Over-centralisation and ‘centralism’ make politics boring – and weakens democracy

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

That was my take from Geoff Mulgan’s recent blogpost: Hollowed Out.

Image: Trials of democracy. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu

I previously wrote about Sir Geoff’s creation of a new university degree aimed at training and educating a new generation of civil servant who is sci/tech/data literate. 20 years ago he was a prominent adviser in Tony Blair’s Government in the 2000s, being his Director of Policy (and later of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit). Therefore his observations on the operation of Downing Street are worth looking at.

He looks across a number of countries with centre-left governments and picked out some common themes.

  • Tactics not strategy
  • Incumbency bias
  • Business capture
  • No culture
  • Low energy equilibrium:

Above – scroll halfway down this post to explore what he meant by each of these

Bloomberg published a recent article noting that poorer areas are turning towards TeamNigel yet in the same article noted that The Greens are also doing disproportionately better in similar more economically-deprived areas. Yet as the former are finding out the hard way, the over-centralisation of the state has meant their loud promises to cut waste in local government turned out to be little more than that. Loud promises. Hence their crisis in Kent amongst other places following 14 years of austerity where the low-hanging fruit had already been cut.

Business Capture almost goes without saying. Sir Keir Starmer and allies made it very clear they were pivoting away from their trade union base that had strengthened under Jeremy Corbyn, towards catching the support of the big business institutions and figures similar to what Tony Blair did in the 1990s. I noted recently that the scale of the former Prime Minister’s Think Tank is huge – far beyond the size of even the larger prominent think tanks of both centre left and centre right. That alone raises transparency issues. There’s also the issue of secondments from business – the latest being picked up in the Scottish Press. That said, this has been an issue for years and it won’t go away. The conflict of interest in the Treasury is having secondees from institutions that ultimately the same department is responsible for overseeing the regulation of and making policies on.

Strategy vs tactics, and incumbency bias I’ll leave to others. The low energy equilibrium and ‘no culture’ were the ones that interested me.

Low Energy Equilibrium

The centralised state means that most of the significant decisions are made at the centre – far away from communities impacted by them. A couple of weeks ago the Minister for Housing indicated he would be creating a centrally-led development corporation for Cambridge. There’s nothing to stop him from doing so, but he also had the option of having a mayoral development corporation or simply creating a new unitary council for Cambridge’s economic sub-region and leaving things at that. Part of the problem is party political – Cambridgeshire & Peterborough has a Conservative Mayor, and the county council along with South Cambs District Council are Lib-Dem controlled. The latter with a super-majority of over 2/3 of the seats. As things stand and looking at electoral history, the Liberal Democrats are most likely to be the party in political control of any new Greater Cambridge Unitary Council. And Labour know this.

I saw what the low energy equilibrium looked like earlier on at the guildhall where Cambridge City Council councillors scrutinised the new documents on the emerging Greater Cambridge Local Plan – where I asked this public question on Neuroarchitecture. It covers many of the issues I raised in my previous blogpost here.

“Why would members of the public want to turn up to a meeting that involves ploughing through motor traffic in rush hour only to ask a question that ministers will completely ignore?”

Exactly. And Sir Geoff makes a similar general point.

“It makes no call on citizens to play a part in change – they are left merely as passive spectators.”

Where does political power and consent from the people reside? Because of all of the political parties represented in The Guildhall, The Green Party have been the most public in their opposition to the growth plans.

Above – Cambridge Green Party on FB 04 Nov 2025

This also reminds me of the feature that Rachel Cunliffe did for the New Statesman on the hollowed out state and how it impacted local communities, using a nearby town in Bedfordshire as an example.

“Disempowered local government enfeebled by decades of

  • centralisation,
  • austerity, and
  • compulsory outsourcing.”

It’s very hard to get people involved in consultations if they’ve had decades of the above. There are generations of people who have never taken part in consultations before – and many who are understandably cynical about it because their responses are all too often ignored by tick-box processes not designed to listen to people.

Have we seen the serious policy debate on the future of our local towns and cities?

The Pride In Place funding is a traditional big-spending location-specific programme that the civil service is used to doing. But the big benefits are not nationwide. It needed to be accompanied by much greater empowerment of local councils giving them the ability to impose new taxes on a much wider range of areas – including where some activities are overwhelming local areas. Such as tourism and AirBnB/second homes. But successive governments have prevented this. Sir Geoff also asks:

  • Where is the serious debate about what stance to take to a capitalism that has clearly so often become the enemy of democracy?
  • How to respond to rapid demographic shifts and remake welfare?
  • How to share power between multiple levels?
  • How to use all the powers of the state to boost affordable housing?
  • How to reinvigorate democracy and restore public trust?

Inevitably for the majority of people the default is whether the incumbent party in government has done a reasonable enough job steering the ship of state. or whether it is time ‘for someone else to have a go’.

Technocracy vs radical ideas

Sir Geoff looks at the rapid rise of The Green Party in recent times – not just the past couple of months that has resulted in over 150,000 Green Party members – a record, but also the four new MPs that were elected in 2024 – also a record. In the face of multiple crises combined with what feels like the paralysis of the centre over the past couple of years (a centre that has allowed itself to be battered by the louder voices in the print press and more inflammatory parts of the online media right of the Tories), it’s perhaps not surprising that sharper media performers with new messages not often heard in the media are now catching the attention of people – thinking also of Cllr Rachel Millward whose profile is also rising as one of the two deputy leaders for The Greens due to many media appearances. I dare say that in the longer term Cllr Millward could turn out to be an even stronger adversary than Mr Polanski.

