Another argument for localism

"We need a skilled politician who knows how to make and execute decisions using the advice of the official mayoral machine and the London Assembly. We do not want an empire-building rent-a-quote.  The obvious recruiting grounds are the assembly, the boroughs and Parliament. A candidate needs experience of London electors. It would help if our candidate either had been or still is a councillor or an MP within the London area. He would know part of the electorate well. He would know the local organisations, and be used to the some of the local media.  It would be good if our candidate had a track record of delivering better service for less cost as a leader or committee chairman in a borough council, or in some other elected office. It would be important that the candidate could devote large amounts of time in the year ahead to the task of wooing the electorate, researching and setting out a plan for sorting out London's problems. I don't mind what sex, race, creed or religion the person is, but I do want someone competent."

With those words (in The Telegraph) John Redwood sets out some qualities that the Tory candidate for London Mayor might need.  The trouble with Britain's centralised system of government is that there is very little opportunity for people to acquire real experience of policy innovation and running genuinely independent local councils.  The situation could not be more different in the USA.  Republican voters have a choice between John McCain, Rudi Giuliani, Mitt Romney and one or two others.  What is notable about Giuliani and Romney is that they have serious executive experience.  Giuliani has run New York.  He has driven down crime, managed budgets and cut taxes.  Romney ran a Winter Olympics for Utah and was also Governor of Massachusetts.  We might have less difficulty finding good candidates for high office if we had our own system of seriously devolved power.  Just a thought.

Comments

[matt wright]

Agree,

Matt

[TomTom]

but that is true, Willy Brandt was Mayor of Berlin, Konrad Adenauer, Mayor of Cologne; Helmut Schmidt was a Hamburg Senator; Helmut Kohl led Ludwigshafen Council before become Prime Minister of Rheinland-Pfalz

Joseph Chamberlain was Mayor of Birmingham and Director of the family firm of Nettlefolds (GKN).

The Victorians had the model but The Treasury destroyed it by removing all local funding from municipal electricity works, gas works, water through Labour nationalisation and Heath nationalising water and breaking up local government.

The creation of Metropolitan Councils led to the bureaucracy of officers and the removal of parish councils where entry could be made into politics.

Abolition of the GLC showed just how unimportant city government was, and that one destructive act made Livingstone a living rebuke to Thatcher upon which he has built his career

[Richard]

I might have more faith in local councils if they didn't put speed bumps in residential areas without the permission of the residents, give planning permission next to housing estates without the permission of the residents, refuse to get rid of fortnightly rubbish collections despite public dissatsifaction with the scheme and various other decisions that irritate people.

[Prentiz]

I might have more faith in local councils if they didn't put speed bumps in residential areas without the permission of the residents, give planning permission next to housing estates without the permission of the residents, refuse to get rid of fortnightly rubbish collections despite public dissatsifaction with the scheme and various other decisions that irritate people.

A) Speed bumps - you're probably right. B) Planning permission - councils have so little discretion these days its almost inevitable - they can reject planning decisions against regulations - but then your council tax goes to pay for the applicant's costs. C) Waste is taxed beyond belief now - and its going to get worse. Do you want weekly deliveries at the cost of super-high council tax? Otherwise you'd be better served blaming either this Government (Gordon Brown's hike in landfill tax in the last budget, for example) or the EU, who's measures to cut landfill caused the issue in the first place. Of course, it is far easier to just blame local councils - which is exactly what the Government would like you to do...

[TomTom]

give planning permission next to housing estates without the permission of the residents

Blame Margaret Thatcher. To stop "left-wing councils" from blocking suupermarket expansion an Appeals System was instituted against Council Planning by reference to DoE inspectors in Bristol representing the Environment Secretary.

The Applicant hired a Barrister to present his case; if he won the Local Authority had to pay ALL costs, so now to preserve budgets Planning Departments just pass anything to avoid being subjected to Whitehall overruling them.

