Double or quits
It’s been a long day, and it was damn cold in the office (10 degrees for goodness sake! with the heating on full), but I wanted to set down my first reaction to Millibands ‘double devolution’.
As far as I can see, it consists essentially of cutting out local democratic control of spending, services, resources, in favour of a direct relationship between central government and local ‘volunteers’ and activists, who will, no doubt, be selected by the government (who else will do the selecting anyway?).
This is neither democratic nor decentralising. Indeed it amount to a further increase in central control and a further reduction in democracy and accountability. As a consequence I now look at the proposed school reforms in a new light. Rather than schools being merely removed from the ‘shackles’ of LEA control, they will instead be controlled directly from DfES (there’s a phrase about pipers and playlists that springs to mind). And no individual school will be in a position to stand up to the dictats of the minister of the month. Freedom is slavery, eh?
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
Daniel Webster