Tom has summed up perfectly everything I observed about the way our seat of democracy operated for as long as I was involved in local government. Those who aspired to climb the greasy poll from local government, learnt quickly the Westminster way of business, doing their former colleagues no favours on their way up.

One thing that has struck me more than anything about most of those reaching high office, is their apparent disdain for the place they came from.

Eric Pickles was one those most obviously hostile to local government once he became the minister for local government.

He killed off pensions for councillors. I’m not criticising that one way or the other, but it was a perfect example of his general approach to local government and its councillors in particular.

In many ways I can see why he would feel that way about councillors. Many that I have encounter aren’t worth the basic allowance, let alone a pension at the end of their term. However, this is where my criticism of people like Pickles lies. When presented with the opportunity to get councillors to do a better job, he took the spiteful route of removing a benefit. He could so easily have required a major improvement in performance, delivery and results in order to qualify for pension rights.

He could have done something about the training that is offered and that some attended but others don’t. Within my own council, I attempted more than once to get a change to rules for the entitlement to full basic allowance to be dependent on attendance at least six key training sessions. Planning, even if they were not on that committee, health and safety, lone working, data protection, local government finance.

None of these were so lengthy that anybody needed to take time off work, or lasted any longer than any other council meeting. Yet too many councillors avoided them like the plague.

So yes, I can see why ex-councillors hold little regard for those they came through the ranks with. However, that means they should be doing their utmost to change things, not just allowing things to continue and probably now get worse as unitary authorities become the norm for every area of England.

This now means that we will all be ruled by a very small cabinet of ambitious local politicians sitting above a gaggle of untrained wannabes, all playing their own version of Traitors week in week out.

Note. The LGA has a number of different training courses available that council/group leaders can nominate the chosen few to attend. this piecemeal approach to councillor training does their local taxpayers no favours.

2 January 2025

Opinion

Tom Nicholson

This country’s most important political 

pundit? Claudia Winkleman 

Good afternoon,

Dig out your hooded cloak, cut yourself a flat fringe and turn up the melodramatic cover version of “Mr Sandman”: The Traitors has returned for its third series. I’m a huge fan of its backstabbing, plotting and gleeful campiness, and have worked out my own game plan for victory. No doubt I’d have a meltdown at the roundtable and get myself banished immediately, but a man can dream.

Ian Dunt has gorged on all the international versions too – New Zealand’s is particularly choice – but for slightly more hifalutin reasons. For him, The Traitors is a window into how our politics works, and how to tell when we’re being lied to.

“Watch the programme carefully. You will see the same technique over and over again. A Traitor is suddenly in the spotlight at the round table. All eyes are on them. They have to explain themselves. And then, instead of doing so, they simply turn the spotlight on someone else. They do not answer questions, they just raise them in a different direction. This technique works nearly every time. It is quite hard to prove your honesty. But it is astonishingly easy to encourage people’s suspicions in an unrelated area.

“There’s a lesson here in how to spot political lies. ‘The Traitors’ teaches us to look out for those who whip up the crowd against outsiders, who use their popularity to escape accusations of deception, and who respond to scrutiny by raising unrelated suspicions about others