Councillors as agents of the state

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The Communities and Local Government Select Committee has been worrying at the role of Councillors. And they have published a report that says Councillors' role is "on the frontline". It seems that this doesn't mean they're shipping us to Afghanistan apparently but rather that we should be out of those fusty dusty council meetings.

Here's Clive Betts MP, the committee chairman:

Councillors are spending less time in council chambers and more time out and about in their communities. In future, they will increasingly need to be on the frontline, working with constituents and external organisations such as GPs, schools, police, local businesses and voluntary organisations to ensure their communities make the most of all the opportunities available to them."

Now let me explain something here. As a councillor I am elected with the specific and express purpose of representing - in my case - the residents of Bingley Rural in the decisions that the council makes. That really is my role - it's why we have councillors since all 13,000 of those residents can't squeeze into City Hall to make the decision.

What Mr Betts and his committee appear to want us to do is something entirely different. Partly this is because the last Labour government (anticipating an age of elected mayors that never happened) abolished the committee system that had served local government pretty well for a 100 years or so. Instead we are told we're now "community leaders" - in reality little more than agents of the state and deliverers of bacon to the masses on behalf of benevolent state authorities.

For most councillors their main role - being a representative - is exercised only two or three times a year. When we elect a leader (although technically this is only done once every four years now), when we set the level of council tax and when we make the two or three decisions that statute has reserved to full council. Instead we are treated as some kind of community development worker - urged to make sure that all the state's goodies (those "opportunities" Mr Betts refers to) are available to our residents.

From being involved in debating and deciding on major issues - how must to spend on housing, the organisation and operation of social services and the building of public facilities - we have descended into pettifogging details. Worse still we are sucked into the little bans and controls that officers like to introduce - passive aggressive "no doorstop selling" campaigns, raising awareness of obesity or supporting campaigns against drinking or smoking.

In the end we scuttle round a few dozen active people in our wards and work with all sorts of "agencies" (when these can be bothered to involve us) with the main aim of delivering the goodies to the ward or accusing the other side of taking all those goodies for their wards. And we do a pretty good job of this in the main despite the system making it ever more difficult for someone with an actual job to fulfil the role.

...but it isn't what councillors are for, it isn't the point or purpose of representative democracy. And if the future is just about community development we need to ask why we need so many councillors. Or whether forcing us into being agents for state agencies simply undermines our democracy.

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Idiots, Naomi Klein and the branding of political personality

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The other day, Naomi Klein of “No Logo” fame, penned a long, rather impenetrable and certainly meandering think piece for the dearly loved Guardian. Now Ms Klein is nothing if not consistent and lays into her favorite target: “corporate branding”. And this time those bad old brands have taken over the government.

Now I don’t wish to rehearse the legion reasons why Ms Klein is massively and dangerously wrong – why she fails to realise that it is better for corporations to invest in your and my minds than in the pockets of decision-makers. Why the rejection of the trademarked brand gives power to producer cartels. And why we are rich because of brands rather than the other way round. Ms Klein crawled from out the pseudo-liberal American left with its hypocritical and selective take on freedom and its hatred of the ordinary and everyday. What she says displays a deep misunderstanding of marketing.

However, Ms Klein sparked another interest of mine – the idea of the personal brand (or even the anti-brand as she likes to position herself which is really cute). Naomi, ever glib, slipped out this little opinion:

“So, it seemed that the United States government could solve its reputation problems with branding – it's just that it needed a branding campaign and product spokesperson sufficiently hip, young and exciting to compete in today's tough market. The nation found that in Obama, a man who clearly has a natural feel for branding and who has surrounded himself with a team of top-flight marketers.”

Well leaving aside the rapid falling to earth of this Icarus of politics, I was struck by the significance of the political leader as a brand and the importance of that brand to the success or otherwise of a government. However, I suspect that a few moments glimpse at history (and fiction - Liberty Valance springs to mind straight away) will show that, far from Obama – Man as Brand – being as new phenomenon, he is a continuation of a great American tradition.

We have only to think of Theodore Roosevelt with his “action man” positioning, the “Camelot” of JFK and Reagan’s “Sunrise in America” to appreciate that the ‘personality brand’ is central to American politics. It could be said that the “backwoodsman” image of Davy Crockett – even of Abe Lincoln – was central to positioning and the political brand.

As we stumble towards another British General Election, the ‘personal brand’ is taking centre stage. This isn’t new – right back to Disraeli the individual personality of a politician has been significant – but this will be the first British General Election where that fact has been placed centre stage. The campaign is being drawn as a battle between leaders – a war of champions – rather than a contest between competing party organisations. And the brand positioning of those leaders will be central to the outcome.

I’ve said before than this is a retrograde step – I do not get a choice between leaders but a choice between ciphers who may or may not reflect what those leaders want to do (or even what they say they want to do). And the idea that the careful wrapping up of politics into a nice parcel represents an effective approach to branding and positioning shows yet again that our politicians don’t get marketing strategy either. In truth Naomi Klein is right about branding. It isn’t the salvation its advocates say and it is but one element of one part of an overall marketing strategy.

There is a problem. There really is. But it’s not branding. It’s not that corporations are trying to capture government – nothing new there government has always been corrupt. It’s that we, the everyday idiots, don’t care. One day we’ll wake up, realise our mistake and pull the whole house down. Until then I’m going to carry on drinking Nescafe, wearing Levis and all the other bad consumer stuff that Naomi doesn’t like!

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Cullingworth doesn't want "modern community leadership" but a little bit of old-fashioned service would go amiss.

An assortment of the great and the good have launched something called 21st Century Councillor. This grouping - doubtless well rewarded with dollops of our taxes - suggest that tomorrow's local Councillor will be a:

"... supported, confident, talented and professional community leader."

Now I have no problem with Councillors being confident and talented and I haven't the foggiest what the bureaucrats mean by "supported" but I have my doubts about the remainder. In truth I believe the assumptions that underlie the observation to be dangerously wrong.

Being a local councillor is not a profession (there isn't yet a chartered institute of councillors although I don't doubt the LGA, LGIU, IDeA, NLGN, LACORS and assorted other well-padded London-based local government organisations have it all planned) and local councillors are not elected to provide "community leadership" we are elected to represent the residents of our ward - and I interpret that as meaning to serve their interests not to lead them.

However, as most decision-making power was removed from local councillors by Blair's local government "modernisation", the great and the good have been scrabbling around looking for some kind of role for all us pesky backbenchers. And the solution - promoted by that most New Labour of organisations the New Local Government Network under my pleasingly former MP Chris Leslie - has been the idea of councillors as Community Leaders.

The problem is that places like Cullingworth really don't want community leadership - especially from community leaders who have the role of telling them why the local council, at the behest of some bureaucrat down in London, is imposing something that isn't either needed or wanted. What villagers here desire is a little bit of response from the council, the health service, the police, the Environment Agency and, for that matter, all the myriad other bureaucratic institutions that blight the lives of ordinary folk. And because they don't get that attention most of the time, the councillor's job is to argue, insist, cajole, badger, shout and generally get up the noses of local officialdom in the hope that they will actually listen to local people and act on what they hear.

Where I come from that's not "community leadership" it's service.