Lindsay Jenkins: The government is riding roughshod over voters to abolish local councils

Lindsay Jenkins' latest book Disappearing Britain, The EU and the Death of Local Government puts together the jigsaw revealing the agenda for the break up of Britain.

While Blair is away in Brussels negotiating the EU constitution, on which the British people may yet have a say in a referendum, at home his government is spurning local democracy. Unlike the Brussels’ negotiations, that is not headline news.

Shrewsbury District Council asked voters last January if they wanted their council to be abolished and its role taken over by Shropshire County Council as a unitary authority. The answer was clear: 18,000 people, two thirds of those asked, said no, they wished to keep their local council. 

Is the government acting on their views or even taking any notice? Until the High Court intervened this week the answer was no.