Today apparently marks the sad demise of Bedford County, presumably announcing the birth of Bedford and Kempston Borough gaining far greater power, matched with the rural boroughs of Mid Beds and North Beds or South Beds combining to create a rural administration.

The move for Liberals and especially Lib Dems has it goods and bads. On the one hand the new administrations will rule over less people making power more local and closer to those it governs over. It also takes power from a legislative body that was ruled by Cameron’s Conservatives (although knowing the area I doubt their reading of Burke is the same as Cameron’s if he reads Burke that is.) with no hope of the Liberals taking it. The new set up; leaves one area where the Liberals can contest for real power and sacrifices one totally to Cameron’s Conservatives.

Of course the power granted to Bedford, will go to the directly elected mayor who lucky for him has next to no checks on his power and was re-elected in a election that shocked independent watchdogs.

The problem at hand though is that it yet confuses once again how the UK and differing areas are governed. On the train I counted about eight levels of government that ran across the UK depending on the area you live in they would have differing amounts of power and may or may not exist. This essentially the result of decades and decades of Lab – Con centralisation, mixed in with half hearted devolution.

If Liberals constitutional reform and localism we need to effectively answer the question of what we mean by local control. Do we mean that a community we should govern itself and services mean 70,000 or 140,000 people? To encourage a civil society and real political engagement amongst other things more localism is not the complete answer. We need to make government simpler to, clearer to those who it governs and we ask to interact with it.

The Liberal program for reform should not just be more local government, but clearer and smaller to.