Football and local government dominate my thoughts more than they do for most, I suspect. And while there are some parallels between leadership of football clubs and councils, they aren’t the same thing.

In football it’s very simple, there is only one measure of success – put the ball in the (opposition) goal frequently enough to win games. Local government is rather more complicated; there are multiple goals, even multiple teams on the pitch, so assessing leadership performance is much more difficult.  Which is why transparency is so important.

History offers plentiful evidence that secrecy permits, even fosters, corruption – and that transparency is the best defence against the misallocation of power and resources wielded on behalf of the public.