Police Commissioner Elections and Devolution

Yesterday I voted in the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales. The Police and Crime Commissioners will take over the role of the police authorities, through which local council members and independent members. The PCCs will control the budget of the police force and be able to hire/fire the chief constable. They will also set local policing priorities.

The idea for PCCs was presumably partly inspired by the de facto firing of chief constable Ian Blair in London by London mayor Boris Johnson, and the desire to bring the police under local democratic control. While I think there should be democratic oversight of the police, it's wrong to politicise policing so directly - it would be better for democratically elected councils with several responsibilities to hold the police accountable rather than a directly elected individual to do the job.

The campaign hasn't grabbed the national imagination - or the local for that matter - and in general the candidates have stressed that policing will stay independent, so there hasn't been the politicisation of policing that opponents to the plan, like me, feared. But with the powers of the office limited to setting the overall vision of the police, deciding on the chief constable, and making budgetary decisions where the PCC has little control beyond allocating the resources given to him/her, in the future the PCCs are likely going to turn into super-powered elected lobbyists for their policing region, lobbying for more money for more police. To some extent this has happened with the position of London Mayor, so it seems more likely to happen to this smaller office.

It would be better for local democracy to decide on the size of the area that's best suited to bringing decision-making in general closer to people without it being too far removed. If bigger local councils or regional assemblies could decide on matters such as policing and also have some control over the purse strings, then it would give people more control and responsibility over how to approach policing locally. This could be part of a more general devolution of power locally, though this runs up against the unpopularity of regionalisation in England.

Empowering local democracy is a good aim, and some lobbying for the local area is a good thing - after all, MPs are supposed to represent their constituency in the national debate on issues and bat for it - but it needs to have some rational structure that allows people to engage fully with what the priorities across several local issues should be. Proper devolution would create bodies big enough to take on responsibility for their areas and have the power to make substantive decisions, without being too far removed (a tough balance). This would open up a more engaged local debate and boost turnout, rather than creating a English and Welsh political landscape that's littered with elected offices of varying sizes with little rhyme or reason as to how they join up to make streamlined, effective and accountable local government.

Big Election Date set for Ireland

It has been announced that Ireland will hold elections to the European Parliament on Friday the 5th of June. Polls will be open longer (7am-10pm) to try and encourage a larger turnout as turnout for EP elections traditionally decline at each poll.

What makes June the 5th a big election day (apart from the elections to the biggest multinational, directly elected institution in the world) is that elections for local government will be held too, and possibly 2 by-elections (which really should have taken place already by now). Fine Gael hopes to gain from the government's unpopularity in both polls, but I don't expect major losses for Fianna Fáil, if only because they sunk so low in the last local and European elections. More interesting will be the performance of the Green Party, the junior partner in the governing coalition. Will the Greens (who hold the Environment and Local Government Ministry) be able to avoid the voters' wrath?

Given the influx of people from the new EU member states, I wonder if they will register to vote in the EP elections, and if this will have much of an impact if they do...

It will be very interesting to see if statistics for registration levels of non-Irish EU citizens will be available. Are EU citizens in another member state than their home state more likely to vote in EP elections (and possibly be more pro-European?), or would factors such as unfamiliarity with the electoral system (EP elections don't have a unified system) and voter-candidate language difference turn them away? Or is the EP (and the EU at large) not important enough even for mobile EU workers for these questions to be relevant?