Foreign wars have the unfortunate side-effect of bringing out the self-regarding narcissist in people. This is made all the more pronounced in our era of social media, in which some types appear to think that mere tweets can stop wars, and that an appropriately-altered Facebook profile might bring about world peace.
The latest casualty in this regard has been local government. And I don’t just mean the Scottish government and the Scottish National party, who have had delusions of grandeur long before the Israel-Gaza conflagration begun. I mean local, provincial councils.
Such vainglorious grandstanding on international issues is a waste of time and money
In a tweet last week, Freddie Bailey, Labour councillor and cabinet member for environment and community safety at Preston council, proudly announced: ‘We in Preston are the first Council in the UK to hold an Extraordinary Council Meeting to pass a Notice of Motion calling for a immediate ceasefire in Gaza.’ Well that’s that sorted, then. Job done.
Apparently not. On Monday, Oxford city council – which is run by Labour – added its impetus to the international chorus of voices urging for a ceasefire. One of its councillors, Paula Dunne, pronounced: ‘Tonight the motion I proposed at Oxford City Council to call for an immediate permanent #Ceasefire in Gaza passed unanimously… End apartheid. End occupation.’
Yet another game-changer, surely? I doubt it. Oxford will hardly be the last council to declare its support for Gaza and Palestine. In this age of coercive, competitive compassion (where, a couple of years back, footballers ‘took the knee’ because it would have shameful not to) it will surely become a badge of honour among Labour councils to issue a similar demand.
The conformist impulse among local councillors to show support for the Palestinians isn’t confined to these shores. As TRT World, a Turkish broadcaster, reported yesterday, nearly a dozen city councils in the United States, from Michigan to Georgia, have this week called for a resolution on a ceasefire. Oakland city council has also called the unrestricted entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza and a restoration of basic services, as well as ‘respect for international law’.
‘My heart is too broken to even express what I’m truly feeling in this moment,’ said council member Carroll Fife, who brought the resolution. She added that the issue is ‘deeply, deeply concerning’ to Oakland residents.
The passing of such motions, in the US and back home, raises the obvious question: why do local politicians think they are in a position to pass judgement? David Glazier, who teaches constitutional law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, remarked: ‘It raises an interesting question on where they are getting this mandate to speak for the people in their city when nobody elected a city council person because of their stance on Middle East peace.’
Quite so. Councils should concern themselves with local issues. They should do exactly as is written on the proverbial tin: do local, don’t speak global. And there are plenty of important local matters in the UK, such as housing, Ulez expansions, the future of the high street and potholes, to name just a few. Such vainglorious grandstanding on international issues is a waste of time and money.
Yet pontificating on dramatic global matters is far more exciting than dealing with dismal prosaic problems such as drains and dustbins. Opining on life-or-death matters allows provincial politicians to fantasise that they are far more important than they actually are.
Not that they need a fresh excuse. Local government, and devolved government, already has an exaggerated sense of its status and worth, hence the vast salaries it pays to its staff at the very top. In fact, you can see how inflated local government’s sense of self-importance is by the fact that Preston council has a ‘cabinet’ at all. My late father, upon learning that Dover district council had a ‘cabinet’, wondered if it didn’t also have a navy.
All of this is not without precedent. Provincial voices have before piped up in times of international crisis and tension. Most famously, in 1898, the Skibbereen Eagle newspaper in West Cork published a leader promising to ‘keep its eye on the Emperor of Russia, and all such despotic enemies – whether at home or abroad – of human progression.’ The difference here is that this intervention has since become a source of amusement. The risible presumptuousness of local councillors today will not achieve comparable legend.
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