How to get growth

National governments are rightly focused on reducing the deficits that are causing massive threats to their economies. But the resulting austerity leaves little scope for schemes to stimulate economic growth. And growth would increase tax revenues, thus helping to eliminate the deficits and reduce debts. So what's to be done?

Socialists believe that more can be spent on stimulating growth, while maintaining spending on public services, by taxing the rich more. Deficit hawks believe less should be spent on public services and on growth schemes, while increasing taxes across the board. Neo-classical liberals also believe in spending less, but that reducing taxes can stimulate growth.

I don't know that any of these views are right. I'm not an economist, and the arguments on all sides fail to convince. But who knows?

However, in the UK I think there's something that might help, whatever your economic view: empowering local engines for growth.

Different parts of the country should be able to take advantage of their own particular local strengths to encourage growth. This requires central government loosening its fevered grip just a little on taxation and expenditure, and letting strong councils take advantage of local conditions.

I want to draw attention to two important aspects of this form of localism: (i) local decision-making about big developments; and (ii) local decision-making about public services.

Local decision-making about big developments

Developments can get stalled at an early stage by emotionally charged battles between enthusiastic proponents of stimulus schemes (house-building, wind farms, engineering projects, and the like) and wary residents fighting damage to their neighbourhoods.

Both sides think the system is weighted against them. The reality is that if local people rather than ministers are the ultimate arbiter of proposals, proposals will have to be designed to unarguably benefit local communities rather than to align with well-meaning but amorphous national policies.

This is not simply a case of transferring decision-making from ministers to councillors. Councillors do need to play an important role in this: referring back proposals that clearly contribute insufficiently; ensuring stakeholders are involved in the discussions; commissioning research comparing alternative options; and proposing conditions such as a local tax, an inspection regime, modified plans or new community facilities. But local electronic plebiscites make the final decision.

Good developments are more likely to succeed quickly under this form of localism, because developers will need to design proposals that make it easy for locals to judge that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. And bad developments will no longer be able to rely on multiple appeals, inattentive councillors, vague planning policies and ministers with nothing to lose in the locality.

At the same time, developers will not be faced with the knee-jerk local opposition that comes from justified scepticism and sense of powerlessness about the planning system. Constructive engagement is more likely.

Local decision-making about public services

A second way in which local engines for growth can be enabled is through liberalising public services.

Rather than the State controlling public services centrally, like some totalitarian regime, councils would be free to pursue their own preferred ways of delivering particular services, whether that's in-house, through contracts with companies, or in conjunction with other organisations or councils. At the same time, power to vary taxes enables those with different ideas about what works to put those ideas to the test.

Those councils that want to stop the cuts get to stop the cuts, but they will need to borrow the money or raise taxes. Those councils that want a balanced budget will be able to cut spending and increase taxes. Those councils that want to reduce taxes get to do that. But more importantly, councils are free to decide on the priorities for schools, hospitals, police, post offices and so on that make sense for local people, taking account of local needs and opportunities.

Through this encouragement of innovation, the country does not put all its eggs in one basket, but is able to pilot different ways of stimulating growth and dealing with debt, within broad but sensible constraints set by central government.

What works in one part of the country does not automatically work elsewhere, but by evaluating the factors affecting success in every part of the country, the Government will see good ideas being taken up across the country, and bad ideas being quietly dropped with no loss of face to central government.

More autonomy allows ideas to be put to the test. Of course it's true that councils might choose to go for the monorail rather than more frequent buses; they might choose to build the casino rather than the theatre; the nuclear power station rather than the wind farm. But councils must be allowed to make mistakes, so long as there is complete transparency and accountability to local voters.

Why won't this happen?

This "localism-plus" means that good developments are more likely to succeed quickly, and that public services can innovate under democratic local control rather than stagnate under monolithic central control. These are strong engines for growth.

I've outlined the key objections to this proposal. But the main reason this kind of thing is unlikely to happen is not because of potential costs, uncertainties or fragmentation; nor even (at a philosophical level) fears of privatisation or of localism. It is that battle-lines are already being drawn for the next election, and that for all but a few liberal-minded politicians, the dream of enforcing one's own prescription for success across the whole country overrides all other considerations.

Acknowledgements

• "N30" [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0] by Flickr user churchofpunk.
• "Piggy bank" [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0] by Flickr user Teresa Gibbison.
• Photo of Sir Stuart Rose [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0] by the CBI.
• "Local government gears" by LonWon. [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Political Narrative Battlegrounds for 2015 (the May 2012 Crystal Ball)

It's obviously far too early to be predicting the narrative battlegrounds on which the expected 2015 general election will be fought. So here goes...!

