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Decade
Local Government
Chronicle - 30 April 2007
Two images stick in my mind from opposite ends of the
country. One is of a triumph turned sour; the other of a rank defeat.
Because, inevitably, we look for emblems to mark Labour’s 10 year
overlord-ship of local government I think they convey the key mood –
frustration.
The first image, from
2000, is of Ken Livingstone hi-jacking with cheerful effrontery Labour’s
restored London Government. Labour couldn’t find a plausible candidate
for its own creation – it settled for the hapless, puffing Frank Dobson.
Now Ken, restored, unrepentant, to the Labour fold, can watch the other
parties’ gymnastics as they seek a plausible candidate to run against
him.
The second image, in
November, 2004, comes from the North East, the heartlands of Labour.
Driven, already, to postpone referendums on regional government in
Yorkshire
and the
North West
, Labour pinned its last great hope on the North East. It was thumped:
700,000 – 200,000.
This was defeat on a grand
scale. Not, I suspect, that Tony Blair shed many tears.
Blair has got huge advocacy skills. He can empathise with
everything from a seal cub to a pensioner victim of anti-social behaviour.
But precious little advocacy was invested in that vote.
Looking for a watershed
event in the Blair years I settle for that referendum. It humiliated John
Prescott. He had driven the agendas at his conglomerate department. His
mediation role in government, both, obviously, between Blair and Brown and
between traditional Labour and the New Labour “project” had given him
both influence and authority. Now he began to look much more like a hulk
until his affair beached him completely.
When Tony Blair entered
Downing St
in 1997 I doubt if he ranked Labour councillors amongst the outriders of
New Labour. Labour had been scarred by the conflict years of the 1980s.
Fabian Socialists vied with Thatcherite Tories in their predilection for
central control and New Labour’s appetite for change, almost instant
chance, made it impatient with local government’s traditionally paced
approach.
But the
Prescott
years saw change. One hall-mark was the erection of the vast gendarmerie
of inspection and control that went with Best Value and which has now
evolved into the Comprehensive Performance Assessment. The other was the
prescription of local government management structures – directly
elected mayors, Cabinet-style leadership – in the belief that
performance needed to be engineered. The third strand was the appointment
of regional quangos in “strategic” areas like planning, transport and
housing.
The government’s recent
White Paper acknowledged that this had been overkill on a heroic scale,
but it would be wrong to dismiss everything as tough love gone wrong.
There is a role for a process like the CPA. The question is whether the
outcomes justified the weight of the monitoring apparatus: by the
Government’s own admission the verdict is at best uncertain.
The regional referendum
left
Prescott
deflated and policy directionless. When David Miliband was sent to the
department with a Cabinet seat it was as if the lodger had been invited to
take over the management of the tenement. As the department seemed to
haver between competing agendas Gordon Brown’s spending demands drove
Council Tax bills into the political screaming zone. Revaluation was
jettisoned. Capping, excoriated by Labour, was back in town.
Ruth Kelly has brought
back some sense of strategic direction with a cautious, incremental
approach to localism, and the commitment to agree simplified ways to
measure performance. The
Lyons
report could provide a longer-term direction of travel. The problem is
that, however enticing the vision, there are unresolved issues in the here
and now – structure and funding. Local Government needs a sustainable
funding base and a clear idea of what lies ahead on structures rather than
the ad hoc improvisation which seems to rule at present.
Devolution may be a gentle
trickle or it may be a sturdy flow but it must be poured into a vessel
with sides. Those sides are still missing.
And that is why I believe
the verdict must be one of frustrated hopes – on the part of local
government for “freedoms” and on the part of Government for a new,
consumerist culture in councils. Cheeky Ken and the great White Elephant
of the North East are not unreasonable symbols of the what-might-have-beens
© Local Government Chronicle
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