City Talks: Simon Parker on shifting power to cities and local areas

This month Andrew is joined by Simon Parker, Director of the NLGN, to discuss his new book Taking Power Back: Putting People in Charge of Politics. Simon explains how the UK has gradually concentrated power in Whitehall and Westminster over the course of the post-war period, and argues that the peculiarly British experiment with centralisation has failed. Instead, international social and technological trends point to new ways of delivering public services that puts local people in the driving seat. Using examples like the Occupy movement in New York, Simon outlines this new 'libertarian socialist' ideal of 'the commons', and how it can work in practice. He suggests that the city devolution agenda taken up by the current government is welcome, but should only be the first step to pushing more power down to local communities.