HAVING suffered deserved humiliation after trying to foist Labour loser Frank Dobson on Londoners, Tony Blair is said to have ditched plans for more locally-elected mayors.

Good -- it will save a lot of expense and political pantomime.

But will he go the whole hog and revise the absurd town hall reforms that will let councils form one-party cabals of so-called super councillors who meet in private to run the show -- as the ruling Labour group at Blackburn and Darwen may still do and their cocksure counterparts at Lancashire County Council intend to? If Labour has already earned a backlash from the voters over attempts to impose its will on local government, why is it persisting with setting up these autocratic, undemocratic secret cabinets when the debacle over the London mayoralty and the recent local elections showed bossy Blair and his local imitators that voters demand that their choice must be paramount in how and by whom our towns and cities are run?

If there is a good reason for insisting on these secret Labour coteries to fix and spend your Council Tax, I have yet to hear it.

But, meantime, perhaps the junta-junkies at County Hall and Blackburn town hall will tell us what is bad about the plan and example of the ruling Tories at Hyndburn who intend to set up a cabinet that will meet in public while appointing scrutiny panels to monitor its decisions and with opposition councillors in charge of them.

It would seem that in Hyndburn they are scared of neither openness nor criticism.

So why are Labour's would-be super-councillors elsewhere so chicken?