There’s an old joke about married couples which says the husband makes the important decisions: whether they shall recognize Red China, what they shall believe about the financial crisis, the couple’s position on global warming; while the wife deals with the unimportant stuff; where the family live, how many children they will have, where they’ll go to school, what they all will eat tonight and where they’ll take a holiday.
Government in Britain is a little like that. David Cameron gets to hobnob with Mr Obama and Frau Merkel, and maybe pass a bill about reforming the NHS.
But the stuff we car about is all done by largely ignored and derided local authorities. Caring for the elderly, collecting the bins, mending holes in the road and the quality of the police, education and health services on the ground is all run my local councils.
Central government has tried to take much power away from local councils because it provides most of the money, and it restricts the way the authorities can raise their own money, capping council taxes and the like.
This has been a helpful strategy for central government. When things go right at the local hospital, or crime figures drop, Whitehall can present this as a result of its policies, of its money.
When things don’t go right, then that’s the fault of local councillors, and if some or most of those councils are run by opposition parties then even better, not only are the councilors incompetent, they are ideologically motivated as well.
So the pattern has been to ringfence money, or restrict it while pushing responsibility for improving services down to local authorities.
Until now.
Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles decision to find £250,000 to allow councils to carry out weekly bin collections is a fascinating indication of a tiny, but perhaps telling, shift in the balance of power between Whitehall and town halls.
A few years ago Mr Pickles might have made a speech at his party’s conference decrying those authorities which have gone to fortnightly collections. He could have derided them as tree-huggers whose concern for the environment didn’t extend to preventing rats and foxes from spreading trash over the streets.
But the narrative of the last 15 months of government has been cuts. Even the most inattentive will know, by now, that the coalition government is cutting on public spending. And many of the services affected by those cuts are provided by local authorities.
So now a council can decide to go to fortnightly bin collections (for which I might add, there are very good reasons) and deflect any criticisms by invoking the cuts.
Its fortnightly collections or the council has to cut care for the elderly, or sack some lollipop ladies, or close a library.
And none of it is our fault, you’ll have heard of the cuts in our grant made by the government.
The government has made such a virtue of its deficit reduction plan, that it has to own the effects, it cannot now blame local councils.
And if those effects is something that matters to Conservative voters, as weekly bin collections seem to particularly, that leaves it in a bind.
Which means that it is in the odd position of sacking sailors in the same week as it is finding extra money to keep bin men busier. And I wonder if there may yet be not another downside to the announcement.
When some other service disappears; meals on wheels say, or a youth centre or two, voters may wonder why their rubbish is still assiduously collected every week; can this be a real priority? Assuming that Mr Pickles’ quarter of a million pounds is ringfenced specifically for refuse collection, councilors can reply that the decision to prioritize bins over maternity units was made by government ministers, not at the town hall.
For years local authorities were the whipping boys of politics in Britain; blamed for the failures, going cap in hand to Whitehall for money, ignored by voters.
But the focus on cuts has shown us how much we rely on the town hall for the services which matter to us; and national politicians desire always to take centre stage is now rebounding upon them, and costing them money.
