Politics: the last vestiges of democracy

By Richard North - December 17, 2024

Then a local government officer, I remember clearly the great reorganisation precipitated by the Local Government Act 1972, which in England reduced the number of councils outside London from 1,245 to 412, and in Wales to 45.

The Act itself was the child of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, more commonly known as the Redcliffe-Maud Report after the name of its chairman. This was appointed on 7 June 1966 and the report was published in 1968, then to be followed by a White Paper published in May 1971 which led to the Act which came into force in 1 April 1974.

From start to finish, therefore, the process took eight years, during which time there were endless discussions and briefings, all of which had been preceded by local government reorganisation in London, taking effect in 1963, setting the tone for the wider reorganisation process.

The changes were far from popular, but they were, by no means, the last word on local government reorganisation. Yet none of the changes since have been as profound as those proposed in yesterday’s English Devolution White Paper introduced by deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.

To an extent, these build on a longstanding process which goes back to the Blair regime and John Prescott’s abortive regionalisation programme. This had more than a tinge of EU influence in it, but was abandoned after North-east voters rejected the idea of a regional assembly in a referendum in November 2004.

The fact that the idea was so roundly rejected by a popular vote, however, has not meant that successive governments have abandoned it. Progressively, we have seen the imposition of a series of combined authorities, each with an elected mayor planted at the apex, in a grotesque parody of democracy, sold to a largely indifferent electorate under the pretence of devolution.

This form of regionalisation by the back door, however, has been piecemeal and is inevitably slow. But we have now got to the stage where Starmer’s Regime is declaring its hand and planning for a rapid completion of the process, part of what it calls euphemistically “devolution by default”, to disguise the compulsion built into the plan.

On the agenda is the abolition of the remaining and largely rural two-tier district councils – first introduced by the 1972 Act – and their upper tier county councils, the boundaries of which in some areas go back to medieval times and beyond.

As a replacement structure, every local authority in the country will become what will be called a “strategic authority”, a bastardised concept comprising mega-districts each with a population of about 500,000. This means that the existing counties become unitary councils – like their metropolitan equivalents – encompassing the full range of local government functions, in their transition to becoming strategic authorities.

Initially, there will be two types of these authorities: the Foundation Strategic Authorities, and the Mayoral Strategic Authorities, which will include the Greater London Authority and all the other authorities which currently have elected mayors.

The ambition is that all parts of England, ultimately, will become Mayoral authorities, with elected mayors foisted on them whether they like it or not – and many don’t.

Once this system is set up, there are then plans to establish a grading system, where Mayoral Strategic Authorities with “a strong track record of delivery, which can demonstrate exemplary stewardship of public finances”, can request access to a deeper level of devolution.

This includes a magical device called the “Integrated Settlement”. With that, they become “Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities”, a status which confers additional spending powers (and obligations), with central government funding passed downwards for projects to be managed at the “strategic” level.

But the key criterion for this magical status is that the funding can only be passed to Mayoral authorities with a directly elected mayor in place for at least 18 months. Authorities, therefore, are to be bribed into submission, agreeing to hold mayoral elections for their weary council-tax payers to troop out and vote for the chosen candidates – without anything so uncouth as a referendum.

Doubtless, it could be said that Rayner’s White Paper simply sets the seal on a new system of local government which has long been in the making, but it is also very clearly the cause that this has been a “stealth” reorganisation, which has bypassed even the most perfunctory of democratic processes.

In contrast to the 1972 Act, with the prolonged and well-publicised Royal Commission leading up to it, the only marker of this profound change is an opaque piece in Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, amounting to less than 200 words.

There, we are told that Labour would “deepen devolution settlements for existing Combined Authorities” and also widen devolution to more areas, “encouraging” local authorities to come together and take on new powers.

There is absolutely no hint that the Starmer Regime was planning a fundamental restructuring of local government, the compulsory abolition of centuries-old two-tier county structures (which predate the 1972 reorganisation), and the effective imposition of directly-elected mayors in every authority in the country.

Furthermore, by turning every council into a unitary authority with a typical population of 500,000, this makes a complete mockery of the concept of local government, where the size will exceed many sovereign nations, distancing local electors even further from the centres of power.

Rayner, says the Guardian – in a piece published before the White Paper – was to promise on Monday that more decisions will be put in the hands of people with “skin in the game”, but observes that there will still be top-down targets to push areas to meet housing and development demand and to stop local objections from blocking projects of strategic importance.

In fact, power will be concentrated in the hands of mayors, which – as yesterday’s ministerial statement makes clear, with local government minister Jim McMahoon declaring: “Ultimately, our goal is mayoral devolution”.

This means that councils will be dominated by obedient party hacks, on whom will be bestowed the nominations for mayor candidatures, whence they will ride the prevailing party preferences in the areas in which they stand, on turnouts as low as 15 percent.

Local councillors will have even less input than they have already, and council leaders will be relegated to the positions of administrative drones, managing public services.

Traditionally, the Guardian is the local government newspaper – and used to make much of its income from local authority job advertisements. In keeping with this role, it has been the first (and so far the only) paper to publish an editorial in which it remarks that the White Paper “promises to empower local councils in England while simultaneously telling them what to do”.

The paper recognises that the promised abolition of district councils, which face being merged with counties to form unitary authorities, is a “politically provocative measure”, warning that disrupting local democracy “is not a thing to be done lightly, especially when public trust in politics is widely understood to be fragile”.

But it is silent on the utterly undemocratic manner in which these far-reaching plans are being rammed through the system, although it does conclude that local councils risk being reshaped not to make their own choices but the better to carry out Whitehall’s orders.

That has always been the greatest weakness in British local government – certainly since the beginning of the 20th Century – in that it has acted primarily as an agent of central government, with very little local autonomy. With this new, arbitrary system to be imposed in such a peremptory fashion, the situation can only get worse.

The Mail though, is on the ball, stating that Labour has been accused of trampling on local democracy, noting that if councils drag their heels over doing the planned reorganisation, change will be forced upon them via a “ministerial directive”, which will be written into the planned legislation.

And when councillor Hannah Dalton, vice chairwoman of the District Councils Network warns that “any creation of mega councils will prove the opposite of devolution, taking powers away from local communities, depriving tens of millions of people of genuinely localised decision making and representation”, alarm bells should be ringing.

Sadly, though, this major assault on the fundamentals of our already etiolated democracy don’t even make the front pages of today’s newspapers, while the “insurgent” Reform seems more concerned with the delay in holding elections, brought about by the administrative changes, than it is the further erosion of our democracy.

By such neglect are we thus enslaved, reflecting the penalty system for failing to pay local taxes, where a prison sentence is automatic for default, with no opportunities for appeal. Essentially, we have freedom only under licence, conditional on our payment of our annual Danegeld to our masters.

And Starmer’s Regime is about to remove the last vestiges of democracy from the system.