James Mitchell decries the lack of local power in local government and advocates radical reform.
"How we constitute ourselves is one of the most basic, if multi-faceted, issues in politics. It has to be about more than creating a Parliament and accumulating power for the executive in the Parliament’s name.
We have lost sight of the ideals of self-government that animated earlier debates and stuck with a Scottish variant on the system that was supposed to be rejected. For all the talk of popular sovereignty, what has emerged is a mini-Westminster in which the executive is dominant, Parliament is compliant and any other potential sources of legitimacy are denuded of authority. The central paradox of Scottish politics has been that in the desire to find an alternative system we have ended up with a system of government that is essentially the same as the Westminster system.
We have neglected deficiencies in our system of government, in how we constitute ourselves with this narrowing focus. Relations with the rest of the UK are important but there is so much more that demands attention. May’s local elections will likely become another referendum on whether we should have a referendum, negating the principles on which the new system was supposed to be based. We need fresh thinking, prioritising local issues and evidence that power is shared from parties."