Now Dominic Cummings wants to abolish the Tory party grassroots

Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser, wants to abolish an entire tier of local government. It was reported last weekend that Robert Jenrick, the cabinet minister responsible, would announce plans next month to merge county and district councils to create unitary authorities across the whole country.  

“This is all about ‘red wall’ empowerment,” a government source told The Sunday Times. The source spoke about “giving a stronger voice to the regions” and “levelling up” by giving more power to local people, but then gave the game away by adding that it was also about “breaking Labour’s traditional stranglehold over local authorities, especially in the north”.  

In other words, by replacing Labour-controlled councils with unitary authorities that could be led by directly elected mayors, the Conservatives hope to repeat their successes in London (Boris Johnson), the West Midlands (Andy Street) and Tees Valley (Ben Houchen). The Tories think they can win mayoral elections in places where they could never win a majority of council seats.  

This is a foolishly ambitious plan. As well as going to war with the civil service, the EU, the judiciary and the media, Cummings now wants to take his permanent revolution to local councils. Not satisfied with wanting to reorder the centre of government with his plan for a war room in 70 Whitehall, at the back of 10 Downing Street, and to transform government departments (so far achieving only the merger of the foreign office with the department for international development), Cummings wants to reorganise the whole of local government.  

If that wasn’t disruptive enough by itself, it is also a full-frontal attack on the foundations of the Tory party in the country. Local councillors are the core of the activist base, and they are likely to respond badly to being abolished, merged or marginalised by powerful mayors. Especially if the plan to downgrade them is pushed by Cummings, who isn’t even a member of the party.  

No wonder that Amanda Milling, the party chair who is usually useful only for quiz questions about the five female members of the cabinet, is reported to be opposing the plan forcefully.  

Reorganising local government is always and everywhere a waste of time and energy with unintended consequences. Tony Blair was keen on directly elected mayors, but he mainly succeeded in giving platforms to his enemies to the left (Ken Livingstone) or right (Tories and independents).  

Tory backbenchers are already up in arms over Jenrick’s plan to relax planning rules to allow more houses to be built in their green and pleasant constituencies: they are not going to take kindly to having the stalwarts of their local Tory associations upset further. I predict yet another U-turn.  

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator