IT IS, perhaps, an insight into how far reaching the Blair revolution has been when we see a Labour council pencilling in privatisation of services without flinching.

True, the exploration by Blackburn with Darwen Council of the option of private sector involvement in the running of its parks and leisure centres, which face cuts of more than £500,000 this year, is only a step on from the farming out of town hall services to firms through the competitive tendering which the Tories forced on local government.

Nevertheless, it is a departure that, only a few years ago, would have struck most Old Labour councillors as heresy.

But not the new breed. For we see those in Blackburn town hall prepared to go even as far as selling off the family silver by shutting down the much-loved Lewis Textile Museum whose building was given to the town for that purpose alone.

Why won't they say what they intend to do with it?

Yet, apart from the dubiety of that move, there can be nothing wrong in the council extending the Thatcherite principle of privatisation to town hall services - not when, time and again, it has delivered improvement of services and better value for customers.

Thus, when we see council spending cuts threatening to brings reductions in maintenance of sports grounds, an all-weather sports complex being shut during the day and charges to users set to rise above the rate of inflation, it is not only fair that the council should ask whether private firms could do the job better and more cheaply than they can, but is right that they should do so.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.