Jonathan Bryant (Brighton & Hove, Direct Democracy): The October Google Zeitgeist Conference in California was a particularly apposite occasion for David Cameron to set out a vision described recently by Steve Richards in The Independent as "potentially revolutionary in its implications, one that could at the very least transform the political culture in Britain". Mr Cameron's prediction that as a society we are on the cusp of a new ‘post-bureaucratic' age may not have caused intakes of breath in the nation's pubs and bars. But as more details emerge of what this new philosophy actually encapsulates, it is becoming clearer <!--more-->that his vision does indeed sum up the zeitgeist.
Recent policy announcements on parental choice in schooling, localised energy production, Wisconsin style welfare reform, directly-elected sheriffs and the establishment of a new Conservative Co-operative movement all have one common thread running through them: decentralisation. What Mr Cameron is outlining in his talk of a ‘post-bureaucratic' age is essentially a localist vision - recognising that the power of the central state to effect meaningful change over people's lives is severely limited. A much greater degree of local control allows communities to apply solutions best suited to meet their needs - decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. Such diversity also works at a national level - local innovation would allow others to copy the best, as happened in the USA with welfare reform.
Without wishing to sound too self-congratulatory, Direct Democracy would like to take some credit for the ideas that are now emerging from Conservative Central Office. As a group of new Conservative MPs, MEPs and candidates, we have been espousing this localist theme for some time now. Indeed, all the ideas listed above - along with pushing the powers of regional assemblies and quangos down to local councils and scrapping Crown Prerogative appointment powers - originated in our manifesto, Direct Democracy - Agenda for a New Model Party. As Mr Cameron himself stated recently: "I passionately believe we need to localise power, as recommended by the Direct Democracy movement of Conservative activists and MPs". And whilst we are delighted that Mr Cameron has started to draw out some of the practical implications of the new vision, we would urge him to be even bolder.
For us, the essential prerequisite to any genuine and meaningful devolution of power is to make local councils self-financing. Cameron's recent pledge to force referenda on councils who propose unreasonable council tax increases may superficially seem an attractive application of local direct democracy. But in principle, it would have much the same effect as a crude central capping. Similarly, the supply-side revolution in school places promised by the Party's new education green paper needs to be accompanied by demand side reform - namely a legally enshrined right giving every child's parents the right to request and receive the funding for his or her education, to take to the school of their choice.
However, the mood music is extremely encouraging and, despite opposition claims of lack of substance, a clear vision is emerging. Michael Gove recently summed up the zeitgeist in characteristically elegant fashion:
In every area of life the future rests not with the exercise of massive power from one central point but the enabling of growth through constant innovation and adaption. We can no longer control society as a diplodocus controlled its tail, from one tiny brain that is immeasurably distant from the action
The future's bright; the future's local.
Comments
"Wisconsin style welfare Reform"
You have to do something for your benefits.
Have school age children you get benefits for. Make sure they go to school or you get your money cut.
If unemployed you have to do a certain amount of 'work' to get benefits. Initially (both for recipients and when the reforms started out) training or tightly supervised job seeking, later community based work etc. Don't do the full hours required then the money is cut proportionally.
Time restrictions on benefits etc. Discourage people from going onto benefits in the first place.
It's been very effective at getting people off welfare and into work.
Couple of links with details.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/HL593.cfm
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3573807.html
Charliemarks' remarks on immigration, jobs and unemployment would be plausible if the numbers of British citizens claiming benefit had gone up by near a million since the Poles and Czechs arrived. They haven't. So we have a nice clear counterexample for once to the misconception that there are things called jobs which are capable of being created or destroyed, and are distinct form instances of people doing productive things. Unemployment and its euphemismatic equivalents has been pretty much constant. Employment on the other hand has gone up by hundreds of thousands. A job exists only while somebody is doing it.
Pace Sarah, immigration doesn't need to be "justified". Immigration is just people moving house. You don't need a justification or a permit to move from Bristol to Sheffield, so why from Prague to Lewisham?
Such reforms are only good for the ruling class...
Under capitalism there cannot be full employment - the three main parties accept this - so there will always be people seeking unemployment benefits.
So what it really means is a return to the the soup kitchen and the workhouse...
What is "Wisconsin style welfare reform" and why is it a good thing?
@charliemarks Conservatives have never been interested in nothing else but power. Check the history of tory governments and you'll see how most of the population had to suffer the consequence of ever growing neglect and social disparity.
The very idea that suddenly, Cameron is somehow different - or might be - is laughable.
The thing is, that currently in Britain, there's no opposition to anti-democratic economics, otherwise known as "capitalism". (..though its hardly of the Smithsonian kind, because current capitalism relies on state subsidies..)
"...the essential prerequisite to any genuine and meaningful devolution of power is to make local councils self-financing."
Hear, hear.
This word "localism" is all very fine but, I suspect none of you could tell me what it actually is!
