Decision time for local democracy

Last updated at 07:49 03 May 2007

Both north and south of the Scottish border, voters in today's elections face an unusually tough decision.

Local polls are meant to be about local issues, of course. But we all know that they've always been seen, too, as a midterm opportunity to let the national parties know exactly how we rate them.

So should we be thinking locally or nationally? The voters' dilemma is sharpest of all in Scotland, which now faces an election that could mark a turning-point in the history of the United Kingdom.

There, as in England and Wales, the instinct of countless disillusioned Labour voters is to give Tony Blair a sharp parting kick up the backside, while also registering their disapproval of First Minister Jack McConnell.

We know from the polls that many are tempted to vote for the Scottish Nationalists - for years a natural home of the protest vote north of the border.

But we know, too, that a large majority of Scots wish passionately to preserve the Union with England - for 300 years the world's most successful economic and cultural alliance and a source of huge enrichment to both nations.

So will pro-Union Scottish electors hold their noses and vote for the shambolic SNP, in protest against an unpopular Labour administration - with the strong risk that the separatists will emerge as the biggest party in the Assembly? Meanwhile in England and Wales, the local election results may have less farreaching implications. But the voters' dilemma is hardly less acute.

In a rational world, the decision would be straightforward. You want weekly bin collections? Then shouldn't you vote for the candidates who promise them and kick out the councillors who have abolished them? If only it were that simple. The truth is that while many Tory-run councils have introduced fortnightly collections, the driving-force behind the policy has come from Labour-controlled Whitehall.

Seeing the way the wind is blowing, Mr Blair now claims he is a 'traditionalist' who supports weekly collections.

Oh, yes? Why, then, didn't he veto the punitive landfill taxes - and the diversion of funds from the Tory south to the Labour north - which have driven Conservative councils to halve their services? And why, too, has he allowed Environment Secretary David Miliband to press ahead with setting up unelected quangos, which will take decisions on rubbish collections out of local voters' hands altogether? No. Under this most centralising Government, which interferes more than any of its predecessors in local authority matters, it is harder than ever to disentangle the local from the national.

Indeed, councils throughout the country find their hands ever more tightly tied by a Labour Government which is always shovelling new responsibilities on to them without providing the money to carry them out - thereby forcing them to increase council taxes while limiting their freedom of manoeuvre.

To that extent, council elections have become something of a sham under Labour. Only when local authorities are once again genuinely responsible for local services will they be truly accountable for them at the ballot box.

In these most complicated elections, therefore, we hesitate to offer advice. But if Mr Blair gets what in this paper's view would be a richly deserved parting drubbing from the voters today - both in Scotland, where he has undermined the Union with his cynical devolution settlement, and in England and Wales, where he has enfeebled local democracy - he will have only himself to blame.