Whilst this country has been obsessed by Brexit, austerity, balanced budgets and multiple failings by one Tory leader after another the reality is that a whole tier of government, and the services that it supplies, has been laid to waste. As new surveys reported in the Guardian reveal, local government is now on the brink of extinction. Once the driving force of local economies and innovation in transport, energy supply, education, a great deal of entertainment, housing and social provision, local government is now but a shadow of its former self, and what is left does in far too many cases look as if it will fail due to lack of funding in the near future.
This is no small deal. The welfare of millions of vulnerable people, including considerable numbers of children, is dependent upon council services, which many do not now know how to supply, and admit that they may fail to deliver.
Significant parts of our green economy are also dependent on local council services.
And the residue of so many services that once defined civic pride that in turn represented belief in the places where we lived and the people who lived there are now facing the likelihood of closure forever.
How did we move from an era when councils generated power, provided local transport, built and managed social housing, managed schools, provided leisure facilities of so many sorts, supported adult learning, and provided critical social services to the situation where many local authorities face bankruptcy? I would argue that this is because of the operation of the cowardly state.
The cowardly state is the exact opposite of the Courageous State that I described in my 2011 book with that title. What happens in the cowardly state is that a neoliberal politician, obsessed by centralised macroeconomic control of the economy and a desire to shrink the state at all costs so long as it has limited impact upon their own political fortunes, will close, privatise, outsource and simply abandon public services where anyone but they can be blamed for this happening with an indifference as to the consequence that is profoundly sociopathic.
I would argue that this is exactly what has happened to local government since 2010. The impact of austerity has been offloaded by central government onto local authorities. Sixty per cent of central government funding for local services has been lost over that period. The result is apparent. Services have collapsed. Outsourcing is failing. The most vulnerable have been failed. Protection has not been available to those who need it. And the policy has itself been proven to be bankrupt. Tory Northamptonshire - which has had to declare insolvency - is the evidence of that. Other Tory councils have warned that they may follow suit. The evidence of today's report is that the likelihood of this happening is now not remote, but commonplace. Whatever the model for local government was that the Tories had, it has failed. And they have failed people with it.
This is not a situation that is easy to reverse, for all sorts of reasons. Good people are not attracted to be councillors when the rewards are low and the prospect of failure, for which you may well feel a personal responsibility even if that is inappropriate, is high.
The same is true of good managers and staff, who all have their own personal breaking points, which many will have reached.
And the culture of solving problems locally has also been dissipated. Communities don't work together to solve problems now: that is something we outsource to a company to achieve, which it now (predictably) transpires that they are unable to do because they do not have anything remotely like that built into their purpose, and so ethos.
We do, then, have a system brought to its knees by deliberate choice of a political system, and most especially a political party, intent on destroying it even though that objective would appear to be the exact opposite of its supposed Conservative purpose.
Can this be reversed? The obvious answer is that of course it can be, but that this will take time. To rebuild organisations always takes that. But the process is not just one of providing piecemeal life support systems to keep emergency services functioning. Important as that funding is, what is required is a repurposing for local government.
That means we have to reimagine why we needed local government in the first place. This means we have to rethink the concept of community. We have to imagine the ideal of social cohesiveness. And envisage the advantage that comes from cooperation rather than competition. We have to reintegrate, and not separate. Whilst funding, borrowing and the governance of local government have all to be reimagined to make sure that they are fit for purpose, which the most cursory reading of Private Eye will reveal is not always the case now.
And why do we need to address this Cinderella of political activities? Simply because where we live matters. And how we treat each other in the communities where we are matters. And how we protect the weakest is the surest indication of how strong we really are. Whilst greening our world so that it might survive will necessarily require an increasing emphasis on all that is local.
The demise of local government is now likely unless something is done. We cannot take that risk. Nothing less than its wholehearted revival is required if we are to rebuild communities fit to live in.
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As someone who works in local government, I can only agree.
What does not help is the reaction of Councillors to cuts. There is a tendency for some to over react and start to cut activities that actually contribute to income in panic. The Tory councils in particular all too readily cut their own throats by swallowing the outsourcing pill wholesale in trying to win brownie points.
In my organisation we have an attitude of invest to save which also helps to offer work the private sector. Not all local leaders are so poor. But we recently had the Tories (supported by UKIP councillors) get in where I work and they want yet another costly review!!
One if the biggest threats in Local Government is from MBA managerialism tendencies, where former department heads want to set themselves up as service ‘commissioners’ who end up being highly paid to sell off the work force cheaply to externals and then just run contracts. Many former department heads should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves over what they have done to preserve their positions.
