As this Labour government staggers on through a summer and the economic news worsens I was mulling this evening how the future will pan out.
If, as currently seems likely, the Conservatives win the election what will they face? With the public finances shot and the prospect of a long period of low or negative growth will the public put up with the necessary long period of restocking the nation's coffers? Hopefully the our experience in the the early 1980s will prove an accurate predictor of the future - a Conservative administration rescuing the country from ten years of economic mismanagement - with the repairs that can be made in the first years of a Cameron administration serving the country well for the decade to come.
However national successes will likely come at a price, and locally the key challenge will be for a Conservative Council to survive any dissatisfaction from voters in the challenging early years of the next administration.
Again I conclude that the link between central and local government should be loosened with real power needs being devolved to local level. Only by doing this will we stand a chance of people voting on local issues to when they come to elect local representatives residents.Treating all elections as an opinion poll on central government needs to end.
