Localism

A friend commented on my previous posting about reducing the number of MPs to 430 by saying that the USA number is underpinned by a whole system of federalism and therefore my suggestion might not be workable in our situation.
My reply is slow in coming as it has been bubbling away in my head for some considerable time. It is still at the incomplete fermenting stage but it is supported by reading "Thatcher & Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts" (winner, Channel 4 political book of the year 2007) by Simon Jenkins (published by Penguin).Simon Jenkins writes twice weekly for the Guardian and weekly for the Sunday Times. He has been editor of both The Times and the Evening Standard. In 1995 he chaired the Commission on Local Democracy and published "Accountable to None:The Tory Nationalisation of Britain".

In "Thatcher & Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts" he looks at the political legacy of Margaret Thatcher and her "true heirs", John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He argues that they have utterly transformed Britain in the process to leave us where we are now "prosperous but perplexed, spoilt for 'Choice' but less and less equal, infantilized by targets, drowning in bureaucracy and bombarded by spin."

In the book he states my principal mantra and creed, "Localism is the stuff of politics" (page 306). I am against centralism and the view that Britain is a "unitary welfare state, politically monolithic and administratively homogeneous" (page 307). I believe centralism has brought about the collapse of British public life and is one of the prime reasons for the British apathy at the polling booth. I cringe when I read in the newspaper of voters threatening to withhold their vote at the coming elections because of the MP expenses scandal. It seems to me that this puts the protester with the majority who don't vote anyway and therefore negates their protest completely. I believe less than 40% actually vote and that figure might even be optimistic.

My call for the reduction in the number of MPs has therefore to be reconciled with my belief that the whole business of government needs decentralising and we need to return to "localism" to re-empower the voter. We need to look at other societies for some ideas of how to recapture local government from the grasp of central government. "A citizen of a typical American suburb or small town might expect to devote a night a week to some civic activity" and "80% of Germans can name their local mayor." (Jenkins, page 308). Both these ideas, "Civic activity" and "name the mayor", would stump the local voter here in my own area. I will return to both ideas in later postings as both are key planks in my own small but persistent political awakening.