Britain | Local democracy

English local government is in a dire state

The excitement over metro mayors cannot disguise the rot

Election officer sorts through the Polling Station signs.
Don’t rush there all at oncePhotograph: Alamy
|KINGSTON UPON HULL

One leaflet being stuffed into letterboxes by Liberal Democrats in Hull, a city of almost 270,000 people in East Yorkshire, argues that Labour politicians spent too much money on some car-park gates. Another boasts that trees have been pruned near a supermarket and that a new grit bin has been installed. All politics is local, goes the old saying. Increasingly, all English local politics is trivial.

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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “An expensive irrelevance”

From the April 27th 2024 edition

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