I think it's plausible that both the Coalition parties will have a similar top-level narrative:

The economy is on the right path again, but the task is not finished.

The country was in a terrible state five years ago. Britain was being dragged down by a dreadful deficit. The banks had got away with massive profligacy because of an unhealthy bonus culture. There was no money left to secure the future of our vital public services.

So when we took charge, we stopped the rot of Labour overspending, we clamped down on the banks, and we reduced taxes for hard-working people. Tackling the deficit needed tough, unpopular decisions. The country would be far worse off if we hadn't taken those  decisions.

Now, we need to finish the job. Get Britain working again. Use the solid foundations we have put in place to build a strong and lasting prosperity. Labour would put the recovery at risk. But we can make Britain the envy of the world once again.

Labour, of course, will be saying the opposite:

This incompetent government has unnecessarily damaged Britain's public services and created mass unemployment; if you let them get back in, they will slash-and-burn all that we hold dear.

Five years ago, the world was faced with an unprecedented international economic crisis, caused by bankers who only cared about their bonuses. But the Labour Government led the way in preventing a global meltdown, and put Britain on the path to recovery.

But this Tory-led government dealt with the world economic crisis in the worst possible way. It cut spending too far, too fast. It created an entirely unnecessary double-dip recession. Britain would have recovered years ago, if it hadn't been for this mismanagement. The Tories cut taxes for their rich cronies, while the rest of the country suffered unemployment and cuts to schools, hospitals and other public services. Trebling tuition fees. The Granny Tax. The Pasty Tax. Picking on the disabled. Privatising the NHS. The Liberals were complicit in all this.

Now, what about the next five years? The Tories don't believe in public services. They want to cut and cut until there's nothing left. Don't let them finish the job.

This is over-simplifying things a bit, but then political narratives need to be simple.

But come down a level of abstraction, and the narratives are murkier at this stage in the parliament.

Conservatives

The Conservative Party is torn between, on the one hand, traditional fiscal prudence (reducing government over-spending, and slightly increasing taxes to pay off debt); and, on the other hand, free-market libertarianism that says that a radical pruning of the state can set wealth creators free and thus benefit everyone. Critics say that belt tightening can slide into stagnation and diminished public services. Meanwhile, radical pruning is a gamble that might result in mass unemployment and inadequate safety nets for the most vulnerable.

It could change, but currently the prudence chaps dominate the pruning brigade.

The likely Conservative narratives, one level down, would therefore be along the lines of:

After the turmoil of the Labour years, the firm grip of the Conservative-led Government was absolutely the right thing for the country. Now we need stability and steady growth. We need to nurture the recovery; we mustn't imperil it again with Labour's wild spending.

We've put the economy on a firm footing, so now it's time for us to sort out other socialist legacies: Fight back against the EU's invasion into our affairs. End profligate subsidies for inefficient energy generation. Reduce taxes on enterprise and hard work. Cut bureaucracy in social services. Allow museums and hospitals to charge foreign visitors. Renew Trident. Fund our armed forces properly. Give schools back the right to select pupils... etc. etc.

Labour

Meanwhile Labour is torn between, on the one hand, the New Labour vision that public services deliver targets best when they are given as much freedom as possible from state regulation and are funded by partnerships with the private sector; and, on the other hand, the socialist ideal of the state looking after everyone in society, and spending money to keep the economy going. But critics say that New Labourism helped to create a situation in which irresponsible banks plunged the country into economic crisis; and in which hospitals and schools ended up lacking democratic accountability for their decisions. And the socialist ideal can easily slip, they say, into spending beyond our means and into weakening enterprise by sucking more and more of the nation's wealth into central government.

It's not clear to me how this tussle between New Labourism and neo-socialism will play out. Ed Balls was thoroughly implicated in New Labourism but Ed Miliband is (probably rightly) keeping his policy options open for now. My guess is that nearer the election there will be some kind of public catharsis: "It was Gordon Brown who wanted PFI. And the CBI was pushing for less regulation. We've learned from those mistakes."

It will be tempting, I think, to just stay on the attack:

Inhumane cuts. Ideological economics. Out of touch. Incompetent. etc. etc.

But journalists will press for firm plans, and the public don't like politicians who are resolutely negative without getting into detail about how they would do things differently. So a possible positive Labour narrative, one level down, would be:

We need government to offer alternative models to uncaring capitalism: Address our housing crisis using cooperative and mutual models. Give tax breaks to businesses that fund apprenticeships. Give energy consumers, hospital patients and parents the power to call managers to account. etc. etc.

