Localism and the left: the need for strong central government

We are all localists now, or so we are told. The political parties, NGOs across a broad range of policy areas, and many think tanks from the right, left and centre of British politics are now broadly unanimous in their support for the idea that the British democratic system needs to be overhauled and that many of the powers currently possessed by central government should be devolved down to local communities. But localism is also a radical response to what many on the left and the right see as a profound political and constitutional problem: that the Westminster Model, and the notion of representative democracy which animates it, has failed. Adapted from the source document.