Andy Burnham has successfully changed the mood music of our politics to inject a soupçon of confidence and even optimism, but there are various potential stumbling-blocks which could dent if not destroy his and our hopes.
Top of the list in my view is:
North Sea Oil
Rumour has it that he is “minded” to authorise more drilling in the North Sea Oil Field. Anything which provides jobs (and the elusive “growth) is always a temptation for Labour politicians (the clue is in the name) but he should resist it - even the device of attaching new drilling to an existing licence.
If sinking islands in the Pacific and melting ice in the Arctic are too far away to convince us that climate change is real and highly dangerous, surely wildfires in our favourite holiday spots in France and Spain, not to mention on our own doorstep, should be sufficient to convince him not to give way to the profit-greedy lobbying of the oil giants.
Devolution to Mayors.
Enhancing the powers (including tax-raising?) of local government is a Liberal principle greatly to be encouraged, but to concentrate those powers to an individual, powerful and possibly charismatic personality is hugely undemocratic. Powerful personalities with the “guts, grit and determination” to sort things out has been the mantra of authoritarian regimes throughout history.. We need our local leaders to be responsible and answerable to locally elected representatives, responsive to local opinion.
That means local councils and councillors - boring I know, but likely to be more effective.
Trident
Mr Burnham has expressed more enthusiasm for Trident than I think is healthy. It is hugely expensive, detracts from military expenditure which would be more useful (boots on the ground for peace-keeping and rescue purposes after natural disasters.) If we must have a nuclear deterrent than something more modest, jointly with the France (or pooled with the EU) and deliverable without US permission would be preferable.
Migrants in Small Boats
Mr Burnham had a ”photo-opportunity” in Dover over the weekend to highlight this issue, so he has already made this mistake. He wishes to show that he takes this “problem” very very seriously. But it isn’t a problem and it isn’t serious. Irregular migration via small boats is a small fraction of an immigration total that is falling rapidly and would almost disappear if there were legal viable routs for the people who want to come here.
Mr Burnham’s visit merely draws attention to what the Right Wing love to use to divide us. They must be delighted. Sir Keir Starmer's gaffe with “island of strangers" should have alerted Burnham to the futility of a “me too” in this delicate area.
Early prisoner Release.
Clearly Mr Burnham has not read my previous post in which it is suggested that Prime Ministers should not try to appear to have a finger in every pie. Early prisoner release is a “lose- lose” situation, the result of years and years of sending too many people to prison, and well before the misguided fourteen years of austerity (to which Labour’s Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling subscribed) failing to provide the buildings to house them.
The current crisis should have been left to the Home Secretary to sort out as best she could and receive the deserved opprobrium.
We need our local leaders to be responsible and answerable to locally elected representatives, responsive to local opinion.
ReplyDeleteCould you explain why an elected councillor would be ‘responsive to local opinion’ but an elected mayor would not be? Surely both have to pay just as much attention to their electorate in order to get re-elected?
(In fact you could argue that a mayor needs to be more responsive to local opinion as he or she will have a higher profile and therefore voters will actually vote for or against him or her based on his or her record … whereas sensible people who pay no attention to local politics will have no idea who their local councillors are or what they have done, so they will get elected or not based on the popularity of their national party, whereas mayors quite often have personal votes that buck the national trend, whether that’s Mr Burnham in Manchester when the Labour Party was hugely unpopular, or Mr Houchen whose voters stuck with him even as the national Conservative vote collapsed to its lowest level ever.)
Any executive power needs to be subject to scrutiny. The London Mayor is scrutinised by the separately elected London Assembly members, though it is argued that their powers are far to limited. Other directly elected mayors are scrutinises by what I think are called Combined Authorities, consisting of appointees of the various local authorities covered.. Very few people know who they are or what they do. True democracy needs to be open and by discussion.
DeleteAny executive power needs to be subject to scrutiny.
DeleteYes, and are elected mayors not scrutinised by their electorate? In a democracy, isn’t the only scrutiny that ultimately counts the scrutiny of the voters, and don’t elected mayors face that openly and directly?
Yes, but if powerful executives are held to account only once every four or five years, there's plenty of room of poor decisions, cronyism , and even corruption in between. Scrutiny needs to be continuous.
DeleteScrutiny needs to be continuous.
DeleteIs that not what the press is for? Including, these days, citizens publishing on the inter-net? To continuously scrutinise the executive and feed back the truth to the voters so that they can make an informed decision at the next election?
Why is an intermediate level needed, with all the cost and extra bureaucracy that entails?
Because "if powerful executives are held to account only once every four or five years, there's plenty of room of poor decisions, cronyism , and even corruption in between." True a vigilant local press could help to limit this, though it could be in the hands if the executive and these days tends to be very sparse.
Deleteif powerful executives are held to account only once every four or five years, there's plenty of room of poor decisions, cronyism , and even corruption in between
DeleteBut not if the executive in question wants to be reelected. And if they don’t care about being reelected, why would they take more notice of a bunch of councillors than the electorate?
If we must have a nuclear deterrent than something more modest, jointly with the France (or pooled with the EU) and deliverable without US permission would be preferable.
ReplyDeleteTrident is deliverable without the permission of the USA (though it is not maintainable without American involvement, so while the USA could not stop us launching nuclear missiles tomrrow, they could certainly put us on the road to being unable to launch them in a year or so).
But a deterrent operated jointly with France would not be deliverable without the permission of the French, and wouldn't that be worse? After all, historically, the French have been our enemy far more often than the United States has (indeed, had the French not aided the rebel colonists at Yorktown, the United States would not exist as an independent country today).