Localism: about time

Since I read Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell's excellent book, The Plan, I've become a great supporter of localism - and it's good to see that David Cameron has adopted it to some extent as official party policy.

Taking more power from Whitehall to local referenda is certainly a welcome sign, and should concentrate power in the hands of local people as opposed to bureaucrats and civil servants who are totally isolated from the real world.

Scrapping the Infrastructure Planning Commission is another shift of power to local people - it exists very nicely for the executive to push through Heathrow expansion without a Parliamentary vote, and it's about time the local peoples' views were taken seriously.

It's now clear that the Right care more about democracy than the Left and New Labour, who have centralised power either in Whitehall or Brussels, while creating the illusion of devolution by simply creating more levels of waste in Wales and Scotland.

Upholding Parliamentary democracy

Whether you agree with the Heathrow proposals or not, we should all agree that it is an absolute shambles that they will not be voted on by the UK Parliament, supposedly the supreme body of UK power, but instead will be forced through by ministers and quangos. This shows utter contempt for democracy and the voters, who elected MPs to represent them.

And I congratulate John McDonnell for his courage in expressing his beliefs of Parliamentary sovereignty. He was suspended as by Parliament's rules, but he deserves to be congratulated as he stood up to a government that clearly cares little for democracy.