Best Of

Sometimes it takes a post to realise a great truth. Barty is the anti-Doug. Or Doug is the anti-Barty if you prefer. While Barty's libertarianism suggests local govt should be abolished in favour of national, I believe the opposite. If I were arrogant enough to draft a proposal for a well organised society, I'd posit that municipalities should be the primary unit of political organisation, rather than nation-states. I genuinely despise nationalism and would love a political culture rooted in citizenship and civic engagement rather than ethnic or cultural identity. Even so-called "civic nationalists" can't completely escape the taint of at least one of those. Usually both.

I daydream that democracy moves back to the original idea of its classical founders - people would participate directly in face-to-face assemblies at the municipal level to make decisions about local affairs, moving beyond representative democracy toward genuine participatory self-governance. I think representative democracy is cracking up and the only way to save democracy in any meaningful sense is to move back to toward genuine participation. Yeah, theoretically you could do that on a national basis, like a Eurovision vote, endless referenda, but are people really participating, rather than just observing.

Municipalities could form voluntary confederations to coordinate on larger issues while maintaining local autonomy. Economic life would be reorganised around municipal ownership and cooperative enterprises making the local community the fundamental unit of political life while connecting these communities through horizontal networks rather than vertical state structures.

It'll never happen but, hey, it's my ha'penny's worth on how to save the world.

Municipal corporations were a part of the bedrock of Britain's Industrial Revolution.

And in the new millennium, it's notable that outside of the capital (which hoards capital to itself), the strongest growth is in the cities with strongest devolved powers.

Barty's bastardised mashup of centralism and libertarianism has no successful real world analogues.

As a self proclaimed soft Libertarian, although not of the Propertarian bent that Bart seems to espouse I have to say I very much like Doug's idea of bottom up governance. Only those things that cannot be achieved at the lower tier should be elevated to a higher tier.

My only difference is that in this system I still see a place for the Nation State to provide the legal and security framework within which it all happens. That is not something I think can be done effectively or democratically at a Supra national level.

But most decisions being made at a municipal, town or parish level is very much something to be aspired to.

Except UK is full of retired NIMBYs, who are much easier to fight on a national policy level (not that anyone is) than a local one. I think that's a lot of where Bart's coming from.

The ideologically libertarian way to put this is that if you need the government to make rules, they should be objective and generalized. If you need a lot of local knowledge to make decisions properly, you're probably micromanaging too much.

A practical way to see this distinction is if you compare Japan, which has planning rules but they're mostly like "if there is a slope, your building must be at least twice as far from the slope as the height of the slope, and this will be checked by a man with a tape measure", with Britain, which has rules like "you should not be out of character with the general vibe of the place, and a committee of elderly people will tell you whether what you want to build does that or not".

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At the link is a very good 4 minute demolition of Lammy's proposed no juries plans.

This is utterly DAMNING for David Lammy.

"We are not looking to convict people as quickly as possible, we are looking for justice."

A Barrister clinically dismantles David Lammy's disgraceful decision to scrap jury trials.

Watch until the end.
It wont even fix the backlog.
https://x.com/addicted2newz/status/1995954389014774270

Jury Service is a form of Conscription.

You can certainly view it as such.
You're aware of the concept of civic duty ?

So you believe in Conscription then?

If there were an urgent need for it, yes.
There isn't.

What or who would define "need"?

Is there a "need" for Jury Service?

Note to editors: Sunil is one of that intrepid band who have been "called up" twice.

Me too. Heard four cases. Three were a complete waste of time.

I would argue against it's being a serious inconvenience. (So were the years I spent as a school governor.)
But on balance I think it a worthwhile inconvenience.

And if course a better funded and organised system would be significantly less of an inconvenience, along with addressing the backlog.

OT - Clearly Farage expects the Cons to come to him on bended knee begging for the said alliance. No Ref oppo to sitting MPs in return for Ref getting a free run everywhere else for example. Seems unlikely. A much better plan to just take over the Cons - but that seems more likely after the next GE than before it. Farage needs things to happen fast - it won't get better for him and he may end up operating from a much weaker position.

Only Jenrick if he replaced Kemi would even consider a formal Tory and Reform pact pre GE and Cleverly and Stride might not even back Farage to be PM post GE if a hung parliament but abstain

Scenario 1:
Kemi steps down before next general (60% chance?)
Jenrick replaces her (75% chance)
jenrick succeeds in negotiating a deal with Farage that leads to a Reformed Conservative Party going into the election (20%)
Result - 400 seats to the Reformed Conservative Party. 100 seats to LD - the official opposition.
Chance of it happening 60%x75%x20% about 10%?

