Most political pundits ignore local politics, feeling it a boring, bureaucratic irrelevance when compared to the real seat of power and influence. Local politics conjures up images of old women arguing over hedges and dog fouling, or Steve Coogan’s character in In The Loop, a bizarre individual obsessed with a collapsing wall as the UK is on the brink of war.
Yet so much of our everyday lives- from roads, to bin collections, to planning for housing- are run by local authorities: by your neighbours and people you know, not by MPs. And because it is so tangible, the local often matters to people in a way that bigger, macro- level issues may not: litter is annoying, parking tickets are annoying, traffic is annoying, dog fouling is annoying, collapsing walls are annoying.
Local politics are particularly important in Wales, a country which is intensely parochial in the truest sense of the word. Wales is different from the rest of the UK in two key ways when it comes to local politics. Firstly, compared to the rest of the UK, Wales is far less urbanized and has a higher proportion of smaller towns and villages. Many of these towns and villages are also relatively isolated because of Wales’ appalling transport infrastructure, and in many towns – particularly in the South – there is little migration in or out. This lack of mobility means that the local community becomes very important to people, and can be very influential in moulding people’s beliefs. The second distinct feature is the hegemonic dominance of the Labour party in Wales for over a century. This has produced sprawling local dynasties and a deep rooted local party apparatus which penetrates local civil society in a way which is not found anywhere else in the UK.
