As I write this, we're midway through the party conference season – and its hard not to start shouting: ‘Local government is part of this too, you know.'

For a sector numerically dominated by local councillors, it is astounding how politics is utterly obsessed with a very small clique operating on the national stage. All three parties traditionally manage to ignore the massed ranks of councillors and, by the mid-point of the Labour Party conference, little had changed this year.