Maybe we should transfer Planning Appeals to Brussels - it is about as near to planing decisions in Darlington as London is

[TomTom]

give planning permission next to housing estates without the permission of the residents

Blame Margaret Thatcher. To stop "left-wing councils" from blocking suupermarket expansion an Appeals System was instituted against Council Planning by reference to DoE inspectors in Bristol representing the Environment Secretary.

The Applicant hired a Barrister to present his case; if he won the Local Authority had to pay ALL costs, so now to preserve budgets Planning Departments just pass anything to avoid being subjected to Whitehall overruling them.

Maybe we should transfer Planning Appeals to Brussels - it is about as near to planning decisions in Darlington as London is

[aristeides]

John Redwood is quite right. I argued some time ago in the London Mayor section of ConservativeHome that Simon Milton, Leader of Westminster Council - a flagship in terms of quality of administration, provision of services and electoral success - should be asked to stand.

It is really time to stop messing around with non-Conservative "celebrities" and look in our pool of genuine talent . Simon Milton is amongst the best of a very competent and experienced bunch of successful local politicians, a lot of whom have been putting into practice sensible, even green, Conservative policies for the past ten years while the parliamentary party has been trying to get its act together.

[Peter Hatchet]

My problem with local authorities is the terrible quality of so many of the councillors.

Whilst I don't want to detract from the excellent work that, undoubtedly, a significant minority of councillors achieve (Wandsworth & H&F being notable exceptions) unfortunately, they are few in number.

In many places, there just isn't the dynamism and leadership there.

Labour and Liberal councillors are simply terrible. They are totally clueless and, in the cities, drawn from the unemployed, the inexperienced, the ignorant and the incompetent.

Unfortunately, whilst Conservative councils are undoubtedly "better", I don't think our councillors are much to shout about either.

Most Conservative councillors I've met/had dealings with - particularly in the Shires - are retired, over-65 and of the "we've always done it this way", "mustn't rock the boat" and "we know best" variety.

Many of them view being a councillor as something to merely occupy their retirement and/or as a natural way to achive status in their community.

You often only hear from them at election time, they are very complacent, avoid difficult decisions and - when they talk to you - they can be very patronising, particularly if you're "young" (under 40). Sometimes, they want somebody "young" just as some sort of mascot.

Councillors need to be drawn more, much more, from professionals in their 30s and 40s who have experience of business and the drive to take risks and make tough decisions. It needs to be attractive to those with a full-time job.

As it stands an attendance allowance of 2-3K per year, the need to take 10-12 days leave for council meetings makes it very unattractive indeed.

[Paul Scully]

"My problem with local authorities is the terrible quality of so many of the councillors."

This is a "chicken and egg" scenario. Give councillors more power, you ought to attract better candidates. However, the power was taken away because of some dreadful councillors in some areas.

It is all of the ancillary committees, meetings and preparation work that makes it impractical for many working people with a family life to stand.

[Richard]

For some reason this silly computer only allows me to see further posts after I first access this page if I post again so this is just a pointless post, feel free to delete it.

[Yet Another Anon]

The Victorians had the model but The Treasury destroyed it by removing all local funding from municipal electricity works, gas works, water through Labour nationalisation and Heath nationalising water and breaking up local government.
Conservative and National Governments in the 1920's and 1930's just as much took part in the shift towards municipal schemes being taken over nationally - it was Conservative governments that started the process of Electricity Supply and Generation being regulated nationally and being brought together and things such as Bus transport and Education being nationalised, in fact a lot of the 1980's privatisations actually further nationalised control under state regulators - finances of water were privatised in 1989 but under Ofwat the actual rules and control became more centralised than ever, major utilities now pay shareholders but operate according to a remit from a regulator who tells them how to conduct their business, surely either something should be run by a state corporation or agency, or a private charity limited by guarantee or if it is to be floated on the Stock Exchange ideally it should be fully denationalised and deregulated - the problem with things such as major utilities is that there are common public interests that militate against simply handing over all decision making to private bodies because there is actually little scope for competition. United Utilities are being fined for awarding contracts to their own companies rather than putting them out to competitive tender raising the question as to what is the purpose of them actually running the company if OFWAT is going to decide on what basis work is carried out.

