Jonathan Swift is turning in his grave….
I have a modest proposal to make. Councillors should go on strike. For a week in the run-up to next year’s general election, they should put down their clipboards, store their leaflets back in their cupboards and stay at home rather than campaigning for their local PPC.
Just look at the facts: there is a cross-party consensus for cutting local government budgets and no politician is yet offering councillors the tools they need to put their organisations on a sustainable footing. If this were education, the London Underground or the fire service, we would have seen industrial action and protests on a massive scale.
Councillors may not be able to disrupt the public’s day-to-day existence as effectively as Bob Crow, but they can make life very difficult for their national colleagues.
Local politicians are their parties’ foot soldiers, delivering leaflets and knocking on doors to support their PPCs into power. Sitting councillors can also be a significant source of funding – Labour’s local politicians, for example, pay 2% of their allowances into the party’s coffers.
All of this means that councillors are a sleeping giant – a huge political force which seldom makes its voice heard in the corridors of national party politics. If they went on a campaign strike, then canvassing would slow to a crawl, street stalls would run with a skeleton crew and voter data would go uncrunched. Local politicians should make their terms very clear: no devolution and no sustainable funding settlement means no campaign.
Of course the idea is pure fantasy. Councillors are generally too loyal and too sensible to hold their national colleagues to ransom. But the very idea of going on strike highlights the critical role that local politicians play in propping up the tottering edifice of English centralism. What would happen if they decided to stop?
