Local decision-making should be less constrained by central government, and also more accountable to local people. We will encourage democratic innovations in local government, including pilots of the idea of elected mayors with executive powers in cities.
David Cameron’s green paper Shift Control, published yesterday? No, the 1997 Labour manifesto, and if you want a good hearty laugh, I recommend going to read the rest of the chapter on localism.
I’ll be taking a look at Shift Control from a democratic perspective over the course of a few posts, since it is the fullest Conservative policy statement we are likely to get before the election manifesto, and they are probably going to be in power in eighteen months’ time.
Before getting into the detail, it’s worth starting with a realistic assessment of what is going to happen to localism in 2010. Parties that have power at local level and not at national level are fond of pledging their support for localism. In power, their enthusiasm disappears. Like proportional representation, giving away 20% of power sounds great when you have 0%, and dreadful when you have 100%.
Perhaps the Conservatives mean to be different – let’s hope they do. But even if their intentions are pure, once in office it would take a will of iron to resist media pressure to do something when the next local government crisis happens. No recent British politician has had that iron will.
The problem lies not with the duplicity of politicians, but with a calculation of self-interest. Letting local politicians take decisions brings no credit when things go well, but media opprobrium when things go badly. Baby P was a national scandal, but in theory the voters of Haringey are the only ones who can punish the politicians responsible. In practice, of course, scandals like that influence general election voting across the country.
Telling a politician that they should localise is like giving an employee a bonus of £1 if he succeeds, and executing him if he doesn’t. Risk-aversion is guaranteed.
In the next post, I’ll look at the green paper pledges on business growth.
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