[Yet Another Anon]

For some reason this silly computer only allows me to see further posts after I first access this page if I post again so this is just a pointless post, feel free to delete it.
You should use the refresh button in your browser, the page is not self refreshing therefore you have to do it either manually or set your browser periodically to do it for you.

[George Hinton]

What we will get though, is some party apparatchik, who will become the willing slave of his party's dogma and a nodding donkey on policy and decision making.
What London needs is an independant. Independant of politics, independant of thought, independant of party and dogma. A free thinker whose mandate is to get London moving, financially, economically and physically.
You won't such a person in the ranks of any party. Rather, we need to revise how we go about seeking a mayor.
No more Red Ken's and posturing for political gelt, London needs an effective executive that is apolitical and solely has London's needs as its brief.

[Dan Hassett]

I am standing down as a 27 year old Conservative councillor in this year's elections for the reasons Peter Hatchet outlines. Balancing a career and my constituents is always challenging and will become more so as I am getting married this year and plan to start a family. When I considered the amount of time that I would be able to dedicate to my constituents I realised that it was not enough to achieve anything. That is because there is so much interference and bureaucracy, with one set of elected councillors having to consult other sets of elected councillors through frequent and often pointless meetings, all of which has to be considered before any time can be devoted to actually doing things for your ward.

I would have loved to continue in post. If I had more time, I would have stood and continued to battle against the bureaucracy and intertia to do what is needed in my ward, just as I have for the past few years. Unfortunately, the amount of time that it takes to cut through all the red tape means that I would not have been able to achieve much, if anything, given my other time constraints.

There is a real need to devolve power back to local people, which will often be through local councils. There should also be fewer tiers of local government (Town, District, County and Regional Assemblies just turn into round after round of negotiations over "partnership working"). There needs to be a coherent system which allows councillors to take decisions effectively and swiftly. There also needs to be some way of attracting more younger professional councillors. The only way I can see that happening is to pay at least some councillors as full time workers. I wonder whether we should move to a position of paid Aldermen to take the lead role in each council ward with a team of councillors working alongside.

One final thought. Folkestone, with a population of around 45,000, has 18 Town Councillors, 18 Shepway District Councillors and 6 County Councillors =42 councillors.

Calgary City Council, in Canada, which serves over 1 million people, has 14 City Councillors and an elected mayor. All are paid positions (and non political). There are faults there too, but there isn't any trouble finding enough good candidates to fight all the posts.

[DrFoxNews]

Romney ran a Winter Olympics for Utah - Editor

Ah yes, the Winter Olympics that were awarded to Salt Lake City after all sorts of inducements and armtwisting by the Salt Lake bid team. Hardly something to boast about.

[comstock]

We might have less difficulty finding good candidates for high office if we had our own system of seriously devolved power. Just a thought.

Interesting, but that goes totally against Tory policy, both when you were last in government, and recently in opposition. Tories campaigned against the North East assembely, for example.

[Mark Fulford]

Devolved power leads to postcode lotteries, and the media doesn't like them. Actual lotteries are, of course, fine.

[William Norton]

Comstock: there were very good reasons why the Tories were against the NE Assembly:

(1) It would have put up council tax massively (estimated running costs £1m per week) and wouldn't have been worth the money (it would have been a "strategic" talking shop with zero executive powers).

(2) It was fake devolution - on any conceivable point including, for example, the routing of paths through a national park, the Assembly would have had to comply with central guidance from Whitehall and submit their decisions for central approval or be subject to a veto from the Secretary of State. I never quite worked out why, for example, one of the proposed statutory grounds for Prescott to veto the much-touted North East England spatial strategy (=development plan) would have been if it potentially infringed the planning strategy of - wait for it - the Mayor of London.

