Local government may have refused be ground down by the constant hammering waged by Eric Pickles, by a decade of crippling austerity or by the high street destruction raged by lockdown, but its patience is teetering.
It is a very long time since the 1980s – the days of defiance where political points were scored with rate capping rebellions and refusals to toe the line. Almost exactly 35 years on from Derek Hatton's illegal budget, local government has since prided itself on putting the public before the politics.
In the past decade of council cuts, rising demands, increased expectations and central government snipes, local government has grumbled and groaned, but carried on.
But there has been a quiet shift.
Coronavirus has decimated budgets while ministers have back-tracked on promises to support the sector and vowed instead to take a piecemeal approach to financial collapse. The two new Northamptonshire councils are a testament to the punishment and price of financial failure.
Testing and PPE procurement have been dangerously deficient, putting frontline workers at risk, for the sake of a centralised system. And all the while, parks and recycling centres have served as a convenient distraction from the real issues.
Now local government is answering back. The LGA, the collective voice of councils, is being urged to shout louder.
Government's unfathomable shift from the clear message ‘stay home, save lives' to the baffling ‘stay alert' has been rejected by some, more keen to keep communities safe than to comply.
Plans to return kids to schools by 1 June are being vetoed, as councils take a more risk based approach than the Government's blanket one-size-fits all plan.
In Yorkshire – chancellor Rishi Sunak's own backyard – plans are afoot for a co-ordinated dissent. A mass issue of s114 notices that would no doubt lead more to follow.
And in what has to be the most courteous small rebellion of all time, London councils have politely shunned the calamitous clipper service in favour of setting up their own PPE procurement hub.
As the rest of the country suffers lockdown fatigue, local government has also had enough and it is starting to show.
No one wants a return to the 1980s – we have all grown up a lot since then. But 2020 could be the year that local government starts to roar.