Is it; a region; a county; a district / borough; a parish or what? How about having new "City Counties" with new enlarged "Parish" communities - forget the rest. Current county boundaries were out of date three decades back. Current Parish structure tends to be too small for anything serious to happen.
Travel to work and travel to play areas have changed somewhat in the last decades (see the travel to work map on the following website). The old tribal boundaries have moved as cities have naturally developed into centres of socio-economic activity. So why not make new Counties based on these cities - and some new ones in the various green deserts that masquerade as farms with inadequate woodlands (carbon capture devices) on them.
This will have to be a bottom up revolution as we all know that Westminster and Whitehall will never sanction such a move; in fact, it would frighten the lives out of them. Particularly as all government departments and associated quangos would be managed coterminous with the new CCs and required to present budgets and operating plans to each City County for scrutiny ( if not approval at a later stage).
Can you actually imagine if each City County had a detailed financial account of everything national government was doing on its patch - frightening! (National government makes local government look efficient, believe it or not).
How to pay for it all? VAT has possibilities but a Land Value Tax would be my preference. There would have to be a revenue balancing mechanism across England for many years to come, probably based on County GDP or similar.
Where to start? Look through the data on http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/default.asp
Also, look at the Bus routes in your hamlet, buses tend to go where the people want to go nowadays. The places they have naturally associated themselves with.
The Sustainable Communities Act is a starter for this revolution and could be the catalyst for "localism". What say you?
Thanks Sarah
Guy - where do I begin?
Surely that EU migrants have found employment is because employers choose to employ them, knowing that rates of pay will be lower than settled workers and that language barriers will make it harder for them to assert their legal rights.
Tell someone who is threatened with unemployment or has been made unemployed that jobs are niether created nor destroyed and you'd rightly get called a nutter. Tell them that, oh, sure they can go on doing their jobs without being paid...
Sarah, I know very well the quote - and yes, all who can work should work. At present, we do not have an economic system that allows for this, however.
The bosses lobbied for high immigration - for a workforce that is cheaper and easier to exploit. Remember - the Tories were told by the CBI at the last election: don't cap immigration numbers. So they decided that they would instead cap aylum numbers - which make up fewer people, and besides, asylum seekers are banned from legally working - so no harm don to the bosses.
As I have said, I want people to have the opportunity to work - I doubt very much if there are many people who are happy being out of work - it certainly does not match my experience.
My view is that - get this - there should be supply-side measures... more jobs created in the domestic economy, no jobs being outsourced to low-wage economies.
We especially need investment in those towns and cities that have unemployment levels above the natonal average because of the decline of manufacturing presided over by both Tory and Labour govts...
But I don;t think Cameron's Conservatives are interested in this... Do you?
Those of us that had family members unable to find a job - and can remember being in that position - the misery of being out of work, will be astonished by your comments Sarah.
Are the Tories going to create more jobs? Stop the decline in industry - a decline which they watched and spurred on for years, only to hand the baton onto New Labour - are they going to force capitalists to invest in this country and not ship jobs abroad?
This does not smack of democracy, nor, as this organisation cynically calls itself "direct-democracy". Its nothing but an old fashioned conservative attempt to allow corporations beurocracy and profits to take over.
I wonder what so called "direct-democracy" has to say about democratising global corporations..
Clues to the cynical agenda of tory/direct-democracy are on their web site as well as in the article above:
Key words: "enabling" and "control society".
This is not about freedom but about ways of managing people - be it by control or by the more friendly term "enable". (..are we currently disabled? we need your greatness to enable us - and then, you'd say, we owe you..?)
The ref to "Wisconsin style welfare Reform" is where the clue to further corporatism of the state comes. The harder the sate makes it for people to take time and choose their own lives - e.g. unemployed - the more power corporations have over salary and work conditions.
Direct-Democracy/Tories will say anything to get their hands on power.
"Such reforms are only good for the ruling class…"
Won't do anything for those working their asses off to get taxed to oblivion to pay for those who prefer sitting around on theirs of course.
Indeed, what we have is state-monopoly capitalism - the state helping big business get more profit. Corporate handouts come in the form of privatisations, contracting out, and of course, coming to the rescue when it all goes tits-up, as in the case of Northern Rock.
This country currently has massive levels of immigration justified on the grounds that immigrants are needed because there is 'nobody' to do various jobs.
Taxes, house prices etc are high. It can be a struggle for working people to make ends meet, yet we're supposed to be happy to see the money we earn go to keep people in idleness, some of whom get more money coming in than those with jobs.
People lose their jobs, many want to find another. They don't want to be reliant on the state. After a while they get another job. But there are simply some people who will not work if they can help it. They don't even feel bad about it. They think the rest of us owe them a living. Well we don't.
What do you think should be done re such individuals?
I'm not an expert on political philosophies but the quote is, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is it not? Not "please free load".
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