OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.
Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): Right now, I'm spending a lot of my time on the stump. In a week's time, we'll know the results of this year's local elections; a good time to reflect, then, on the prospects for local government in Britain.
First, what can we expect from the elections, in terms of level of voter-interest? As May 1st gets close, I am spending less time around East Anglia, and more time close to home in Norwich. So I am really only qualified to speak about what is going on here.
And I would say that interest is reasonably strong. One reason why is that we (the Greens) came one vote short of becoming the opposition on the Council here last year. The Lib Dems held on by just one vote in Thorpe Hamlet ward, and thus maintained a 11-10 advantage over us. Norwich's citizens have seen proof that every vote really does count, and I anticipate a slightly higher turnout this year as a result.
But turnout for local elections will never rise dramatically until local government in our kingdom is re-invested with serious powers.
Anthony Brand's previous post in this series points out some of the ways that we are going and need to go in this regard, though he leaves out the most significant potential development in the powers of Local Councils for some years: the passing into law of the Sustainable Communities bill. The Sustainable Communities bill could have tremendous potential, for example in offering business rate subsidies for community-friendly businesses or in preventing the closure of community services such as schools, pubs and (most topically) Post Offices. Local Authorities have to 'opt in' to the process and then having done so must consult with their citizens on issues that might improve local sustainability. A double local devolution, as it is being called.
But the Green Party agenda is more ambitious still. We want to see nothing less than the greatest decentralisation of powers to localities that there has ever been. It's called 'localisation' - the opposite of globalisation. Check out Colin Hines's important book on the topic for more.
Obviously, a programme such as this is dependent for its full implementation on a fairly seismic change in the political culture across Europe, and indeed worldwide. Global trade rules, and the central institutions of the EU, would have to be subordinated to the democratic impulse and the localist imperative. It is noteworthy however that in principle the idea of such decentralisation is already perfectly compatible with EU ideals: the principle of subsidiarity ought to put the onus on any opponent of decentralisation and localisation to justify their failure to move in the direction which we Greens recommend.
Local elections are important. But it is also important that we use national and European elections to generate momentum to change the 'balance of power' such that local Councils etc. have much more power than at present they do. When we make that change, then local elections will become much more important still.
