From his lips to God's ears

"This is a government that will give power back to the people" writes David Cameron in CiF. I not only hopeful but also inclined to believe he is sincere. The question is - do "the people" want that power, and with it a curtailment of their cherished freedom to moan impotently? 

We are going to turn the tide. We will be the first government in a generation* to leave office with much less power in Whitehall than we started with. Why? Because we feel the importance of this in our heads as well as our hearts. There's the efficiency argument – that in huge hierarchies, money gets spent on bureaucracy instead of the frontline. There is the fairness argument – that centralised national blueprints don't allow for local solutions to major social problems. And there is the political argument – that centralisation creates a great distance in our democracy between the government and the governed.

But we feel it in our hearts, too. We are optimists. We believe that when people are given the freedom to take responsibility, they start achieving things on their own and they're possessed with new dynamism. Multiply this transformation by millions of people and you'll get an idea of why we are so passionate about this power shift.

* In a generation? When was the last government that devolved any power?