Liberal Democrats

The LibDems have a number of narratives that don't offer alternative futures to each other, but compete for attention. For example, one narrative is about being in coalition in the first place:

The national interest demanded we help repair the economy while doing our damnedest to protect public services. We sacrificed our popularity to help the country overcome Labour's economic crisis.

A parallel narrative is a defence of the things the Conservatives were able to do because the LibDems weren't sitting on the Opposition benches:

Would you have wanted an unfettered Conservative Government? Or right-wing Conservatives in league with the New Labour zealots who got us into this mess? We helped tame the worst excesses of the Right, although you have to box clever when your Coalition partner is five times the size of you.

There's an obvious risk of a LibDem general election campaign consisting entirely of re-runs of the arguments about tuition fees, the Welfare Reform Act, the Health and Social Care Act, the so-called Granny Tax, etc.: the arguments that failed to convince the first time round.

Another narrative is:

Look at all the liberal stuff we managed to deliver, despite our under-representation in Parliament: shifting taxes from low and middle earners to the richest; getting extra money to schools to help poorer children; creating more new apprenticeships than Britain has ever had before; creating the world's first Green Investment Bank; restoring the link between pensions and earnings; setting up proper regulation of the banks; restoring many of the civil liberties thrown away by Labour; increasing social housing for the first time in 30 years; halting Labour's post office closures; and so on.

Unfortunately lists don't make for great narratives. It's also not easy to explain concisely what makes this good stuff "liberal" in the same way that Conservatives and Labour stances are easily grasped.

All of these LibDem narratives are also too rooted in the past: they don't impel you through to an obvious LibDem future. I'm sure the manifesto will be packed full of good ideas, costed and crafted as usual. But, again as usual, it will somehow lack a coherent narrative to string it together. Some random slogan combining "free", "fair" and "opportunity" won't cut it.

Another problem with these LibDem narratives is that they don't offer congruencies with both possible future coalition partners.

An alternative plan might be to piggy-back on a less antagonistic version of the first half of the Conservatives' message...

After the turmoil of the economic crisis, it was absolutely right for the Conservatives and LibDems to come together for the good of the country. Now we need stability and steady growth. We need to nurture the recovery.

... and then build a distinctively LibDem narrative:

We've got the economy under control, but what's to stop the crisis happening again? If big business is unaccountable to its employees, customers and shareholders, it will simply repeat the same risky behaviour. Meanwhile, if public services and quangos are unaccountable to the people they are supposed to serve, their spending of your taxes will again rocket out of control. We need to encourage  democratic principles and innovative models of mutualism and cooperatives, and not just unconvincing "consultations". We need to navigate a narrow path between cold hard capitalism on one side, and overweight statism on the other.

And we also need to make central government more accountable by devolving more powers to our cities and counties to kickstart local economies, to sort out endemic housing issues, to take advantage of green opportunities, to support your hospitals and schools...

And most importantly, if we don't take greater action on climate change fast, the global economy will be threatened by a crisis that will make the last few years pale into insignificance. We need a massive programme to build more renewable energy capacity; to increase home insulation; to encourage businesses that tackle their carbon pollution responsibly; and to enhance the Green Investment Bank. These measures will help prevent climate change wrecking our economy, but they will also help stimulate our industry and create jobs right now.

Concluding remarks

Crystal ball gazing is a notoriously unreliable practice in politics. And I have a lousy reputation for accuracy. But although the details may change rapidly, I suspect that many of the overriding concerns of Conservatives, Labour folk and LibDems are quite slow to change.

Narratives need to capture those concerns, to fix in voters' minds afresh what these parties stand for.

And narrative building takes years.

Acknowledgements

• The three battle pictures [1, 2, 3] are by Flickr user Dave Pearson, and are CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
• The cats were adapted by me from Microsoft Clip Art [license terms]

Lon Won's Evil Liberal Masterplan

Tackling the problem of the deficit is causing much misery. And regardless of the Chancellor's apparent optimism in last week's Budget about unemployment and growth, the signs are that things are likely to get much worse before they get better.

I believe there's a liberal idea that might help.

What's grinding your gears?

The basic idea is to give local government more autonomy to decide what services it wishes to provide, what mechanisms will provide them, and what taxes will fund them. These powers would then be balanced by a right for local voters to use petitions to trigger binding local referenda.

