This week’s shocking rioting in our major cities has exposed the absence of local leadership. Why does the Home Secretary have to come home from holiday to express her outrage and promise action? Because the Mayor of London was also on holiday? Well, he came back too. As did the PM and his deputy before him. But if the mayor is in charge of London, then he should take control. He’s usually good at grabbing headlines; but do people expect real leadership from Boris?

I wonder what would happen if the riots spread to Saffron Walden. Would people look to the leader of the district council for leadership and community solutions? Probably not from what is a largely invisible and bureaucratic role. The town mayor? He is only in charge of parks. The leader of the county council? Well, the only politician in Essex who has displayed wide leadership was Paul White aka Lord Hanningfield, and he’s now in jail.

So we have a vacuum in community leadership everywhere, and the Prime Minister can’t do everything!

I was talking to a colleague on Monday about how you get highways works done in Stansted. Is it the county councillor, who has a much larger patch to support? Is it the district councillor, who might have a strong interest? Is it the parish councillor, who is closest to the problem but furthest from the solution. And, Essex Highways has been progressively centralised and contracted so that no one there seems to be able to get anything done in less than a decade.

Our democracy seems broken. Too few local politicians want to put their heads above the parapet and take on the responsibility of leadership. Some who do think this entitles them to make up their own expenses scheme. The public is encouraged by take control into their own hands in the Big Society – and some are doing just that today; cleaning their streets from the carnage caused by another section of society which has been doing just want it wants since Saturday.

Not only has there been a decline in individual and community values in recent generations. The idea has got hold that you can have democracy on the cheap by centralising eveything and taking away local community responsibility and leadership. It’s part of the politics of decline in which efficiency is mistaken for effectiveness; in which short-term savings for the taxpayer become long-term costs to the community.

Maybe David Cameron should have stayed on holiday and told Boris Johnson and the leaders of Bristol, Croydon, Ealing, Liverpool and Manchester to get on with leading. Tomorrow’s recall of parliament is nothing more than pandering to the tabloids. We don’t need more laws; just local leaders who will lead.