Daniel Hannan (Member of the European Parliament for South-East England) sees the beginning of a localist revolution.
We’ve still got a very long way to go, of course. But give credit where it’s due. Governments hate giving away any jurisdiction. Yet, on an issue that matters enormously to people across my Home Counties region, power is passing from a remote bureaucracy to a local community. If we can have local referendums on planning, we can have them on policing priorities, tax levels, road schemes. This could be the beginning of, literally, a revolution: a turning of the wheel, a setting upright of that which has been turned on its head, so that the state once again becomes the servant of the citizen rather than the other way around.
One good reason to vote Conservative on Thursday? Localism.
2 comments
wufnik
Except, of course, for the fact that it’s not true. The government acrtualy wants to limit local authorities’ ability to control most planning decisions:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/22/housebuilding-cameron-osbourne-confrontation-tories
Tim Holton
Glimmers of localism in California: Governor Jerry Brown’s been talking subsidiarity. See, for example, this year’s State of the State speech: http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17906
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