It’s a long way to Westminster - Devolving England I
Four areas of the UK now have devolved administrations of one kind or another: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and, of course, London. One constituent part is notable by its absence - England.
How far is Westminster?
The UK is dominated - economically, politically, demographically - by England. The Welsh and Scottish nations desired greater autonomy as a way of countering that dominance. That’s not to suggest there’s anything malign; just that it’s a long way from Westminster to Holyrood. Policies set on Whitehall can look rather strange when they reach Fife, Powys or Ulster. By bringing things closer to home, based on traditional, national boundaries, a closer relation between citizen and government was sought.
In the Scottish case, movements for devolution started almost as soon as the Scottish Parliament entered its 292 year sleep in 1707. It was strengthened by the case for Irish Home Rule, but had to wait until 1999 to see fruition. Similarly, when it was clear that Scotland was going to receive some autonomy, the logical case was strengthened for Wales.
The situation in Northern Ireland is complicated by the Troubles, deeply-entrenched ethnic rivalries and the long history of the region. However, one of the main reasons for devolution - closing the gap between elector and elected - holds, even if Stormont faltered in its first few years.
With a combination of rational and emotional arguments, power has been ceded to those three regions. It leaves us with one, obvious question.
Why not England?
You could equally ask ‘who are the English?’. That, however, must wait for another day. However, all the British are often called English and Britain is often called England. As by far the largest part, you can understand why the mistakes are made.
It also gives a good answer to the question. In general, the feeling of Englishness is not as strong as the feeling of Scottishness or Welshness. Immigrants to Scotland, for instance, are more likely to identify as Scottish than British, while those to England are more likely to plump for British. Great Britain would still be recognisable as such if Scotland were to leave; if it were reversed, England’s departure from the Union would end GB once and for all.
If an English Parliament were set up, it would, given the powers that have been devolved to Holyrood, the Senedd and Stormont, not be that different from Parliament at the moment.
There would be one big change; it would provide an answer to the West Lothian Question. While that would be a good thing, aside from a constitutional nicety, we would essentially have an English Grand Committee. I’m not convinced that setting up another body, even if it were in Birmingham or Manchester instead of London, when there’s another, cheaper solution that doesn’t involve creating a set of elections in which participation will, like as not, be low. It would be as far to Birmingham as it is to Westminster.
Where we are now: Regional Government in England
Although not many people will be aware of it, we already have regional government in England. Of course, Whitehall delivers the services of some of its departments through the Government Offices that exist for each region. Lead by DCLG, they are DfES, DBERR, DEFRA, Home Office, DCMS, DWP, DfT, DoH and the Cabinet Office; the regions are East Midlands, East of England, London, North East, North West, South East, South West, West Midlands and Yorkshire & The Humber.
There are also Regional Development Agencies and Regional Assemblies, although these are being rejigged since 2007’s white paper. The end result is that we have a lot of the structures for regional governance in place already but without any direct democratic accountability.
Is London a nation?
The Welsh have the Senedd; the Scots have the Parliament; the Irish have the Assembly. The fourth home nation does not have its equivalent. However, there is devolution within England – to London. London is not a nation – it is a little sui generis, given its unique makeup – but it is an area that is reasonably easy to identify that has its own, specific needs and problems. These include housing and transport, but range across all the areas of government where the particularities of the region.
London, in a way, makes obvious sense for devolution. With 7,300,000 million inhabitants, it is bigger than twelve of the EU member states - Denmark (5.5m), Slovakia (5.4m), Finland (5.3m), Ireland (4.3m), Lithuania (3.4m), Latvia (2.3m), Slovenia (2.0m), Estonia (1.3m), Cyprus (0.8m), Luxembourg (0.5m) and Malta (0.4m). It also has more people than Scotland (5.1m), Wales (3.0m) and Northern Ireland (1.7m). London, I’d contend, is more than a city; it is large enough that it should also be considered a region. Perhaps Manchester and Birmingham are also sufficiently large. That leads to two particular problems. Firstly, large areas of the country would be stuck outside a region and would suffer for not having part of that weightier voice. Secondly, lots of people travel into (say) Brum for the surrounding regions but don’t live within the city proper. They are part of and depend on the local economic centre and should have a say in it.
I would say that just about every region also makes sense. There are commonalities, certainly, between some regions. However, just as London has specific transport needs, the areas around Birmingham or Manchester or the South West or the North East and so on have specific transport needs, for starters, and go from there.
An analogy: Spain
Neither London or England are any less English by virtue of devolution to London. That process was for purely practical reasons and the lack of a national sentiment there means, simply, that the GLA cannot be described as a concession to a nationalist movement.
If we look at Spain, the country is divided up into autonomous regions. The Basque Country and Catalonia are known well enough as nations, but Galicia and Andalusia are also recognised as historic nationalities. Aragon, Castilla y Leon, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura and Valencia were set up as territories with common historical features based on more than one region; Cantabria, Asturias, La Rioja and Murcia were the same, but based on one region. Madrid, Ceuta, Melilla, the Canaries and the Balearics were similarly constituted, but for more practical reasons.
None of this does anything to harm the identity or integrity of the Spanish nation. Certainly, there are challenges to it, notably from independence-minded Basques, but these do not arise (and are arguably ameliorated by) the autonomies.
Wrapping up
Although the first three devolutions were on the basis of some pre-existing national sentiment, there’s no particular need for devolution only to occur where there is a perceived national grievance. Regardless of the location, there is a practical need for decisions to be taken closer to where their effects are felt. In a time of increasing cynicism and decreasing trust, moving things closer to the voter but retaining a critical mass to be able to effectively run the various services the state already provides on a regional basis.