You would not believe the financial juggling going on these days between the housing revenue accounts and the general fund – it was no accident that the Tories enabled council landlords to keep all their rent income and manage it as they see fit to meet local priorities – it was the biggest hint ever that Councils were expected (even put under pressure) to break down the walls between the funds because of course by doing that Councils would be forced to sell off assets into the private sector and use tenants rent to subsidise council tax and vice versa.
The remaining question is this: for a country that has based its growth on privatisation of the commons since 1979 when the commons has all gone, then fucking what? What will be driving the economy when there is nothing left- when we have hollowed everything out as Will Hutton pointed out in the 1990’s?
Then we have to start again
Will we get the chance?
The biggest problem as I see it is there is no appetite for Local Government as shown by the poor turnout at elections. We need to find a way to galvanise support for what is for many the most important tier of government.
This is a Catch 22
Whilst local government does so little people will not vote
If it did something they probably would…..
Agree entirely with the revival of local government but my view is that councils really should start creating money. I’ve actually got a few local government employees to see the light but councillors don’t see it.
In order to create money you need something to spend it on – not difficult – and also a means of compulsorily requiring its payment. Both of which, of course, councils have.
They should really get together and create Local Government Association pounds.
http://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/what-gives-money-value
It wouldn’t be convertible into Euros but it would be convertible into Sterling, I suggest.
This is the moment for local government to ‘take control’.
In order to assist democracy we actually need a ‘single’ currency but with subsidiary currencies.
This is the start of a reasonable defence against neoliberal austerity.
I am sorry Peter but this does not make any macroeconomic sense at all
There can only be one currency in a sovereign territory if macroeconomic control is to be maintained – and that has to be central government
But you’ve just been railing *against* central government macroeconomic control.
Of the wrong sort
I don’t dispute that.
But I take the view that it is now the only practical way out for local authorities.
I disagree: enhanced grants to deliver redistribution plus reformed local taxation are the way out of that
“I disagree: enhanced grants to deliver redistribution plus reformed local taxation are the way out of that”
I have some sympathy with Peter’s point regarding local council currencies. I take your point, Richard that the ‘correct’ solution is to wait twiddling their thumbs until the government of the day sees fit to generously allow some money to go the local authorities where it is needed to supply the services they are legally obliged (in many cases) to provide.
But the point is that until central government is prepared to accept responsibility for providing the means to provide local essential services the councils’ hands are tied and the selling-off of the public estate continues unabated. It IS deliberate and highly destructive.
Central government will not change it’s policy direction until such time as it is somehow ‘encouraged’ to do so. Local government has no control of its economy while using somebody else’s currency any more than a nation state does.
There is an ineluctable MMT logic to Peter’s suggestion. I agree entirely that a central government taking its responsibilities seriously would be a better solution but we may have to force that change of mindset. One would have thought that Conservative-run councils going into bankruptcy would have alarm bells ringing, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I see a role for the likes of the Bristol Pound – but it is not a separate currency – it is locally recorded pounds realisable only in that City
Fior this I have sympathy
Interesting. Andy gets my point!
Local currencies would enhance local democracy as well.
The Bank of England don’t know whether the Bristol Pound creates money (I’ve asked). The Bristol Pound themselves say that every printed note is backed by a £ in sterling. But of course the Bristol pound is also electronic, they accept payment for council tax in Bristol Pounds and pay their staff partly in Bristol Pounds . I think it is highly likely that they are creating money in fact – but if they really are not, then they ought to be!
Sevenoaks council in Kent has been under Conservative control for ever, is in good shape and has outsourced nothing ever. Two years ago they were up for the local govt award from We Own It for this reason, which is how I heard about them.
I see a role for the likes of the Bristol Pound — but it is not a separate currency — it is locally recorded pounds realisable only in that City.
I think that amounts to hair splitting. The Bristol pound would appear to be in every sense a currency. To say it is not realisable elsewhere is not necessarily the case. Whether or not it has any value as ‘foreign exchange’ in the wider world (within or without the UK) is entirely at the discretion of those interested in using it for commercial transactions surely?
I don’t see how this is not a currency, and the ability of the issuer to demand payment of local taxes in it (which is, I assume, currently optional) offers the potential to reinforce and maintain the currency’s value. This offers one of very few ways of preventing Bristol money drifting off to support the financialised economies of more affluent areas (Like London and the Cayman Islands for example). If central government will not replenish the Sterling Currency constantly being robbed by rentier activity, depressing the Bristol economy, where else is new currency to come from?
The fundamentals seem sound to me, but I have no idea how well it works in practice.