Shirley Ford, Green Party parliamentary candidate for South Shields, took part in More Power to the North? debate on BBC1 on 5 November. She challenged the lack of democracy in local government, with power having been centralised into the hands of cabinets of a very few councillors, and argued for a layer of community councils to bring decision-making closer to people’s lives.
At the end of the debate, Shirley was interviewed, as one of the participants, about what needs to happen next and she made the point that we need a People’s Constitutional Convention now, like they had in Scotland in the mid 1990s which led to the vote in favour of a Scottish Parliament in 1999.
In further comments not included in the programme she added that this is crucial, so that we are not steamrollered by George Osborne, Nick Clegg or any other Westminster big party’s blueprint – whether it’s city regions, elected mayors or English votes for English laws. We also need to be able to challenge the premise that the point of devolution is to “get the economy going again”, ie economic growth at all costs. Greens are determined that the way we govern ourselves should be to create resilient, vibrant, healthy and sustainable communities – whether they are cities, suburbs, towns or villages
Catch it on BBC iplayer, with Shirley speaking at about 14 minutes into the programme and again right at the end, at about 38 minutes. It will be available for 29 days.
There was also a healthy twitter debate live during the programme at #northwhatnext that you can catch up on too.