probably because this thread is about what Clegg was talking about in his framing of the manifesto, not what he might have said. What extensions to local democracy do you believe should be in the manifesto? Personally I’d let local authorities have more control over their own democratic structures and decentralisation agenda, rather than prescribing them from the centre.

“Will “parent” schools be run by a clique of parents or by all parents?”

I’m a bit lost on your point here. Parent governors are elected by all parents, at least down our way…

The original Liberal education system created in 1870 set up 2,000 local education boards, directly elected locally, and these proved massively dynamic, creating a national education system within a few years. The party fought the creation of local education authorities in 1902 which merged these local boards into local authorities and, incidentally, created faith schools. By and large our predecessors got things right.

What I’m not hearing is the language of extending local democracy, rather than simply extending the powers of the existing structures. For instance, the 1870 principles continue to be represented by the election of parent governors. Will “parent” schools be run by a clique of parents or by all parents? Those are my questions and I’m not getting reassurance.

Which means that elections are great accountability if your primary concern is the general improvement of welfare of around 250,000 people every four years (if we’re talking councils). It’s bugger-all accountability when it comes to a specific bad school or a specific failing recycling service. Particularly not if such failures occur in wards or areas where regime change is deeply unlikely, or they’re not a sign of general weakness or underfunding, but isolated cases due to bad management.

It’s also a level of accountability entirely alien to the way we consume the vast bulk of our other services.

We would not for example deal with a bad mobile phone service by waiting four years on the off-chance of kicking out the board of directors on a vote at the AGM. We’d change supplier very quickly.

We’d also be happy to make that change ourselves, not rely on a local sales manager who we can only contact on a Saturday to liaise with customer services on our behalf in the hope that something might get better after a strategic review in 18 months time.

Individual choice doesn’t undermine local democracy, it’s just more honest about what the role of politicians actually is.

Some matters are strategic and about how we best allocate scare resources. Those should be issues for political and democratic leadership. Some are operational and managerial and should be left to front-line staff and managers, properly and directly accountable to front-line service users where that is practical and fair.

The notion then that there is a conflict between more local democracy and democratic accountability and individual accounability and is false. This party really has nothing to fear from empowering people.

In the first half of the sentence the word “local” is negatively attached to politician, in the second half it’s positively attached to “individual”.

Maybe it’s not thought through but it’s the same unhelpful ambiguity that was in Nick’s speech. The best people to make decisions about local services are locally elected representatives, genuinely accountable to the local population – they may be politicians or at parish council level, say, not really. There’s a lack of clarity in what I’m hearing about how we’re going to revive local democracy and that’s dangerous when Labour has pursued, especially in urban areas, models of local involvement that are near-Troskyite – turn up to a meeting and you can take control of a substantial budget of public money. No need to prove that you represent the local population. And even if you’re outnumbered at the first meeting by ordinary people, you just carry on turning up and talking loudly until everyone else goes away and leaves you and your friends in charge of the budget.

John Maynard Keynes

However, the “who does what?” question is and must remain a judgement call. Circumstances change and so does the public mood. What matters is that duplication is avoided. Failure to observe this vital principle is mainly why the referendum on a NE Assembly was lost in 2004 (rightly so in my opinion): opponents were able to describe it as “yet another layer of expensive bureaucracy” without any riposte from the Yes campaign.

The EU too is guilty of failing to observe this basis rule. The European Parliament has just been debating the question of school uniforms (specifically banning the hijab in primary schools across the EU). Sure, it was defeated but that’s beside the point; it should never have been on the agenda in the first place. In fact I simply don’t believe the EU’s claim to support the principle of subsidiarity. When controversy about the Maastricht treaty blew up in John Major’s face it was suddenly ‘discovered’ that this was a basic principle as a way of placating the euro-sceptics. Read the text and you will indeed find the word, but only in passing not as a fundamental principle.

If Clegg can develop a narrative on this that is consistent from parish council to Brussels, he will be halfway to Downing Street.

This habit of confusing a pseudo-creed with a coherent philosophy started with Thatcher, and was grossly overstated then. But, once started, commentators couldn’t help themselves from describing Major’s actions as ‘Majorism’, and the same woolly thinking happened with Blair.

Please no more ‘Cleggism’!

Blair needed the label Blairism becuase he was doing precisely the opposite to his party – ditching their core philosophy and replacing it was something more pragmatic.

Liberalism though, unlike socialism, is already a pragmatic philisophy. It is about how you structure society to cope with multiple beliefs and ideas about the good life while gradually improving opportunity for all.

If we’re starting to call rediscovering that Cleggism or some varient, then I really think we’re missing the point about what Clegg’s trying to achieve. Hopefully his reforms and reattachment of this party to our underlying principles will outlast his leadership…

Unlike Blairism.

Subsidiarity did indeed get its original meaning as a made-up word within an EU context, but today’s it’s used more widely – it means that powers are at an “appropriate” level and only higher up when necessary.

Federalism is the same, though is usually explicitly described as devolving power to the lowest possible level. As you point out, this is indeed usually a matter of governance, but the lowest possible level can often be one of the individual. Federalism’s really my “pet subject”, so surprised at being accused of not properly understanding the term!

Liberalism obviously can mean many different things, but I would say that most sensible definitions would say that if someone can make their own choices with good outcomes that the state shouldn’t make those choices for them.

Peter Bancroft writes: “As pointed out above, the test is one of subsidiary/federalism/liberalism”

No it isn’t. “Subsidiarity” is a legal doctirne of civilian origin recognised and applied by the European Court of Justice and written into the Treaty of the European Union 1992. “Federalism” is a method of government and “liberalism” is a term so vague as to be useless. People misusing legal terminology makes me want to scream.

Horrible word.

Can’t we call it Cleggery instead? Or even Cleggage?

“Doesn’t it really depend on whether passing power down or up or whatever frustrates or fulfills the general will of society expressed through the democratic process ”

I’m sure this hasn’t been properly thought through, but the implication is that the liberal approach to public services is that we’re in favour of whatever level of centralisation the public are willing to vote for.

Are you sure?

As pointed out above, the test is one of subsidiary/federalism/liberalism. If something can be done as well or better by a lower level of govt (or the individual), then it should be done by them.

Thus local authorities should control education, with perhaps a regional coordinating body to share services between education authorities and ensure standards are kept and raised. The role of Whitehall can simply be light touch monitoring to make sure that there are not huge discrepancies between different regions.

I hope your assessment of Cleggism is indeed borne out in further announcements.