Note: Some of what's envisaged is already possible, and a shift in power from central government to local authorities is the major theme of the Localism Act 2011. But to keep the discussion simple I'm just going to focus here on the principles rather than these details, because I think that even after the Act we might be left with a mixture of different types of localism that are inadequately accountable to citizens. Note also that I'm mostly talking about England here. Similar considerations might apply to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but drawing the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Executive into this blogpost would complicate the points being made about the balance between "central" and "local" government.

More costs, more uncertainty, more chaos?

It's not a glamorous idea, and at first glance it sounds like one of those "It'll cost lots of money; the gains are uncertain; and chaos is guaranteed" type of ideas. At times it's almost as if we revel in such ideas in this country.

But actually there needn't be any costs at all: councils could choose to do just the same as they do now. Or they could make different choices about services to provide.

This might mean losing economies of scale from doing some things nationally (e.g. in relation to roads, health, income tax, or benefits); so councils would need to convince voters about the financial implications of proposals. Perhaps there might be efficiencies from cooperation between councils that want to do similar things. Or perhaps a council might choose to award a contract to a local firm in order to save jobs that would otherwise incur redundancy and unemployment costs. Or perhaps a council might take a chance on a new technology or method in a way that central government couldn't.

It might be sensible for councils to jointly fund some kind of contract advisory service, to help councils build on proven contracts. It would also be very sensible to pay for a longitudinal research study following the progress of a range of these local government innovations. But it would be up to individual councils to choose to invest in such things.

It's true that the gains are uncertain; but at a time when national economic stagnation looks like the most optimistic future for the next few years, liberalising state services encourages the opening up of new possibilities. Rather than so many of us whining about "The Government" is doing or not doing, councils could actually put new ideas to the test.

It's also true that there might be a little bit more chaos than we're used to, but surely such liberalisation is better than the monolithic control freakery that has taken root in our state since the Second World War? And liberalisation isn't all or nothing: it's possible to have a bit more localism without the country necessarily descending into some kind of Yugoslavian-style civil catastrophe.

No, the more profound objections to this proposal are not to do with costs, uncertainty or chaos. These objections appear once the rationale for the proposal is made clear.

Rationale
What's good for London isn't necessarily good for the Lake District. Giving councils greater power over what they do for a locality enables them to weigh up the pros and cons of what has been done nationally, to innovate, to test, to refine, and to be judged by the voters on their success.

Pleasant land
and satanic mills

1. Empowering local engines for growth: It's clear that economic growth is needed to avoid worsening economic misery. The UK Government is focused on stopping the deficit increasing, but different parts of the country should be able to take advantage of their own particular local strengths to encourage growth. More autonomous decision-making enables this.

2. Enabling different local priorities: Councils focus on the problems that particularly matter in their area. Everybody everywhere wants to fight crime, help the sick, educate the next generation, and so on; but maybe Devon wants to put more resources into helping the elderly, Southwark into tackling knife crime. Priorities differ. More autonomy allows for more flexibility over rebalancing of resources, in the light of local knowledge about what needs attention over time. Devolution of certain powers to Wales and Scotland has been a great success, and no-one wants to return to the previous over-centralised system. Local people should be able to decide on their priorities for schools, hospitals, police, post offices and so on, within a freer national framework.

3. Taking account of different local conditions: Let's stop pretending that conditions are the same everywhere. Why should teachers in Toxteth get paid the same as teachers in Tatterford? The ability to attract staff with the appropriate skill set, the cost of living, the demands made and so on are quite different. We know that housing benefits, disability support, water costs, VAT receipts, fuel costs, and the like differ depending on local conditions; so why not put councils in charge of how to raise and allocate local resources?

Petitions don't have to be signed using quills

4. Fostering postcode democracy: Much is made of a "postcode lottery". What about postcode democracy? It is mad for Westminster and Whitehall to be trying to micro-manage great cities like Birmingham and Manchester, and counties like Kent and Yorkshire. Meanwhile, the lines of local accountability for organizations such as Academy Schools, Foundation Hospitals, Serco, Virgin, May Gurney and so on sometimes seem unclear. It should be the people's locally elected representatives who call such organizations to account in relation to local work, and there should be mechanisms for action to be taken. Simpler lines of accountability lead to better control of costs. Local referenda are also an important brake on potentially disastrous plans that councils might choose to implement between elections.

