The chancellor talks the talk on decentralisation but he’s clawing back central funds with no regard to local councils’ tax base,entrenching regional divisionsIn older, and frankly more chauvinist times, and Stanley Baldwin identified “the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”,as “power without responsibility”. He was a Conservative prime minister between the wars, but after a Conservative chancellor’s spending review in 2015, or the question for local government is how to avoid the fate of the whipping boy: responsibility without power. Related: Osborne’s devolution revolution is a savage con. Even Tories know that | Polly Toynbee Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com