**Look at all of this money we’re spending on sci-tech stuff that we don’t understand!**

On the No Culture point, you only have to look in despair at the kicking the Arts has been taking over the past decade and a bit. One of the things I’ve tried to be on the lookout for is the new generation of political satirists. While BBC Radio 4 keeps plugging along with Friday Night Comedy, the scene that emerged in the 1980s – For example Ben Elton going after Margaret Thatcher and ministers. And even he was complaining about politicians having no personality!

“Then she reshuffled John Major, a suit full of [nothing] into the Treasury, and reshuffled a man called Waddington – who nobody had heard of that morning, became Home Secretary!”

Above – Ben Elton on Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet full of empty suits in 1990

How many of you can remember a Home Secretary called **Waddington**?!?

Exactly. Although John Major made a name for himself following that episode. I don’t know whether that’s a good or a bad thing given I lived through his government in my teens and still despise it today!

“Over time the parties have become desiccated and more dominated by professional fixers, leaving a politics that often feels joyless, airless and lightless.”

Why did this happen?

“There’s been a cultural hollowing out in many parties that were once fuelled by festivals, music, poetry, film and art and a rich working class culture.”

Furthermore, what sort of events would we expect – should we expect to see politicians at? Has the over-centralisation of decision-making meant that the connection between local arts scenes and local politics has declined? Or did it even ever exist? It’s worth remembering that local councils in eras gone by used to have council committees responsible for arts and entertainments. But then the changes in the 1980s meant that those functions were packaged up and contracted out. Furthermore, even somewhere like Cambridge has struggled to get the wealth-generating firms to sponsor civic events – hence the loss of so many important free festivals like The Big Weekend, and the cancellation of last year’s Folk Festival. (It’s returning this year but Cambridge’s wealthy firms really need to step up because the growing Green Party is making stronger calls to tax them if they don’t).

Moving to an era of short-form video as political engagement

Sir Geoff writes:

“[Centrist leaders] rely on the kind of formulaic responses that worked quite well a generation ago but now reek on inauthenticity; and they still default to the old formats of lengthy speeches and press conferences aimed at the traditional media.”

At the same time, TeamNigel manages to appeal to both – enabled by an uncritical BBC and amplified by GBeebies and the like. Despite the resources they have – in particular from the trade union movement, the left and centre-left have been far weaker compared with their slick right wing opponents. Mr Polanski for The Greens is one of the few politicians who has been able to make effective use of the leftwing tik-tok-osphere/podcastosphere (if I can call it that) to connect with new audiences. Labour’s social media approach feels much more clunky in comparison – as if each output has been through multiple committees before being published. Mr Polanski on the other hand is able to respond to such content instantly, pulling the rug from underneath such output. What would it look like for Labour if local and regional politicians (Andy Burnham?) were empowered to make their own local content with support to amplify it?

Similar criticisms could be applied to the Liberal Democrats who, for whatever reason seem to be struggling to make themselves heard both online and in the media. This despite their record number of MPs (who between them are able to employ what should be a record number of staff). Why haven’t they put together one of the best social media units in the country? Why are they not able to bring in some talented and radical creatives into their operation? Why isn’t their membership rising in response to their huge electoral gains in parliamentary seats? Why aren’t more of their senior politicians at a similar level of public consciousness as their party leader?

“[Labour has] cracked down on debate of any kind and has drifted into immobility and rigidity, responding to agendas set by its opponents rather than making the weather. Facing up honestly to the hollowness of the centre is the first step to renewal: but who has the courage to do this?”

Sir Geoff concluded with the above. One thing I noticed many years ago with Labour was that its highly centralised structures meant it too often felt like their activists were waiting for permission from someone else before they ‘let rip’ so to speak. You only have to look at last August where TeamNigel was running rings around everyone in the political media, and no one seemed to have the ability to respond head on. Instead as Sir Geoff pointed out, we got a weak series of press releases in response to each attack with very little coming from their MPs give or take a few exceptions (eg Stella Creasy in Walthamstow and Clive Lewis in Norwich). One of the reasons I think that so many people on the centre-left turned towards The Greens in such large numbers is because Mr Polanski made it very clear he was prepared to stand up to TeamNigel in the media and followed it through with incredible effect on BBC Question Time, timing his interventions perfectly to take the wind out of the political sails of his opponent. Why weren’t Labour politicians doing the same thing when they appeared on platforms and TV panels when faced with such opponents? Why default to a bland line to take? Or was that the only thing an over-centralised party HQ would allow?

In six months time Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council will be going to the polls – the latter for the final time before the unitary council elections. South Cambridgeshire District returned this council in 2022. Which leaves the Liberal Democrats in a very strong position, and the other parties with a lot of catching up to do in a district experiencing significant population growth. It remains to be seen how all parties evolve their campaigning methods as we move towards a unitary structure. Will we see new and exciting methods of campaigning, and new radical policies stemming from the new powers we’re told local government will get in the Devolution Bill when it becomes law? Or will real power still reside in the centre?

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: