Are you local…?

One of the first articles I ever wrote as a journalist chronicling the dizzy heights of local government politics was one on localism. Indeed, there was a period in the noughties when ‘localism’ was to jargon bingo what Kazakhstan is to Scrabble, and there was very little else worth writing about.

Tony Blair’s smack in the face to the electorate over its opposition to the war in Iraq brought to an abrupt end the faith many had in national politics and many who were driven by a desire to use politics to change the world for the better banked on a more localist approach as being their only real opportunity to get things done. The new technocratic managerialism of the Westminster village was of no interest to those who thought getting your hands dirty meant creating community orchards and staffing food banks. The new politics is, after…