All politics is local  

In one of the Commons committee rooms there is a huge portrait of Joseph Chamberlain, the Birmingham MP and father of the infamous Conservative Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. “Our Joe” as I am told he was affectionately known by his supporters, was also the Mayor of Birmingham at the height of municipal greatness; perhaps local government's finest hour! For example, Chamberlain established a municipal gas supply by forcibly purchasing the two private gas companies on behalf of the city for £1,953,050, even offering to purchase the companies himself if the ratepayers refused. In 1876, Chamberlain also forcibly purchased Birmingham’s waterworks for a combined sum of £1,350,000, creating Birmingham Corporation Water Department, having declared to a House of Commons Committee that “We have not the slightest intention of making profit…We shall get our...