Over the years, England’s town halls have become used to being treated with a mixture of hostility, condescension and neglect. During the late 1980s, writing at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s ideological assault on leftwing councils, the political scientist Andrew Gamble warned that her centralising tendencies could pave the way to “the eventual abolition of local government”. In the 2010s, Conservative administrations blithely swung the wrecking ball once more, as punitive austerity hollowed out council budgets to an unsustainable degree.
Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to sit down with England’s metro mayors in Downing Street this week – the first meeting of its kind – was therefore both welcome and significant. Tuesday’s get-together largely amounted to warm words and selfies outside No 10. But Sir Keir’s announcement of a new council of regions and nations formalises a more equal and respectful relationship. It is a genuine statement of collaborative intent. The sense of a step-change was also conveyed by Angela Rayner’s decision to remove Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” slogan from the housing, communities and local government department that she now leads. Rarely has a political slogan generated so many ministerial speeches and column inches, to such little concrete effect.
