Enter the Commissars

I return from a hol to find … the Commissars Commissioners that are to run Croydon have been installed, and already started calling the shots.  Some background.

In the late 2010s Croydon, a marginal borough that has yo-yo’d between Tory and Labour since the 1960s, fell into the hands of a baleful Labour regime.  At the time we had the “Cabinet” system in place and the Leader of the Council, a paradigm case of the ‘four-letter man’ as my father would have termed him, ran both his cabinet and indeed the whole borough as a personal fiefdom.  Well, when you have a dictator, you’d better hope his judgement is good.  This man’s judgement was appalling (for present purposes we needn’t get into the cronyism and third-world-style corruption that went with it) and he duly bankrupted the borough – literally.  (Total incompetence married to property speculation, you won’t be surprised to learn.)

In order to clean this out politically, residents petitioned successfully for a switch to the “Mayoral” system: the resulting referendum was a resounding win for the new system and in due course a Tory was elected Executive Mayor.  I’ve recounted some of this story before, and his chap  & his regime turned out to be more diligent and dynamic than I’d feared might be the case when I wrote about it last.

But his task was always gargantuan, since most of the (remaining) council services are required to be provided by statute, so where can seriously big cuts be found, and debt repaid?  The brough remains technically bankrupt, though “essential services” are being maintained, as the law requires.

Anyhow, whether for procedural or narrowly political** reasons, Starmer’s government has decided to send in the commissioners.  This is a baleful development.  We live in an age where democracy seems to be falling out of favour, but experience of the alternatives might cause some to revisit that argument.  If not elected governance, what do you get?  Dictatorship, or commissioners at every level.  The priesthood.  Unelected; unaccountable; un-ejectable.  

More from South London in due course.

ND

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**Several leading Croydon Labour movers and shakers currently hold positions in Starmer’s coterie, and the suspicion must be that they plan this as a maneouvre to get a Labour mayor elected in the borough next year.