5. Winning local buy-in for developments: Planning processes are often seen as Byzantine, and weighted in favour of developers, who get multiple bites of the cherry, who only need to obtain approval once (even when circumstances change or have been misrepresented), and who can get away with tokenistic contributions to the community. More autonomy would allow councils to set conditions on developments, such as a proportion of receipts, a tax on subsequent sales, or inspections. There might be referenda to choose between (say) a wind array on the horizon, a nuclear power station on the beach, or imported energy.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Teletubby turbines

6. Tackling climate change: Following on from the previous point, climate change is a critical issue for this proposal. Obviously many kinds of concerted initiatives to deal with climate change need to take place at national and international level; but many aspects of energy generation, energy efficiency, mitigation and adaptation need considered decision-making at local level. Citizens need to be able to experience both the benefits and costs of their decisions locally, or we will continue blithely down the path towards environmental calamity.

7. Enabling innovation and piloting: Liberalising local government does not necessitate either Thatcherite union-bashing corporatism on the one hand, or profligate PC jobsworth totalitarianism on the other. Councils would be free to pursue their own preferred ways of delivering particular services, whether that's in-house, contracts with companies, or in conjunction with other organisations. Freedom to innovate is motivating. It is disgraceful that poorly thought-out legislation such as the Health and Social Care Act get imposed nationwide with proper rounds of piloting and evaluation. More autonomy allows ideas to be put to the test. Of course it's true that councils might choose to go for the monorail rather than more frequent buses; they might choose to build the casino rather than the theatre; the nuclear power station rather than the wind farm. But councils must be allowed to make mistakes, so long as there is complete transparency and accountability to local voters.

Key objections

1. Privatisation: The furore over the HSC Act suggests that "privatisation" is a powerful concern of the public. This is slightly odd as many GPs have always been self-employed on the whole, with contractual arrangements with the NHS; i.e. they're not employees of the NHS. And the recent re-opening of health service delivery to non-profit and charitable organisations is also perhaps not widely appreciated.

Not George Obsorne

Nevertheless, the arguably emotive label "privatisation" points to a number of very reasonable worries, of which the possibility of fees for previously free services is just one. Another worry is that because private companies need to make a profit, they either provide a worse service (to cut costs), or they overcharge compared with an entirely state-run service, or they make savings in relation to employees (e.g. paying them less, providing worse conditions, failing to fund training, reducing job security, cutting pensions, and so on). A third worry is that such companies are less accountable and less transparent in how they operate. Finally, some people see such companies as less caring, less generous and less honestly motivated than state-run services.

Response: These worries in relation to privatisation are legitimate. However, the right to trigger referenda should reassure citizens that they can veto the possibility of fees for previously free services, and that organisations affecting local people cannot get away with bad behaviour. Moreover, if they wish, voters can choose councils that have nothing to do with private companies at all.


2. Lack of belief in localism: As I've argued previously, localism is a hard sell for a variety of reasons, resulting in scepticism about its value and a lack of engagement by the public in local government. I've also noted that there are at least three types of localism, so the disadvantages of one type are sometimes seen as applying to others. In addition, the "postcode lottery" slogan resonates with many people: differences in practices always lead to unfairness, it is objected.

see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

Response: The widespread lack of belief in localism is admittedly challenging. Under this proposal, the shift in powers from central government to councils means that voters have more to lose, so this should help to increase awareness of council powers and to increase the motivation to engage. But I'm not sure the perceptions of local politicians would necessarily improve.


3. It's more complicated than that: Some will say that much of what's proposed is already happening; that the Localism Act 2011 is providing the rest (including a "general power of competence" for local authorities); and anyway this proposal says nothing about how to resolve existing problems with complex relationships between councils, citizens, companies, and central government.

Response: Fine. I'd like to hear more about that. More importantly, I'd like more people thinking about whether the balance in power between central and local government is about right or whether it could be usefully adjusted.

Evil Liberal Masterplan

Autonomous localism needs a change in mind-set from "What's the Government doing about it?" to "What can we do about it?" This could be parodied as JFK-lite, or Cameron's "Big Society", or "just more" community politics. But it's actually very liberal: increasing freedom for local citizens. Of course that freedom could be used to limit the size of the state or to address social issues; to enhance civil liberties or to increase law-and-order; to get more private sector involvement or to run all services in-house; to cooperate with other councils or to compete.

So it's a liberal proposal that could be used to do things that you very much don't like. If you don't trust the voters in your area to vote against these things locally, the alternative is that you continue to rely on voters in other parts of the country to vote against such things nationally. So, I think attitudes to this proposal might very well be influenced by what you think the next UK government is likely to do and by what you think of people in your area.

