Jonathan Bryant (Brighton & Hove, Direct Democracy): Colin Baker sets out a direct challenge below - what does "localism" actually mean in practice? For Direct Democracy, the answer is quite simple: the whole essence of localism is that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. Therefore, the ideal unit of governance is the smallest practicable unit.Take, for example, education. When it comes to choosing a school, the smallest unit is the individual (the parent or the sixth-former). When it comes to how the school operates - admissions policy, uniform policy, holiday dates, religious instruction, curriculum etc - the unit is the school. When it comes to financing the system, the unit is the county or city. The only role of the national government is to specify the outcome. In other words, to say: "By the time you leave school, we expect you to be able to do the following things". As to how to get there, over to schools themselves.
The argument for counties and cities is simply one of affiliation and identity. The word Somerset or Kent or Norfolk conjures a whole series of images in the mind of any Englishman, in a way that "Shepway" and "West Mercia" don't. Left to their own devices, people will probably choose to organise along comfortable and familiar lines - viz counties and metropolitan authorities. But we agree with Colin, this should be a bottom up process - if people want to opt out of the current structures, that should be up to them.
Baker states that traditional counties are too big, practically speaking, to work as localist units, but it is instructive to look at examples from around the world. Kent County Council, for example, has a population which would make it the 33rd most populous state in the U.S. The largest German Land in terms of population - Nordrhein Westfalen - contains over 18 million people. By contrast, in Switzerland, many of the Cantons (the states of the Swiss Federation) have populations similar to many English district and borough authorities. In other words, it is very hard to generalise - these 3 countries all have different structures and sizes of locality - but all are wonderful exemplars of localism in action. Therefore, we go back to our original statement - namely, the ideal unit of governance is the smallest practicable. To decide the size of that unit beforehand, in an arbitrary and centralised fashion, would be to make the very kind of mistake that the philosophy of localism seeks to avoid.
