Letter: Isn’t This What Autocrats Do?

Published on: 19 Apr, 2026
Updated on: 19 Apr, 2026

From Bernard Quoroll

In response to: The Dragon Says – We Should All Be Outraged About the Failure to Deal with Legacy Debt

Look carefully and you will see that the abolition of the two tier “Shire System” was not even a headline in Labour’s manifesto, which majored on so-called “devolution”, not wholesale destruction of the status quo (and a debt burden which makes even Birmingham look good)!

And we still have not heard what they have in mind by way of a regional mayor – which will of course amount to a third tier, above parish and town councils and a unitary West Surrey, (and no doubt will have to be paid for locally).

Worse still, “devolution”, if and when it comes in Surrey, will not be devolution. Mayors will only get centrally allocated regional funds if they agree to “deals”, which is a euphemism for doing what the government of the day wants.

And behind the scenes, all the parties are looking forward to creating fresh, well paid sinecures as resting places for superannuated MP’s. (Reminds me of Police and Crime Commissioners who were supposed not to be promoted on a political basis but of course ended up as jobs for the boys and girls.)

But Surrey is not nearly large enough or economically coherent enough to be regarded as a region, so we may not even get a mayor. First you see it, then you don’t. It would be the three card trick of the century.

What we are really getting, of course, is local administration, not local government.

It all adds up to a further centralising of power in what is already one of the most centralised democracies in the Western world.

Hang on a minute. Isn’t that what autocrats do?