What makes a country great?
Great cities.
That’s a lesson the United Kingdom once knew well. Britain reached its imperial heights in the late 19th century in part because its municipalities were the world’s most productive cities.
None better symbolized British greatness than Birmingham, a manufacturing powerhouse in the West Midlands. In 1890, Harper’s Magazine called it the “best-governed city in the world” because of its novel services, free libraries and museums, free education for all children, modern sanitation, affordable housing, street lighting, a municipal bank, and support for the poor.
The spirit of Birmingham was often expressed by the popular nonconformist preacher George Dawson, and two mayors — Joseph Chamberlain and his son Neville. They evangelized for a philosophy called “The Civic Gospel.”
“A town,” Dawson once said, “is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man’s moral nature.”
Today, the Civic Gospel is preached by city leaders worldwide, especially in the globally ambitious metros of Vienna, Mexico City, Seoul, and Tokyo, where governments pursue humanity-advancing improvements in democratic participation, environmentalism, and the arts.
But these days you won’t hear the Civic Gospel in its home country. When you ask municipal experts about the world’s best governed cities today, you’ll get an earful about Barcelona and Bogota, but nothing about Britain. U.K. cities are too busy struggling to survive.
Birmingham, still the second most populous U.K. city, is now a cautionary tale. In September 2023, it declared fiscal insolvency — one of eight British cities to do so in the past six years. Birmingham’s bankruptcy is blamed on cuts in national support, and two massive mistakes: a boggled IT project (£80 million) and equal pay claims by female city workers (more than £700m). Unable to pay its bills, Birmingham has suspended spending on arts, youth services, and other programs.
The sorry state of local self-governance is not often mentioned in reports about the July 4 U.K. elections in the U.K. But local stagnation helps explain Britain’s current crisis.
In the face of national failures — declining life expectancy and real wages — Britons are unable to turn to their too-weak local governments for solutions.
After the Second World War, the U.K.’s national government stripped local governments of responsibilities from utilities to hospitals, and nationalized services. Whitehall also repeatedly reorganized local governments and their jurisdictions. fragmenting local power. This enriched London ad made Britain one of earth’s most centralized democracies, but curbed the wealth and influence of other cities.
The imbalance has not gone unnoticed. Over the past 15 years, British governments have sought to boost localities via various strategies. In 2019, the Tories running Britain announced a plan for “Levelling Up” weaker cities and regions with greater aid, and established a department to pursue it.
But these efforts have failed, because the approaches are top-down. Indeed, the national “Levelling Up” department has dispensed cash for projects through a slow bidding process, orchestrated by costly consultants. The Economist noted that 60 of the first 71 Levelling Up projects were behind schedule.
Since “Levelling Up” became policy five years ago, economic disparities between rich and poor regions have actually widened. Help probably isn’t on the way. Labour has only made vague promises to “Level Up” better than the Tories.
For now, insolvent cities feel stuck.
The most promising path forward is for the national government to retreat and grant more local autonomy. There have been small moves in this direction, with “trailblazer” deals allowing some metro regions to elect chief executives.
But such devolution deals are full of limits on local control, including a “scrutiny protocol” listing all the ways the national government will watch over supposedly empowered cities.
What’s really needed, but not yet on offer, is a restoration of the local freedom that made Birmingham a city so great it had its own gospel.
Joe Mathews is a Zócalo Public Square columnist and founder-publisher of Democracy Local, a planetary publication.
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