I am under no illusions about this. Compared with Prince Andrew’s latest disgrace or with Keely Hodgkinson’s latest glittering prize, the reform of English local government is no one’s clickbait subject, not even mine, least of all in the run-up to Christmas.
But it is a vitally important subject all the same. Local government that works is indispensable to the wider renewal of the state. It is also a rock without which the vital rebuilding of trust in politics is made altogether more difficult. Yet this cannot just be left to the political class, because their first instincts will be to create a system that works for them, but not necessarily for citizens.
This week’s Labour government white paper on English local government is a coherent and well-intentioned document. It will soon be followed by legislation in the shape of the English devolution bill. But although the course has clearly now been set, the white paper and the bill ought not to be the last word on this inescapably asymmetric subject, with which Labour has been struggling since its opposition days.
The white paper starts from the right place. Angela Rayner’s introduction admits that “England is one of the most centralised developed countries” and that the “controlling hand of central government is stifling initiative and development”. It offers a generational switch in favour of “determined devolution”. The larger goals of the whole exercise are to stimulate economic growth, improve delivery of public services and foster government with, rather than to, the people.
No one will disagree with much of that. The current system of English local government is broken, but it is not rotten. The necessary changes need to revive and restore local government, not sweep everything about the existing system away. The right instincts are as important as the right rules.
In the end, the white paper’s 118 pages should be seen as a progressive centraliser’s wishlist. They imagine an England as seen by ministers in Whitehall, and perhaps officials too, who genuinely want to see the country’s governance work better and more fairly than it is doing. But the pages are not the work of instinctive localists, pluralists or believers in organic change.
The white paper means well, but it is a top-down not a bottom-up proposal. It brings the mindset of big regiments, not small platoons. There is no mention of pluralism. Nor of civil society. There is little recognition that a modern state absolutely has to accommodate people and communities with widely differing views and interests, even when they disagree. It is no surprise that “citizens’ jury” is mentioned nowhere, either.
Yet the white paper has a lot to say about the needs of citizens for better government. The problem is that the citizens it describes always seem abstract, passive and inert. There is not much that is flesh and blood about them. They are a political factor, because they vote (or not) for the politicians who make the rules, but not a human factor. Their actual views do not seem to be of great concern.
At one point, the white paper explains that its goal is a universal system of English strategic authorities, mostly headed by elected mayors. This will be achieved through a collaborative process. “However,” it then adds revealingly, “in order to ensure that citizens across England benefit from devolution, and to ensure the effective running of public services, we will legislate for a ministerial directive.” In the end, in other words, the person in Whitehall still knows best.
Which may in fact be true in some cases. The necessary task of rebuilding the British state will inevitably involve sticks as well as carrots. A network of single-tier local authorities, as now proposed, also surely makes greater sense – and not just to those in Whitehall – than the current patchwork of single and two-tier (or sometimes three-tier) local government.
It is good, too, that the white paper’s instinct favours English counties, not regions, as an essential building block of a modern network. Counties may be Norman in origin and differ widely in size but, a thousand years after the conquest, they are in the English DNA. Earlier attempts to brush them aside have not worked. Regions may appeal to centralist planners, but they lack the identity of counties or cities.
In the end, however, it seems likely Rayner’s plans will struggle to be as universal as she hopes. This is not the worst possible outcome. Previous schemes of English local reorganisation have also faltered in the past, even though large parts of what was attempted endured and brought improvement. No system is ever perfect, and local government is never tidy.
The main threats to Rayner’s plans are clear. First, they duck the funding question. This is a political decision, since higher local taxes, or their equivalent, would not be popular, especially now. This means a system on life support for the foreseeable future. Second, try as she may, Rayner’s system will not adequately reflect actual communities of identity. There will be local revolts against it. Third, the white paper steers clear of the English national dimension. There is plenty in it about devolution within England, but nothing about devolution to England.
Ultimately, the rock on which such plans may founder is the unavoidability of party politics. Scotland has shown how vulnerable a devolution system can be to determined partisanship. Something similar could happen in England too. The election of a number of Reform mayors, determined to blame everything on central government, would quickly stop determined devolution in its tracks. As ever, the biggest challenge to good government is from bad politics.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
