IT was on Saturday morning, as I opened the kitchen cupboard looking for something to eat for breakfast, that I decided how I was going to vote in the local elections tomorrow. There, sitting nonchalantly on top of the Corn Flakes, happily munching through a pack of Warburton’s sliced bread, was a rat.
It’s been a while since I’ve come face to face with our unwanted guests in this part of Glasgow. For the whole winter, they disappeared. I don’t know if they hibernate or just head off to warmer climes, but we haven’t seen sight nor sound of them since the great Glaswegian rat-fest of autumn 2021 when our street hosted a whole army of the little blighters.
Now, however, as the days lengthen and the blossom hangs heavy on the trees, so the vermin head back to the city to gorge themselves afresh. It’s like a civic tradition round here.
The rat in my cupboard was a perky little specimen. He or she turned when I opened the cupboard door, mid-munch, and sat there looking at me for a few seconds, brazening it out. “What?” he or she seemed to be saying to me: “This is my cupboard as much as it’s yours. Please close the door and let me finish my food.” I felt triggered. I hadn’t invited the rat in and yet here it was, invading my private space. I advanced warily. The rat blinked. Then, realising the game was up, it darted out and disappeared through the small hole in one of our kitchen cabinets through which it had nibbled its way.
I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up, closing the hole, and adding fresh reinforcements (clumps of rat-resistant wire wool work best, I’ve found). And as I did so, I decided that, this coming Thursday, I would vote for any local politician who looks even half-capable of cleaning up this city’s dirty streets and putting it back into order.
To do that, it’s worth looking at what’s gone wrong with local politics over the last few years. First and foremost, it’s about money. The Accounts Commission, which audits local authorities in Scotland, concluded earlier this spring that, when recent extra Covid cash is excluded, there has been a real terms funding cut of 4.2% to councils since 2013-14. The Commission warned as a result that councils will face “significant challenges” delivering on the basics. Extra sums have been squeezed out of Edinburgh in recent weeks but the direction of travel is clear: the SNP Government has cut councils to the bone. Other spending priorities, such as the ever-ballooning NHS have taken priority. Local Authorities have been left on their own.
But it is not just about money, it is also about control. According to the Fraser of Allander Institute, increasing sums of the cash that Councils are given is ring-fenced by Nicola Sturgeon’s team in Edinburgh: our local authorities are not deemed capable of deciding for themselves how they should use their funds. It is a long time since the SNP talked about partnership working, or historic “concordats”. Faced with budget cuts and with limited room for local decision making, the consequence is that councils end up making huge cuts on “discretionary” spend – like libraries, play parks, and the local environment. Funding for education and social care may have gone up recently, Fraser of Allander say, but since 2017, spending on ‘cultural services’ has plummeted by 9% and on environment services by 8%.
We’ve seen the consequences of this back on my local street. Our local community group used to get public liability insurance from the council so it could organise a quarterly litter picking event. But - faced with cutbacks - the council withdrew it. So the community clean-ups have stopped. On top of that, the council also decided to charge for bulk uplifts of rubbish in the privately owned lanes which our houses back onto. Inevitably, over the winter months, the rubbish has piled up. Local protests let to a hurried clean up a few weeks ago. But, given the evidence of the rat in my kitchen cupboard, it appears to have come too late.
Given this appalling treatment from Edinburgh, you’d have thought some local leaders in Scotland might have raised their heads above the parapet to protest. It is simply impossible to imagine Manchester’s Andy Burnham or Birmingham’s Andy Street or West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin standing for it. But the SNP hasn’t introduced directly elected mayors in Scotland – after all, that might distract attention from the nationalist narrative. Instead most of our cities are led by a collection of supine and anonymous SNP leaders whose first loyalty isn’t to their locality but to “the cause”. So instead of vigorous leadership demanding change from Edinburgh, we end up with nationalists bending the knee. Memorably, Glasgow’s hapless council leader Susan Aitken once introduced Nicola Sturgeon as “the boss”. It’s not her fault: they are nationalists, after all.
This contempt for local democracy has come to the fore over the last few weeks as the SNP has campaigned ahead of tomorrow’s elections. The party knows turn-out tomorrow will be low; this is what happens when you denude local government of its meaning and purpose. So instead of focussing on the local issues that the campaign might merit, the SNP has decided to focus on motivating committed nationalists by claiming the election is a chance to “send a message” to Boris Johnson. Mr Johnson has as much control over local democracy in Scotland as Emmanuel Macron but, sad to say, it will work. Why tackle the complex realities of today, when the fantasies of nationalism can help obscure your failures and your inaction?
The blunt truth is that local government in Scotland is no longer anything of the sort. Buzz words like “community empowerment” are all the rage, but the broad culture is still to do things for people, not with them. And characterised by weak leadership, it is no match for a powerful Edinburgh political establishment which appears to think it would be far more convenient if Scotland’s 32 local authorities could be reduced to one: itself.
Tomorrow is a chance to demand something better. It is a chance to oppose the centralising mentality in our governing structures in Scotland. It is a chance to demand that power is driven down to street level. It is an opportunity to insist that, instead of frittering away millions on bungled ferries and pointless new independence prospectuses, the SNP government should grant our cities and towns some of the independence they claim is so important by providing them with the funding to support themselves.
Candidates who understand the need to put place before party will get my vote tomorrow. And if they have a ball of wire wool and some rat poison, that would not go amiss too.
ENDS