Acknowledgements

1. "Local government gears" by LonWon. [CC BY-SA 3.0]
2. "English ceremonial counties 1998" derived by Dr Greg from work by Nilfanion.[CC BY-SA 3.0]
3. "petition" by League of Women Voters of California. [CC BY 2.0]
4. View to Sizewell along the beach taken from Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0]
5. "Windfarm" by Russell Smith (rasmithuk) [CC BY 2.0]
6. "The not so slim controller" by Lee Turner [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]
7. "See No Evil" by Tim Ellis [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Three types of localism

Did you know that major provisions in the Localism Act 2011 are starting to come into effect this year?

If, like me, you're slightly vague on how the Localism Act 2011 changes the nature of local government, it's worth reading the Plain English Guide, browsing the communities.gov.uk website or even (good luck) read the Act itself.

This post isn't about the Localism Act. It's about what kind of thing we might want local government to be.

I think this is timely, because, given the widespread public indifference to the Act (citation needed!), I've got a strong suspicion that there's a greater disparity right now than for many years between:
(i) public perceptions of local government;
(ii) the functions and powers of local government as laid out in legislation;
(iii) the customs and practices of local government.

To be honest, though, you're probably better off talking about "what kind of thing we might want local government to be" with all those councillors who grapple with this question day-by-day. But I'm still trying to think things through; hence this post.

I'd like to distinguish three types of localism.

1. Robotic Localism

"I think you ought to know
I'm feeling very depressed"

The first type of localism occurs when local government is large and involves efficient but uncreative administration of rules and procedures laid down by central government. The details of all possible services and decisions are carefully circumscribed. The goals are always those of central government. Anything other than minor local variations in choices is illegal. The decision-making processes are also strictly defined. There's limited discretion over income and expenditure. The role of the local voter is to assess the efficiency with which local government operates. Although this "Robotic" type of local government can be as big or as small as central government decrees, "Localism" is portrayed as occurring when local government is responsible for many large, complex, and important budgets and decisions.

2. Autonomous Localism

"Greasing the wheels"

The second type of localism is very market-oriented. Companies, institutions, charities, communities, and other organizations do pretty much what they like, within broad parameters laid done by central government. Similarly, local government has a high degree of autonomy to decide on what services it wishes to provide, and the mechanisms by which it provides them. It distributes and regulates contracts for its services, funded by the taxes it decides to levy. This type of local government can be as big or as small as it wishes to be. The role of the local voter is to assess the choice of services, the mechanisms by which they are provided, and the subsequent judgements. Central government may choose to regulate particular markets in additional ways, and set minimum standards for services, contracts and taxes, but otherwise largely leaves local government alone.

3. Delegation Localism

"The first rule of management is delegation.
Don't try and do everything yourself because you can't."

The third type of localism is characterised by central government delegating as many decisions as possible, to individual industries, businesses, hospitals, schools, and so on. As in Autonomous Localism, central government may choose to regulate particular markets in additional ways, but otherwise tries to keep out of the way as much as possible. Funding of organizations by central government is decided by formulas that may take account of particular circumstances to a greater or lesser degree; but organizations are encouraged to develop new income streams to maximise their power and to set up mechanisms for accountability to stakeholders. Similarly, central government delegates to local government as much as possible - the choices of taxes to be collected, of services to be provided, and of decisions to be made - without interfering in the operations of local autonomous organizations. As in Autonomous Localism, the local voter can judge local government by assessing the choice of services, the mechanisms by which they are provided, and the subsequent judgements; but since so many services are provided by local autonomous organizations, it is the stakeholders who have the primary role. Where accountability to those stakeholders fails, it is typically central government that takes the blame, rather than local government.

By the way, if you liked the caption for the above diagram, you might like to know it's a quote from that great sage Anthea Turner (!) Perhaps you might prefer "Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way". That's Ronald Reagan.

Concluding remarks

I think it's clear that, in broad brush terms, England is moving away from a kind of Robotic Localism that unashamedly wanted the whole country to receive the best services currently available ("‘We have lived too long with a system good for the few but not for the majority") and so set national targets ("It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose."). And it is now moving towards a kind of Delegation Localism ("The Big Society", "core principles for modernising public services: choice, decentralisation, diversity, fairness and accountability").

It's also fairly clear that there are problems with Delegation Localism, particularly the limitations on local accountability and the limitations on control over what local services are funded and how.

There are also obvious problems with Autonomous Localism, but it seems to me there has been a lack of public debate about what type of localism we actually want, and how the particularly limitations are to be addressed.

