When the bin collection is big news, no wonder local elections fail to inspire

In my two and a half years in Britain, one of the starkest differences I have observed between this and my adopted country, the United States, has been the inability of local government to bring about real change. Little wonder that turnout at local elections, like last week’s in England, is so dismally low: voters don’t bother to turn out because they can’t see what impact their vote will have.

America’s federal system guarantees that power is devolved to the lowest level possible, placing much more responsibility on the shoulders of local and state authorities.

This is due in large part to our deep-seated paranoia about state overreach, or the potential excesses of a tyrannical ruler. To prevent the creation of an effective monarch, the system prioritises taking power away from the highest levels of government whenever and wherever possible. It’s also a solution to the practical problem of catering for 350million people spread across a stretch of land the size of Europe – it would be impossible to keep up with the wildly varying demands of those people from Washington.

Lower levels of government are thus mostly allowed to function as they see fit, and, quite critically, are in charge of their own finances. Most local government revenues in the US are raised through taxation, and not grants from central government. Local authorities thereby have more freedom to decide how they spend those revenues, making them more responsive to the needs of their constituents – and the variation between counties generates competition for businesses and people.

All this guarantees that taxpayers feel a tangible link between what they put into the system, and what they and their neighbours get out of it. There is downward pressure on local and state governments to provide the best possible business environment, and the best schools, because they know that other local and state governments are actively in the business of poaching talent.

In the US, there is serious competition between states and counties to attract and retain jobcreating businesses. Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and the current US ambassador to the UN, staked much of her early political career on creating favourable conditions for Boeing in her state, wading deep into union politics and ultimately winning the argument.

If and when she runs for higher office, expect that story to be a central part of her stump speech.

Presidential debates are choc-a-bloc with statistics about how many jobs were created or retained during a candidate’s time in office. Standing under a party banner isn’t enough to get elected – one must prove a real track record in improving the lives of one’s constituents.

Watching the local elections across England this week drove home the differences between that fundamentally competitive model of local government and what exists here. Making bin collections the focus of their campaign was good strategy

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion on the part of the Tories because, in large part, councils aren’t empowered to do much else.

Compared with the US, where local governments raise the equivalent of 8.9 per cent of GDP in tax revenue (across the OECD, the average is 8.8 per cent), those in the UK raise only 1.6 per cent. Having everything from corporation tax to business rates centralised in Westminster means there’s very little wiggle room for councils be creative and make the case that theirs is the best town in which to set up shop.

Moreover, if local government can’t raise money, it can’t spend money in the ways its constituents demand. And councils are best equipped to know what their communities need. Delivering public services at a local level is about much more than potholes.

In a heavily centralised model of government, voters pay taxes on a monthly basis, but only have the opportunity to hold their leaders to account at the ballot box every few years. The gulf between the governed and their government has produced a powerful backlash against elites and the very concept of expertise.

As in the private sector, competition helps to deliver a better result for consumers (in this case, taxpayers). If we are to increase public confidence in government, that government must be accountable to people, and responsive to their needs. To honour the contract between citizens and their state is to acknowledge that choice exists – the choice to move elsewhere, the choice to shut down or start up a business, the choice to do better for oneself and one’s family.

Molly Kiniry is a researcher at the Legatum Institute

It is the ineluctable logic of running the National Health Service the way we do: a ratchet of ever more extreme nanny statism. The latest proposal – that schools should be judged by Ofsted not just on their academic results, but on how successful they are at reducing the obesity levels of their pupils – is not surprising in the least. The argument goes something like this: some children are unhealthily fat, obesity costs the health service billions, therefore parents will have to put up with being hectored by teachers into mending their ways.

This may well be popular. Plenty of us think that other people make for bad parents and so they should accept some instruction from the state, especially when the costs of that bad parenting fall on the rest of us when we have to pay for their children’s treatment on the NHS. But consider where all this might go.

We already have taxes on unhealthy products. The sugary drinks levy is designed to prod us into making healthier choices. Doctors’ groups, health officials and politicians regularly call for the principle to be extended, with such interventions justified, yes, on the basis of saving us from ourselves, but also because “it will save the NHS billions”. Never mind if such schemes are infantilising, or give undue power to officials (many of whom are themselves obese), or simply make life more expensive. The

‘If local government can’t raise money, it can’t spend money in the ways its constituents demand’

‘Declines in individual responsibility create expensive health problems that the NHS is dutybound to address’

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion