Letter: Will the ‘Control-freakery’ of Our National Parties Ever End?

Published on: 27 Oct, 2025
Updated on: 27 Oct, 2025

From David Roberts

In response to: Voters Should Decide How They Are To Be Governed Locally

Wise words from Mr Quoroll. I don’t think many British people realise how unusually odd “devolution” is. Federal countries and some others have real “decentralisation” fixed and guaranteed in their constitutions.

The only other comparable outlier I can think of is Spain, which is not federal but where nearly two-thirds of the national budget is irreversibly controlled by “autonomous” regions.

Only the UK has a system where ever-changing sets of powers are delegated by central government, which can take them back again any time it likes. Only in the UK is “devolution” applied to reforms, like Labour’s, which do the exact opposite, by centralising local government. Ad hoc deals are a frivolous way to run a country.

In Surrey’s case, twelve councils are probably going to be shrunk into two unitaries. Each of our new councillors will therefore have to cover five or six current wards, while a directly elected Mayor of Surrey (as likely as not some populist crank) will suck even more power upwards.

It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, and the effects of the resulting democratic deficit are hard to predict. There’s no chance any government will let it be filled by parish or town councils, which they like to keep starved of funds and powers. So I guess we’ll see the new councils commit massive administrative blunders for want of local knowledge before, perhaps, informal groups or structures emerge to fill the gap.

One of the big untold stories of the last decade or so has been the rise in local government of independent and local political groups. This has taken place against a background of wider cynicism about national parties who’ve conspired across the political spectrum to over-centralise the country.

Just look, for instance, at Surrey County Council – a zombie Tory administration enjoying allowances for two years after its four-year mandate ended last May. All thanks to a Labour government!

Will the collusion and control-freakery of our national parties one day end in their being routed from councils across the country? I hope so.