Scenario 2:
Kemi does not step before next election, or if she does, Cleverley is the next leader (50% chance?)
Tory leader succeeds in negotiating a deal with Farage that leads to a Reformed Conservative Party going into the election (zero chance)
Result - 150-250 seats to Reform, 50-150 seats to Con, 100-250 seats to Lab, 75-100 seats to LD, 10-50 seats to Green.
Chance of it happening about 50%?

Scenario 3:
Kemi steps down before next general (60% chance?)
Jenrick replaces her (75% chance)
jenrick does not succeed in negotiating a deal with Farage that leads to a Reformed Conservative Party going into the election (80%)
Result - 150-250 seats to Reform, 50-150 seats to Con, 100-250 seats to Lab, 75-100 seats to LD, 10-50 seats to Green.
Chance of it happening about 40%?

Its hard to imagine any mergers or coalitions involving any major party. Everyone looks at the LDs since the coalition. I know they're happy, but they're mad to be so.

Aren't (post-election) coalitions and mergers very different things? The coalition went badly for the LDs, but the merger between the Liberals and SDP was more successful. The threat in a coalition is that the junior partner gets shafted, but there is no junior partner in a merger: you're merged into one thing.

A merger of Reform and the Tories might well involve more policy contradictions than the one between the Libs and the SDems, I think ?

(And it's not as though the latter combination doesn't have its issues.)

Isn't this just Farage doing what he always does? I think he enjoys the limelight but would run a mile from political office.

It’s always easier to be in permanent opposition, able to suggest solutions and ideas that never have to be actually implemented.

Unfortunately the current government appears to have arrived with no ideas, and the previous government had run out of them.

As many of their newly elected councillors running an administration, they’ll be discovering that governing is hard hard hard. A series of spinning plates full of shit, surrounded by electric fans.

I don't think incompetence in office will hit Reform hard enough. A recent example:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-durham-county-council-darren-grimes-400775/

That situation would have applied whoever ran the county. There is a consultation on the budget tomorrow and the details have been published on the council site. Reform have made some savings but the demands on councils and budgets across the board are going up. That’s not incompetence it’s a broken funding model for local govt.

Maybe. But it still leaves Reform heading up the shit-sandwich buffet...

What is Reform's policy for mending the broken funding model for local government? 3 words: Close. Things. Down.

Nope

It’s the same as any other local
Govt

More.govt.money

I refer the honourable members to my long standing answer on this. Abolish local government, standardise services nationwide, and reap the benefits of doing it all at scale.

Solved.

Indeed. Alternatively hand local powers back to people and get the busybodies out of the way.

Anything that is standardised nationwide, like SEND/Care etc should be dealt with and funded nationwide.

Anything that is a choice, should be chosen by the individuals concerned.

Get rid of the local councils, elections and abolish that whole layer of bureaucracy and crap.

Getting rid of local councils will reduce headcount by about 2mn. Headcount and services have been reduced over the years. Current figures for Central Government are 4.04mn (2025) up from 2.3mn in 1999. Total employed is 34mn or 75% of those of workforce age.

How does everyone feel about Bart's suggestion of more central government?

Its more a suggestion for less government, than more central government.

Much of what local government funds currently comes from central government diktats and obligations anyway. Councils are legally obliged to follow through with care and SEND and other stuff that central government insists upon. If central government insists upon it, then it should fund it. Care that is obligated to be provided should be funded through the Department of Health and Social Care. SEND should be funded through the Department of Education.

Local funding should be for local choices. Of which there is precious little anyway, so either free that up, or abolish the whole lot of it.

Obliged.

Going to disagree with you there. Obligated is a UK formal adjective, dating back centuries, it is not an Americanism: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/obligated

Since they are legally obliged to follow through with those, they are obligated to provide it. I am not an English teacher, but that is proper grammar, AFAIK.

Badenoch punchy again at PMQs, as suspected. Thought the stuff about the OBR got lost in the fog of debate but she was very good on the two child benefit stuff at the end. Starmer is being made to look very flat-footed by her now and he didn’t manage to rally his MPs at all (bit concerning when she was going after his leadership). He needs to up his game.

Not my take at all. Badenoch’s leadership of the party is too much opposition calling for resignations in every breath. It’s all gossipy and fluff and rudeness - where’s the gravitas? When it comes to preparing for PMQs or aligning with clear strategy on policy, they seem to just take everything off the front page of the daily mail.

For all the talk of Kemigasm, her only announcement on economic policy which stands out is Cavemen didn’t have a welfare state.

It’s Punch and Judy stuff but I think it’s the right call for the Tories at the moment. They are in danger of being crowded out of the debate by Reform and nobody listening to them.

Kemi has learned that if she wants airtime she’s going to need to get some of these Commons performances onto social media. Going in big and punchy is the way to go while the Tories are where they are in the polls, IMHO.

I would like to see more serious policymaking and strategising from the Tories. But not sure the floor of the HOC at PMQs is the right place for it.