Question for the reader: what other types of localism should we consider?

Acknowledgements

• "Robot" by Andy Field (Hubmedia) [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
• "Local government gears" by LonWon. [CC BY-SA 3.0]
• "Delegation localism" by LonWon. [CC BY-SA 3.0]

LibDems: We must do better than this

Now I know how unbearably holier-than-thou my Labour friends must have found me when I incessantly derided their support for a Labour Government that took us to war in Iraq, that threw away hard-won civil liberties, and that contributed to causing the deficit crisis by overspending and under-regulating.

But here we are, just two years into a Conservative-LibDem coalition, and already the Government has passed the counter-productive Welfare Reform Act, gambled recklessly with our inestimable universities, and failed to fertilize the green growth that would invigorate this barren economy.

Now this weekend, Liberal Democrat voting representatives have shamefully failed to stop the Health and Social Care Bill, when it was within their power to do so.


Why "shameful"?

Well, I'm not going to rehash the arguments here about why this is a bad bill. Instead I will simply point out that despite all the efforts of LibDems to fix its flaws, the Bill still lacks a mandate, it is still dreadfully unclear, and it still has no professional buy-in.

But there's a far bigger failure here.

In his first inaugural address, talking about the deficit facing the US, Ronald Reagan declared "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

He was wrong. Coming together as a country and electing a small group of people to make decisions to our collective benefit is, I think, generally better than not doing so. Where he might have a point is that in trying to do good, governments can often end up doing bad.

This isn't surprising. It's hard to get cost-benefit calculations right because even simple actions in complex societies can have unintended consequences, and because freedom, social justice and future states of affairs are so hard to quantify.

This means we as a country should be a little forgiving of governments getting things wrong. But if they fail to stick to their mandates, fail to study the research evidence, fail to engage with expert opinion, fail to commission pilots, and fail to be scrupulously transparent in their decision-making, we have every right to condemn them.

A key objection is that if governments take time to make laws, the Opposition seizes the media agenda and accuses the Government of dragging its feet, losing its way, being indecisive, etc.

Big deal. We shouldn't let the media management tail wag the legislative dog.

This is not a liberal or democratic way to make laws. LibDems must do better than this.

Doing some good

It is stupid to blame the LibDems for everything the Coalition does. The LibDems have very little power: the voters in 2010 gave them just 57 seats out of 650 seats.

So it is to the credit of the LibDems that they have managed to leverage this limited power to...

• shift taxes from low and middle earners to the richest
• get extra money to schools to help poorer children
• create more new apprenticeships than Britain has ever had before
• create the world's first Green Investment Bank
• restore the link between pensions and earnings
• set-up proper regulation of the banks
• restore many of the civil liberties thrown away by Labour
• increase social housing for the first time in 30 years
• halt Labour's post office closures

Do you think the Conservatives would have done these things if they'd had unbridled power?

Even more shaming: why did it take a Conservative-led coalition to do these things that a Labour government should have been doing?


But is it enough?

When it comes to the next election, the voters will do their own cost-benefit calculations. They will look at the Government's success in tackling Labour's deficit, and the inevitable costs to society.

And the voters will also separate out the LibDems' role.

Sure, they will look at the good things that were possible because the LibDems were sitting on the Government benches.

But the voters will also look at the things the Conservatives were able to do because the LibDems weren't sitting on the Opposition benches: the tuition fees debacle; the stifling of green growth; the many spiteful cuts that save little money but assuage Daily Mail readers; the Welfare Reform Act 2012; and the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Is it enough?

I don't know.

But I do know that our bad bill-making practices are not winning us the media war in any shape or form.

We must do better than this.


Acknowledgements

• "pray" by Samantha Celera [CC BY-ND 2.0].
• "Alastair Campbell talking to staff in Labour's HQ" by the Irish Labour Party [CC BY-ND 2.0].
• "Beavers Breakfast" by Property#1 [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0].
• The list of LibDem achievements is derived from Mark Pack's infographic.

Why is localism such a tough sell?

OK, I jest. I'm grossly ignoring all the solid, nuanced research studying senses of community, local identity, civic pride, etc. And the research studying the conflicted nature of many people's sense of Britishness. And the research studying the complex interplay between different kinds of identity.

Aside from all the evidence then (!) my instincts are that many people tend to perceive "local politics" as more fragmented, opaque, ambiguous, tenuous, and petty than "national politics".

