It's time to reverse devolution and restore local democracy

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It's time to reverse devolution and restore local democracy

Pete North • 5 January 2022

It's time to restore real local democracy

The SNP have acquired the nickname "The Tartan Taliban". The SNP regime is is a curious hybrid of toxic flag waving nationalism (united only by its seething anglophobia) and bone chilling Orwellian wokery, making it one of the most authoritarian regimes in Europe. Its hate crime laws and surveilance of private citizens would make Erich Mielke green with envy, while SNP corruption makes the Tories look like puritans.

There’s a certain Dorian Gray quality to it these days. For all its outward pretence of youthful progressive internationalism, there’s a portrait in an attic somewhere depicting the decaying, snarling genuine article. It's time to put it back in its box.

UKIP has always opposed devolution. The ever increasing devolution of powers to the devolved administrations is a one-way ratchet to the eventual break up of the UK. But we also oppose it because it's not devolution of power to the people. All devolution succeeded in was to create a grubby little fiefdom in Edinburgh, dominated by the SNP mafia, whose tribal politics in no way represents Scotland as a whole. It has removed powers from local authorities and centralised governance. The very opposite of devolution.

Devolution is now beyond the joke. We can see this with Sturgeon's latest Covid measures. Omicron is the weakest strain of Covid yet and the one that's most likely to displace the Delta variant. This is the one we should let rip, but Sturgeon, for wholly political reasons, has doubled down on lockdowns, destroying the hospitality industry in Scotland while unleashing Police Scotland goons to lock up revellers. She's drunk on power she should not have - certain in the knowledge that her worst excesses will still be bankrolled by London. This can only exacerbate intra-union resentment.

UKIP believes we need to get devolution undone. We will campaign for referendums to wind up the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. UKIP will instead strengthen local democracy by devolving powers directly to the people. UKIP will ensure binding referendums on local issues.

Neither Scotland nor Wales needs another layer of centralised government, and nobody needs more politicians. By creating these fiefdoms we've also created yet another cash cow for NGOs and lobbyists, further bloating the political payroll. We can't even say that it delivered better for the people of Scotland and Wales. Scotland's public services are a mess and Welsh health services are in a state of perpetual crisis.

Ultimately devolution has provided a vehicle for nihilistic malcontents to sabotage national unity for their own divisive purposes. This is also true of the London mayoral office, where Sadiq Khan takes a perverse pleasure in wrecking British cultural assets. He continually oversteps his authority, widening the political and cultural gulf between London and the rest of the country when there is an urgent need to close that culture gap.

Devolution does nothing to bring power closer to the people. Manchester, Leeds and Bradford voted against having a directly elected mayor and ended up lumbered with regional "metro mayors" who are elected on fewer than half of the votes, with turnouts as low as 36 percent. Tracy Brabin has zero mandate to speak for West Yorkshire.

The system is wholly illegitimate - not least because "West Yorkshire", spanning from the Lancashire border in the Pennines to the outskirts of York, is a politically meaningless construct. Local government units should owe their existence to the people who live within their boundaries instead of being statutory bodies drawn up by bureaucrats in London.

For similar reasons UKIP will scrap Police and Crime Commissioner posts along with their expensive offices (many have deputies , chief executives, chief finance officers and a host of other highly paid officials) and return oversight of police services to boards made up with locally elected councillors.

UKIP believes in real democracy and that must begin with real and meaningful local democracy. Devolution is nothing of the sort. Devolution is a throwback to Blairite state technocracy to empower judges and quangocrats rather than the people. The restoration of national unity depends on the restoring vitality of our democracy, ensuring that our votes, locally and nationally have real power. Devolution can't do that.

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