(3) There would have been no new money to improve services: no extra nurses, doctors, teachers, policemen etc. Indeed, during the referendum, the Chairman of the Yes Campaign announced that the North East didn't need any extra nurses: a controversial analysis (apparently however the North East did need a new cultural consortium, whatever that would have been).

(4) My view is that it was actually a covert ploy to abolish a few county councils and bring in Redcliffe-Maud style unitary authorities. Whitehall's been after this outcome since the 1960s. You'll notice that whilst they've shelved plans for elected regional assemblies the Govmt is still talking about 'reforming' local government by chopping up more town halls.

It's a point that the Yes Men never could grasp: a PR-style assembly probably would have led to more Tories being elected but we were against it as point of principle.

The NESNO campaign won the referendum with 78% and Prescott refused even to attend the count (stayed in the car park in his jag). You see, Comstock, the Tory Party can call it right every now and then.

[Mark Fulford]

Abolition of the GLC showed just how unimportant city government was...

No, it showed just how badly we wanted to get rid of Ken Livingstone.

[TomTom]

Romney ran a Winter Olympics for Utah - Editor

Yes and he also started Bain Capital the Private Equity Group when he spun off from Bain & Company.

No, it showed just how badly we wanted to get rid of Ken Livingstone.

True. However it means that if any competing centre of power arises at a local level, Central Government will crush it. So the idea is simply as Sam Rayburn said "to get along, go along" and don't rock the boat.

That is why local government will always be controlled by Whitehall or Brussels

[Angelo Basu]

How about abolishing the GLA to get rid of Ken again? However, however much one might abhor Ken, he wins elections and has a democratic mandate to be as loony as he wants. If we can't find someone to be a serious and credible alternative, ultimately that's our problem rather than anything systemic.

Dan Hassett's comment about Calgary is instructive. Why do we have quite so many councillors? Is the opposition to having smaller numbers of regional authorities on the basis of (1) too much like EU regional policy (2) not local enough and (3) we might not win enough power?

[Richard]

"You should use the refresh button in your browser, the page is not self refreshing therefore you have to do it either manually or set your browser periodically to do it for you."

It works fine with my computer at home but the network the college computers are on seems to do weird things.

[TomTom]

It works fine with my computer at home but the network the college computers are on seems to do weird things.

If you use Windows you should go to the Internet settings on Explorer and set it to Refresh Each Time.......and also clear the cookies

[Jennifer Wells]

Contrast the executive experience of Giuliani and Romney with Cameron. He has only worked in PR. He is a terrible risk.

[TomTom]

He has only worked in PR. He is a terrible risk.

PR is the Capitalist version of AgitProp (Agitation & Propaganda) or отдел агитации и пропаганды - which is to inspire the masses and convince them shops are full of meat in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was the title for the PR Chief in Germany.

As the British economy dematerialises into virtual reality it is essential that the message go out that the country is surpassing the competition in educational attainment, steel output, miliary prowess, social contentment, medical advances, and artistic achievement.

In this sense Cameron's PR credentials are ideal.

[William Norton]

Jennifer Wells/Tom Tom: drivel.

[Yet Another Anon]

Interesting, but that goes totally against Tory policy, both when you were last in government, and recently in opposition. Tories campaigned against the North East assembely, for example.
The boundaries didn't match any historic boundaries, now if there were for example to be a Northumberland Devolved Assembly or Northumberland Parliament, and for example a Yorkshire Parliament, a Cornish Parliament etc, a Wessex Parliament, a Mercia Parliament then these would match actual cultural and local political divisions to a great extent.

In Cheshire the plan seems to be now to create a West Cheshire Unitary Authority and an East Cheshire Unitary Authority - having done this the logical thing to do would be to devolve the powers of the North Western Regional Assembly to them and phase that out, have a Lancashire Parliament and a Derbyshire Parliament perhaps also and move towards a single tier of government, scrap the District and County Councils.

