One is the ancient capital of England, the other is home to the Anglican Mother Church. You couldn’t hope to find two towns more reminiscent of our island story and Britain’s glorious heritage.
But in what must historically be the most illiterate decision ever made by a Labor Secretary, Winchester and Canterbury could soon lose their status as cities entirely – thanks Angela Rayner and her plans to shake up local government.
As Housing and Local Government Secretary, she will dismantle our current two-tier system of county and district councils, replacing them with a single level of ‘unitary authorities’ that will deliver all local services.
Winchester council will be included in Mid-Hampshire. Canterbury becomes part of the East Kent Authority.
Regardless of whether each of them has a cathedral, any city so subsumed into a unitary authority will need to set up a new body of ‘charter trustees’ to continue using the coat of arms and city title – a process that will increase administrative burdens, incur significant legal costs and inflate council bill bills.
The total insensitivity of this proposal is not surprising. Rayner is a thick-eared person who clearly has no sense of history.
She is probably only half aware that her own second home, an £800,000 seaside flat in Hove, is in a cityscape that has recently achieved city status (shared with neighboring Brighton) – a status she is about to abolish.
Winchester has been a city for centuries longer than Britain itself has existed. It was the capital of Alfred the Great’s Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the ninth century and served as England’s main capital even after the Norman Conquest.
Canterbury Cathedral was founded in 597 and every year tens of thousands of visitors follow in the footsteps of Chaucer’s pilgrims
Canterbury is not just a local government. The name itself is synonymous with our history, centered around the historic mother church of our islanders, which over the centuries has become known as ‘England in Stone’.
Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the greatest English poets, wrote his Canterbury Tales, in which a motley collection of pilgrims, many of them infamous, made their way to the shrine of Thomas Becket, the 12th-century archbishop who was murdered on the orders of Henry II.
Chaucer tells us at the beginning of the poem that people flocked to Canterbury from all the counties.
It would sound less poetic if we thought they were all leaving for the East Kent Authority.
Let’s try to be honest and say that by abolishing the two-tier system of local government, the government wants to streamline the system, improve efficiency and save money.
That could – just maybe – happen if we were dealing with honest, efficient people who know what they are doing.
But we have to deal with the ever-expanding, increasingly inefficient British civil service, led by Angela Rayner.
When has this loud, rude person ever demonstrated administrative skills? When she advertises herself to the public or to her fans in the Labor Party, her only selling point seems to be that she had a difficult upbringing and is a teenage mother who feels the pain of other teenage mothers in their difficult circumstances.
Having difficulties in early life is not in itself a qualification for the difficult job of a senior state official, a minister and someone responsible for millions of pounds of public money and the lives of millions of people. British history is full of great politicians who had difficult lives in their youth, but they did not make this fact in itself a qualification for office. It was their talent, and not their unhappy childhood, that enabled them to accomplish the task.
When she was in charge of housing, Angela Rayner promised a program to build affordable housing. Such miracle programs are possible – just look at Harold Macmillan’s achievement when he was put in charge of housing in the 1950s and a large number of cheap houses, many of them the famous prefabs, were built.
Rayner did virtually nothing before becoming embroiled in a scandal of her own. Granted, it was found that she had not broken the law, but it was surprising to say the least that a Housing Minister did not understand the relatively simple rules regarding stamp duty.
Now this woman, who called her Tory political opponents ‘scum’, is responsible for the reorganization of local government.
It probably makes little difference to her and the other residents of Hove whether this seaside resort is a city or not. But casually abolishing the city status of Winchester and Canterbury is grotesquely insensitive. Millions of us care.
It would have been entirely possible, as she advanced her ‘unitary’ local government, to say that Britain’s historic towns should retain their city status.
Everyone would also have seen that if they had to have a ‘unitary’ system, the old names could be kept. Why ‘East Kent Authority’ and ‘Mid-Hampshire’? The soulless emptiness of these new names has the kind of gloom of the old Soviet system.
Winchester Cathedral was consecrated by the Normans in 1093. It is the longest medieval church in the world and the nave now serves as the final resting place of Jane Austen
As Minister for Housing and Local Government, Angela Rayner (pictured with Andy Burnham) is dismantling our current two-tier system of county and district councils, replacing them with a single level of ‘unitary authorities’ that will deliver all local services.
Furthermore, does anyone really believe that these reforms will necessarily make Britain a better governed country?
I would be very interested to know in two or three years’ time whether the people of East Kent or the people of Mid-Hampshire report more frequent and better bus services, better waste collection, fewer potholes in the roads, faster ambulances, an expansion of the public library service, repaired and revitalized swimming pools and sports facilities.
Of course, these union-dominated public services will remain inefficient and poorly managed. Andy Burnham’s localism won’t cure anything, especially not Rayner-style localism.
She will, of course, argue that she is abolishing the two-tier system to reduce the bureaucracy and costs of local government.
But to implement this abolition it will actually create more bureaucracy, more civil servants, more clumsy paper pushers, all employed at the expense of the hapless taxpayer.
However, none of us expected the contempt with which Rayner would treat our history.
Winchester has been centered around the enormous cathedral since it was consecrated by the Normans in 1093. It is the longest medieval church in the world and the nave now serves as the final resting place of Jane Austen.
Canterbury is a priceless jewel, where the cathedral was further founded in 597 and tens of thousands of visitors follow in the footsteps of Chaucer’s pilgrims every year. And yet they are both rejected by Rayner in her thoughtless drive to modernize local affairs.
The city status of these great ancient places is not just a matter of words. It is an expression of the historical past that unites us all and makes us more than just a set of statistics to be manipulated by soulless politicians who, unlike our great cathedrals, are here today and gone tomorrow.
