justice to local government the solutions rest in the professionals running those same essential areas of the state.

At the heart of the debate is the affirmation of democracy resting with the people, not in the government itself. In essence democracy of, by and for the people should mean exactly that and it is the state’s, both central and local, role to defend those ‘natural’ rights.

We have become accustomed to being governed and giving our consent. We acquiesce and take a minimal part in the business of governance. We look to be led and when the quality of that leadership is lacking it exposes the frailties of the system designed to empower the representatives and executive who govern in our name. 

Traditions of government and civil bureaucracy have been developed over the last two centuries to the point that the body of government is itself a beast, a monolith, that perpetuates itself. It justifies itself and its power by virtue of its being. The disconnection from people and their lives is found in the centralisation of that power. There are different pressures pulling the state apart and at the same time focusing power at the centre. The emergence of regional mayors and of devolved assemblies has augmented local government, but power and financial control are retained largely at the centre of Whitehall in London. These so-called devolved bodies are tinkering around the edges of the fundamental seat of power sited in Whitehall.

Subsidiarity is a forgotten principle that most governments preach when in opposition and misplace when in power. The ideas of localism are only as good as a government willing to let its power go and allow variation and dissent.

Our vote matters only when it counts in the margins and in modern UK politics some votes matter more than others in a first past the post electoral system that sees those seeking power fight over an increasingly narrow selection of society. Disconnection is real when you feel your vote and voice do not matter. 

In the late Victorian era, great civic edifices, like Manchester City Hall, were built that reflected the power of the age divested in places like Manchester. London was powerful, but it was not the only centre of power. Now London eclipses the rest of the country and as such the dichotomy between the capital and the country is stark. Division is worse in places like Boston or Clacton because democracy means little to people when it is remote to them and meaningless.

If a vote had value in changing the condition of people it would transform people’s value in it. Localism is not about simply devolving power, although to begin with that would be a solid start, it is also about enabling the quality of local leadership to take up that power and be effective. We have seen such a hollowing out of local government over decades that this cultural shift we are speaking of here will require time and faith because things will not transform overnight and mistakes will be made.

One size fits all electoral boundaries only serve to draw lines on maps, but genuine coalitions of interest and need can better reflect local priorities. The centre must give up power and devolve this to local government. The danger is that the centre determines the shape of local government.

The evolution of local democracy has to come from the ground up. It has to be functional, it needs to be accountable and it has to deliver results that make a difference to people’s lives. While the centre might establish principles such as a proportional voting system, or codes of conduct, the essential point of subsidiarity needs to be unleashed. Greater Manchester is not rural Lincolnshire, and therefore devolution of democracy has to reflect natural communities.

We should start with a new Localism Act designed with local government, not something done to us, but a new democratic settlement that enshrines a new relationship set down in law as equals.

Broken Britain can only be repaired if we start with our systems of governance and allow a new mature and equal relationship to take root. If we then tend that new growth of innovation and professionalism at a local level the centre might just benefit too from a renewal of faith in what difference politics can mean for people.