Overall there are too many Councillors, there is no reason why there couldn't be different tiers of council with more localised groups of the same councillors representing the people at the particular level - so a local councillor might be a District, County and Regional Councillor with only one set of elections.

There is an element of jobs for the boys - the politicians and Civil Servants have an incentive to allow bureacracy to flourish.

[Ash Faulkner]

"Interesting, but that goes totally against Tory policy, both when you were last in government, and recently in opposition. Tories campaigned against the North East assembely, for example."

That is not localism, that is centralisation at a different centre.

[TomTom]

Jennifer Wells/Tom Tom: drivel.

Posted by: William Norton | April 20, 2007 at 17:31.

Profound statement William...obviously you are of the initiated отдел агитации и пропаганды a true Герой Социалистического Труда

[Richard]

"The boundaries didn't match any historic boundaries, now if there were for example to be a Northumberland Devolved Assembly or Northumberland Parliament, and for example a Yorkshire Parliament, a Cornish Parliament etc, a Wessex Parliament, a Mercia Parliament then these would match actual cultural and local political divisions to a great extent."

Which happens to be BNP policy but admittedly there's nothing wrong with the idea in principle. Although why we'd need regional government I'm not sure. I'd be all for devolving power from county councils down to borough councils and abolishing the former if possible. Ideally though after my experience with local government I'd be quite happy to see all their services sold off to the private sector and limit them to arranging carnivals and firework displays..

[Dave J]

"Giuliani has run New York."

Giuliani ran New York City. That's no small feat by any means--the city is larger than almost all US states--but "New York" by itself legally refers to the State of New York, as much as NYC and its denizens might tell you otherwise. ;-)

"We might have less difficulty finding good candidates for high office if we had our own system of seriously devolved power."

You're right, of course, but strictly speaking this goes beyond "devolved" power here in the US. First, devolution implies inherent power at the center or the top being bestowed to the periphery: that's the opposite of the way federalism works in the US, where it's the states that have inherent power and the federal government that is one of limited, delegated authority.

Second, you need more than just laws to do this: you need a fundamental and dramatic change in mindset. The UK is probably the most centralized state in the developed world, and too many of its citizens believe that EVERYTHING is a problem to be dealt with at Westminster. It's a vicious circle, of course, both cause and effect.

[Yet Another Anon]

First, devolution implies inherent power at the center or the top being bestowed to the periphery: that's the opposite of the way federalism works in the US, where it's the states that have inherent power and the federal government that is one of limited, delegated authority.
The US though is a Federal Union of States, the UK is a State although it could become a Federal State - legally California for example could in theory cecede from the USA on it's own authority; in the case of England, Scotland, Wales, Ulster etc.... all power is not in their own right but rather loaned by the crown, even the Westminster Parliament and government governs by the authority of the Crown, the Crown is an abstract concept with the monarch of the day merely being a person who wields that power - the authority for the Crown comes from God.

[Dave J]

"...legally California for example could in theory cecede from the USA on it's own authority..."

Arguable. We DID have a civil war about that, you know. ;-)

[TomTom]

the UK is a State although it could become a Federal State

No it could not so long as sovereignty rests in "The Crown in Parliament" since that is indivisible.

The Celtic fringe enjoy Super-Council status nothing more; and it could be reversed simply by revoking the Devolution Acts.

Federal Systems are creating by Constitutional Assemblies which precede any Congress or Parliament thus making the Parliament itself a subset of the Constitution derived from the Constitutional Assembly....

That is why a Unitary State cannot become a Federal one by legislation; in fact Parliament only gained sovereign rights because Oliver Cromwell displaced first The Crown and then The Parliament by removing the House of Lords and then by purging the House of Commons.

The Restoration represented Phase I of constitutional monarch and 1689 Phase II