People power

Simon Jenkins on why the Tory party should campaign to restore power to local communities

The rebuilt town hall of the ancient Borough of Henley still stands brave over its market place. This was Henley's forum and seat of government, a onestop shop of civic welfare. From here Henley's streets were lit, paved and policed, Henley's traders regulated, Henley's children educated and its poor relieved, all under the aegis of Henley people.

Anywhere abroad this would still be the case. In France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and throughout America municipalities the size of Henley continue to exercise such power. Town halls and mairies remain centres of local politics and administration and their people like it that way. Yet in England such buildings arc empty shells, as if hit by a neutron bomb denuding them of people and power. Henley is administered by a district council randomly located upstream in Wallingford, plus a county council in Oxford, a region in Guildford and mostly a ministry in London. Suggest to local citizens that Henley might regain its old privileges and they would equate it with feudal scottage and the ducking stool.

In October 1986 the then Tory government staged a bold overnight reform. It obliterated the restrictive practices of the City of London and threw Britain's financial services open to allcomers. The so-called Big Bang was widely predicted as a catastrophe. Yet it transformed Britain from a declining backwater of European finance into a surging champion. Political imagination and a dose of guts yielded a stunning success.

The Conservatives should plan a similar Big Bang for local democracy*. Like its predecessor, this should be a major event, a Freedom Day for local liberty. It should see a nationwide 'bonfire of controls', as the Tories produced to widespread delight in 1951. Millions of buff envelopes should go up in flames and bureaucrats be subjected to auto da fi.,'.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the party turned its back on local democracy, hoping to rule for ever on charismatic central leadership. It removed power and fiscal discretion from tens of thousands of Conservative councillors, snapping the contract between the party nationally and its supporters. This was a tacit barter of local power for activism at general election time. Councillors were now told they were no longer to be trusted with the nation's schools, houses, transport or

health, as they were across Europe. In city, county and suburb, the party's little platoons duly packed their bags and went home. The Tory party disembowelled itself and is still bleeding. In 20 years it has lost a million members.

The lesson the Tories should learn from George Bush's victory in America has nothing to do with security or the 'values agenda'. It is that elections are won by avid party workers getting out the vote. There is no short cut to this, via television or computers. No party can win an election without a highly motivated infantry. The Conservatives demotivated theirs. New recruits will want to know what the party has to offer them in their own back yards. They will want power.

The New Localism which spread across Europe in the 1980s and 1990s was no gimmick. It led to constitutional change in France in 1982, Sweden in 1984, Italy in 1993, Spain in 1997. All involved real devolution, transferring taxing and spending to provincial and local councils and mayors. A people fed up with overcentralised government demanded reform and got it. France's communes plan their environs and maintain their primary schools. Germany's 'Lander' control education and transport. Denmark's counties run hospitals to far higher satisfaction levels than Britain's NHS. Spain's mayors rule what are effectively city states.

Such devolution is not seen as a throwback but as crucial to public-sector modernisation. France in 1982 dismantled the most dirigiste state in Europe, producing one corner of the public sector not currently in crisis. Swedish 'free communes', municipalities voting to opt out of central and regional control, have spread across Scandinavia. No American Republican would think of deputing local schools to state or federal authority.

Central governments will always be needed to set minimum standards and redistribute revenues from rich to poor. But nowhere has needed Gordon Brown's stupefying structure of targets, league tables and central controls. Some local variation in services is accepted everywhere else, provided only that accountability is local. The key lies in that accountability.

Britain does not need to reinvent new local structures. They exist in the cities and counties that applied before 1974, needing only a revitalised politics and fiscal regime. This means breaking the power of party cabals and moving towards direct election of mayors. If the Tories had not opposed mayors, they might now control dozens of English towns and cities. As for the counties, historic custodians of English identity, John Prescott wants to abolish them as obstacles to his executive regionalism. The Tories seem disinclined to stop him. Yet county councils were once citadels of provincial Conservatism.

In rural and suburban areas below the county tier, European experience indicates that what matters is not size but loyalty to place. The present structure of mostly anonymous districts could go, with truly local government built on existing boroughs, towns and rural parishes. Henley, like adjacent Sonning, Marlow and Nettlebed, would find itself again charged with the care of its streets, clinics, hosteLs, primary schools, parks and public buildings. Only through-roads, secondary schools and planning need go to Oxfordshire. Taxes would be levied at the tier relevant to the service, with poor areas alone receiving of central grants. This is not drastic.1 repeat, this happens everywhere else in Europe.

I cannot imagine a more exciting cause for a modern Tory party than restoring power to communities. It embodies the Conservative principle of local diversity and choice. It makes services accountable at the point of delivery, to local users and voters. It promotes personal and communal responsibility and, witness America, draws people out of their armchairs into public service. Nothing concentrates the mind of Americans so much as the prospect of their neighbours fixing (some of) their taxes. The government's own study of Sweden's 'balance of funding' shows that some variation in standards — the postcode lottery — is acceptable where taxing decisions are strictly local.

The Tory response to Mr Prescott's defeat in the North-East referendum this month was miserable. It did not demand the dismantling of his superfluous regional apparat. It was the old cliché, that better public services would come from 'cutting bureaucracy'. Oppositions always promise that, but in government never achieve it. Cutting bureaucracy means devolving power.

For Tories the New Localism is not just right, efficient and democratic. It is a matter of life and death. Without some such renewed contract with the party in the country, the flight of activists since the 1990s cannot be reversed. Labour tried to restore local roots through quango patronage but failed to rediscover accountability. The Tories should use democracy.

Such a programme cannot be gradual. From Cornwall to Kent, Hampshire to Cheshire, Bristol to Newcastle, the party should declare a nationwide festival of democracy. People must take back responsibility for their public services. They must be reawakened, with a bang.

* Big Bang Localism: a Rescue Plan for British Democracy, by Simon Jenkins (Policy Exchange, 10 Storey's Gate, London SW1).