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While the first year of this government has been far from without its challenges and missteps, no one can accuse them of inertia. This spending review represents the latest step on a journey of state transformation that still at times seems lacking in an overarching vision that can be clearly articulated to voters, businesses and […]
Originally published in the Municipal Journal [02/05/25] Last July, when commenting on the record worst Conservative general election result, I fell back on philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorism of how, if a person stares into the abyss long enough, the abyss will eventually stare right back at them. Taking that famous line from the movie Jaws, […]
Originally published in the Local Government Chronicle [22/04/2025] As the days tick down to next week’s local elections – reduced as they are by the spate of Devolution Priority Programme caused postponements – it seems a given that all is moving apace with the devolution agenda. Six decades on from Redcliffe Maude and after all […]
Originally published by LBC [01/04/2025] It is fair to say that the annual TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) ‘Town Hall Rich List’ is feared and loathed by council leaders as a yearly punishment beating ordeal. Council tax bills are annually hiked to the full 5 per cent extent or even more in places like Birmingham and Croydon […]
Originally published the Local Government Chronicle [25/03/25] Domestic energy security and supply has been prominent in the news in rather different ways for energy security and net zero secretary Ed Miliband. For once it wasn’t the third runway which blazed the media trail for Heathrow airport to dominate the news cycle. A small comfort, perhaps, […]
Originally published in the Municipal Journal [19/03/25] An accusation made against the European power elites in recent weeks has been their learned helplessness in global relations. The argument is that the continent that gave us the worldly political philosophy of Machiavelli in the Renaissance, the state-making diplomacy of von Metternich in the bloody aftermath of […]
Originally published in the Local Government Chronicle [26/02/25] This year we are marking the thirtieth anniversary of the introduction of the seven Nolan principles in public life. The origin to all this was the wave of increasingly frenzied series of red top newspaper stories ferreting out incidence of ‘sleaze’ – of the cash in brown […]
Originally publishes in the Municipal Journal [03/02/25] Everyone has had a chance so far to give their opinions about the chancellor’s reset growth speech. All that is, bar the bats and newts we can now safely stop worrying about. For those on the Labour left like Clive Lewis, the fact the Plan for Change has […]
Originally published in the Municipal Journal [22/01/25] The excitement of drawing boundary lines in maps of our country to fit devolutionary whims is seemingly as irresistible to armchair commentators as it is to MHCLG mandarins and ministers alike. One is reminded of the lines from the W.H. Auden poem ‘Partition’ written in the aftermath of […]
Originally published in the Local Government Chronicle [21/01/25] The AI Opportunities Action Plan as published on Monday is that rare bird. It is a genuinely ambitious grand vision (promising an astonishing end of decade £400bn economic boom through enhancing workplace innovation and productivity) matched by a readily understandable blueprint that points to a technological revolution […]