The civil service is at a low ebb. Morale is at rock bottom and ministers are moaning, but the worst thing is the realisation in Whitehall that prime minister David Cameron's criticisms contain a grain of truth. And it's all the fault of local government!

The problem has been building for some time, and amounts to a veritable crisis in the way we are governed in England. The complacency of the political and administrative class at the impending break-up of the UK is both amazing and entirely consistent with the defeatist mood.