Jackie Weaver, the woman whose solitary claim to fame involves clicking a 'Remove Participant' button on a video call three years ago, has emerged from the digital scrapheap to suggest that parish councils—the absolute basement of the British political hierarchy—should be granted more 'authority.' It is a terrifying prospect, akin to suggesting that the person who cleans the gum off the bottom of the desks at the UN should be given a seat on the Security Council and a briefcase full of launch codes. Weaver, the accidental icon of administrative spite, believes that these localized committees of the terminally bored should play a 'bigger role' in democracy. This is not just a bad idea; it is a profound misunderstanding of why parish councils exist in the first place: to provide a safe, isolated container for the most annoying people in any given zip code to argue about flower beds until they expire from natural causes.

Let’s be clear about what a parish council actually is. It is a purgatorial gathering of retirees, failed hobbyists, and individuals with a pathological obsession with 'standing orders.' These are people who view a planning application for a neighbor’s conservatory as a declaration of war. In the viral Handforth Parish Council meeting that catapulted Weaver into the zeitgeist, we saw the raw, unbridled energy of local governance: grown men screaming about jurisdiction while a woman in a fleece jacket exercises the only power she has ever known—the power to mute. To suggest, as Weaver now does, that these entities need more teeth is to advocate for the democratization of petty tyranny. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if the Homeowners Association had the power to levy taxes and manage infrastructure, Weaver is your prophet.

On the Left, this nonsense is dressed up in the flowery language of 'grassroots empowerment' and 'community resilience.' It’s the usual performative drivel that suggests if we just give enough power to a group of well-meaning volunteers in a damp village hall, we can somehow bypass the systemic rot of the national government. It’s a delusion that ignores the fact that 'the community' is often just a collection of people who hate each other’s hedges. On the Right, this is framed as 'localism'—a convenient way for the central government to offload the responsibility of crumbling public services onto the shoulders of amateurs. If the bridge collapses, it’s not the Prime Minister’s fault; it’s the fault of the Little Wallop Parish Council for failing to prioritize the 'authority' Jackie Weaver so desperately wants them to have.

The reality is that the more 'authority' you give to the microscopic levels of government, the more you incentivize the kind of bureaucratic sadism that makes modern life a chore. Weaver argues that local councils are the backbone of engagement, but in truth, they are the graveyard of ambition. They exist to debate whether a park bench should be teak or mahogany while the world burns. By elevating these squabbles to a position of actual power, we aren’t fixing democracy; we are simply ensuring that every aspect of our lives is subject to the whims of the person on your street who has the most time to read a three-hundred-page manual on administrative procedure.

Weaver herself is the perfect mascot for this era of diminished expectations. She didn't win an election; she won an internet fight. She is a 'star' not because of her vision for the future, but because she stood her ground against a man shouting about a 'Handforth Clerk.' This is what passes for political leadership in the 2020s: the ability to remain calm while being yelled at by an idiot. If that’s the qualification for wielding more authority, then every retail worker in the country should be a High Court judge.

Giving more power to parish councils is the final stage of national decline. It is an admission that the big problems—the economy, the climate, the absolute collapse of the social contract—are too hard to fix, so we might as well focus on making sure the parish clerk has the 'authority' to silence a dissenter. It is the institutionalization of the busybody. Weaver’s vision of a 'bigger role' for these councils is a future where the entire country is run like a Zoom meeting hosted by someone who doesn't know how to turn off the cat filter, but knows exactly how to kick you out of the room for questioning the minutes of the last meeting. We don’t need more authority at the local level; we need fewer people who think that knowing the 'standing orders' entitles them to a scepter. But in a world where celebrity is built on the mundane, Jackie Weaver is the queen we deserve—a ruler of the small, the petty, and the muted.