This is not to say that such people's local political identity is necessarily like that. For many folks, local issues are more personal, relevant and important than (for them) the remote, alienating, argy-bargy of national politics. "Local political identity" is bound up with the street, the family and friends, the job, the pub, the chippy. It's about popping in on elderly neighbours, helping out at the school, doing a sponsored marathon. It's about campaigning for or against the bypass, defending the post office and the playgroup. It's about here.

Moreover, the jokey comparison pictures above don't make any sense for people who engage with councils on policy, who write to papers, attend public meetings as a matter of course, reply to consultations, and the like. The comparisons would look very different. That's fine. I'm not talking here about these folks here.

What do the people with negative perceptions of local politics think about local politicians? My instincts (again, blithely ignoring all evidence) are...

• People who are wary of the competence of national politicians tend to be wary of local politicians more. After all, Westminster draws its talent from the whole country; whereas the local councils are just full of busy-bodies from hereabouts. So if you think MPs are bad, what must the councillors be like?! Please remember I'm talking about common perceptions that might explain why localism is a hard sell. These are not my views. I don't believe anything of the sort about councillors! Well, most councillors anyway... ;-)
• People who are wary of the trustworthiness of national politicians tend to be wary of local politicians just as much. After all, (goes the belief) "They're all as bad as each other".
• People who want national politicians to get a grip in a particular policy area don't want local politicians getting in the way of that. A "postcode lottery" is a bad thing, they might say, and at least if national politicians introduce something daft, every area of the country suffers, and it's not just our particular backwater.
• People who want national politicians to stop trying to control everything don't want local politicians interfering either. It's "political correctness" gone mad", after all, and the more "bosses" the greater the chance of stupid ideas getting imposed on us.

It would be nice to test whether many people do actually think these things. Maybe someone has.

And if all this didn't make it hard enough to sell localism as a good idea, the identities of councils themselves (at least in England) are far from uniform. The parish, the district, the borough, the town, the city, the county... Who knows what the term "region" refers to, let alone a "Regional Development Agency"? And "district": it might have a million people in it or just 35,000. And even if your particular councils turn out to be ones with clear identities, don't let's get started on the boundaries of neighbouring councils... Moreover, terms like "municipal", "borough", "civil", "principal authorities", "unitary", "metropolitan" and "non-metropolitan" do not trip off the tongues of ordinary folk: they sound like words from the 1950s, spoken by grey men in glasses with black plastic frames.

Most importantly, which council does what? Do they look after the schools and hospitals and police too? And how well are they doing? And who scrutinises them? And what's the difference between an officer and a councillor? And between a Chief Executive and a Leader and a Mayor and a Lord Mayor? And how much do they get paid? And why do they make so many stupid decisions? And who do I talk to about...? And why do you only see councillors at election time? And can you believe anything they say in their leaflets? And... And... And... And what are they after? Who are these strange people who want to be councillors anyway?

For people associated with local government, this is probably nothing new. They come across such bewilderment very often. So they have no problem understanding why localism is a tough sell. And every bright innovation from Cabinets to Unitary Authorities to Directly Elected Mayors to Directly Elected Police Commissioners is, I'm sure, a well-intentioned attempt to help deal with this bewilderment.

And I don't have a solution.

But I want to flag up this problem, because I'm going to argue in a later blogpost that right now we need localism more than ever.


Acknowledgements

• "Parliament at Twilight" by Kurt Munz [CC BY 2.0].
• Streetview images from Google.
• "Crawley Council" by Andrew Skudder [CC BY-SA 2.0].
• "Winston Churchill 1941" by Yousef Karsh [copyright expired].
• Clipart from Microsoft.
• "RAF Tornado GR4" by John Haslam [CC BY 2.0].
• "Borough of Hackney Seddon Atkinson Strato 325 8x4 Rubbish compactor, Apr 2009" by Felix O [CC BY-SA 2.0]
• "William Shakespeare" (Chandos portrait) attributed to John Taylor [copyright expired].
• "The Nordenskjöld Hall" by Anders Sandberg [CC BY 2.0].
• "union jack" by NapaneeGal [CC BY-NC 2.0]
• "UK stamp: 1st class" by Tom Marshall [CC BY-SA 2.0].
• "Pound Coins" by William Warby [CC BY 2.0].
• "Parking Tickets" by Ashley Coates [CC BY-SA 2.0].
• "Justice" by Charles D P Miller [CC BY 2.0].
• "Speed camera, Blossomfield Road, Solihull" by Elliott Brown [CC BY 2.0].
• Screen capture from BBC news broadcast
• "No News Today - Official" by Tim Green [CC BY 2.0].