Austerity, outsourcing and English councils in crisis

Northamptonshire county council met on 1 August 2018 to discuss possible cuts to its services for vulnerable children and adults.Aditya Chakrabortty’s excellent piece (The councils that embraced austerity will cost us all dear, 13 August) builds on an earlier one by Patrick Butler, who pointed out in ( Opinion, 17 October 2012: “Outsourcing a local authority in its entirety is a long-held Tory municipal fantasy, first articulated by Margaret Thatcher’s local government min