This chapter discusses the municipal city, Victorian system, local government, national efficiency, borough extension, 1929 Local Government Act, central-local relations, central government and towns. The aim of central government in the Victorian period was not so much to bully local authorities into conforming with centrally prescribed policies as to ensure the observance of minimum standards in what were seen as national services at a time of otherwise undirected municipal expansion. As central government found itself being pushed into social politics by electoral pressure and party competition, local government distanced itself from the early welfare state. The First World War enhanced the problems faced by local authorities. In the first place the destruction of the Liberals as a party of government removed the only party seriously interested in reforming the rating system. County opinion became steadily more splenetic in its opposition to borough extension, with the vocal support of shire backbenchers in the Commons.