Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

At Ultonia, Lee is dismissive .  At Northern Ireland Centre-Right, Seymour Major is still in the throes of ecstasy .  My take on Cameron’s conference speech is somewhere down the middle. Certainly I didn’t feel that this address featured the rhetorical pyrotechnics which the Tory leader has occasionally produced.  It felt a little laboured, it didn’t depart substantially from the script, and given that it was delivered by the first Conservative prime minister since May 1997, it wasn’t even received that rapturously by the Tory faithful. In today’s Belfast Telegraph, which is not yet online, I consider Cameron’s references to Northern Ireland.  The headline ’Fine words, true.  But do you really get us, David?’ is not really an accurate reflection of the article's content. As a commentator, rather than a politician, I’m not restrained from saying that the Conservatives don’t need to ’get us’ and if they do finally 'get us' it will be to our detriment. ...

When the Conservative party announced the contents of a green paper on local government reform in England, I welcomed the initiative rather ruefully, given that regional government is soundly entrenched in the rest of the United Kingdom courtesy of devolved institutions. Nurturing the grassroots of democracy, decentralising power, localising decision making – all intrinsically noble goals which aim to facilitate the type of participative society Cameron Conservatives are keen to encourage. To further these objectives, the Tories intend to remove a layer of regional assemblies in England. The party’s goals won’t be as readily achievable where emasculated local councils subsist under an expensive stratum of regional government, which, in order to justify its existence, must retain functions local government could perform. However, in April’s ‘Prospect’ Demos Director Richard Reeves emphasises (subs required for full article) that the sound theories of localist policy are not always ...