If the argument was that it’s a long way from Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff to Westminster, and if we accept that it’s a long way from London to Westminster, I’d say that it’s at least as far from Yeovil, York and Yeadon.
xD.
Categories: All WW, Announcements, Symposium
Your anology of “it’s a long way from…: is rubbish. Here in Australia we know far more about ‘a long way from’ than you in UK will ever do. You could fit the whole of the British Isles three times, if not more, into the lower half of Queensland - But we have a federal government - a state government and Shire Councils. We have densely populated cities, and distant rural areas: the needs of Cairns is far different than the needs of Coopooroo.
So according to your rational thinking we should be split up into even smaller regions - after all it’s even a “longer way from …” anywhere here than anywhere there!
Your profile gives you away - you belong to a party that seems to be determined to reject the fact that your devolution system has grossly disadvantaged England (although I commend you on actually being able to say the word.)
Face it - there is no real distance between Coombe Magna and Carlise, so there is no real reason why there should not be an English Parliament. If there are good reasons for granting one to Scotland and therebye breaching the Act of Union - then there are equally good ones for reconvening the dedicated English Parliament. Or one could argue, we need a Parliament for the Shetland isles … after all it’s a long way from Holyrood to there you know.
Hi Zenboia,
I fear you’ve misunderstood me. When I said that it’s a long way to Westminster, I wasn’t speaking literally. It’s about how people relate to Westminster and Whitehall, not how many miles, feet and inches separate two places on a map. If it had to be put into a metric, we could look at population density as well. It may not be, in rods, perches and chains, that far from Coombe Magna to Carlisle but there a very great many people - perhaps more than even in all of Australia.
My point was that the perceived remoteness of decision-makers from local implementation points - the Government Offices are effectively an extension of Whitehall - leads to suboptimal decision making and misses an opportunity to greater involve people in the politics and civil society of our country. Given low and falling trust and involvement in the political process, I think that would be worth trying; it’s at least worth considering.
I have to take issue with your comments about the Act of Union. As it happens, I think this is a fairly academic debate. The old Scottish Parliament derived its authority from the Scottish crown. Even at the Union of the Crowns, England did not have suzerainty. the key test is that the English Parliament could not have simply abolished the Scottish Parliament or the state of Scotland. Scotland had to decide to do that for itself; England set itself up to help Scotland through a political (rather than personal) union after the failure of the Darien project. The current Parliament derives its authority from an Act of Parliament - the Parliament of the UK - and remains subordinate to it. It can be abolished by a single Act at Westminster without reference to Holyrood. Inasmush as this is the case, Winnie Ewing’s words at the opening of the first Holyrood parliament of the modern era (along the lines of ‘the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned in 1707, is hereby reconvened’) were wrong as the new Parliament is a new body, not a reinstatement of the old.
I think that the constitution of the UK is in a greater state of flux than usual. There are issues to be resolved - the Lords, for instance. I don’t know enough about the Barnett formula, to which I think you refer above, to comment on its precise operation but the principle of richer areas supporting poorer areas is not, to my mind, unreasonable.
England, at the moment, doesn’t really exist in any legal sense. The feeling of Englishness operates quite independently of political action. I don’t see how democratising and rationalising existing structures poses any threat to the roast beef of Old England.
xD.
[...] UK over at the Wardman Wire. Do go over and take a look; the first post, by yours truly, is ‘It’s a long way to Westminster‘ and the second, from Garbo, is ‘The Great English Parliament [...]
Surely the biggest problem with the “region” argument as a model for devolved government in England is that it without fail removes powers from local government (local authorities/boroughs) which are at least reasonably close to their communities, and places them in much more remote regional centres. Therefore, it is the opposite of devolution. Central government gives away no powers, merely takes powers and responsibilities from local authorities to give to these regional bodies. The Review of Greater London Authority (GLA) Powers in London was extraordinary in its claims to be devolving and its actual clear intent to take powers away from London Boroughs and not central government. When I publicly challenged both the Minister responsible at the time, Ruth Kelly, and the Minister for London Jim Fitzpatrick (two able and straight politicians) on this, they found it difficult to respond - because it is what happened. The people of the North East of England saw through this ruse and extra layer of politicians when they voted overwhelmingly against a “regional assembly” when it was put to them.
I see the following as being the main problems with regional government as you appear to propose it:
1. Regional assemblies as presently existing are nearly completely toothless. Their main functions are in spatial planning and some minor transport matters. Even the present government would not argue that having a Mayor of London and a London Assembly with somewhat greater powers than regional assemblies answers the West Lothian question in greater London, and if you intend regional assemblies to do this in the future then these bodies would need to have legislative powers with their own governments. Having legislatures and governments (in effect, federal institutions) for each region as they stand at present would result in 9 different legislatures. Frankly, such fracturing of England would be ridiculous: would we drive up the A1 or A4 wondering at what point the road traffic laws might have changed?
2. The regional assemblies do not have public support and you have zero chance of succeeding at any rerun of the north-east referendum. Regional boundaries are just lines on a map drawn by bureaucrats at the time of the forming of the giant Department of the Environment of Ted Heath creation (which included also transport) to ease administration, and they were never intended to attract local loyalty. The idea, for example, that people in Watford have some special bond with people in Norwich which they do not have with people in Gerards Cross is absurd. You will notice that where real policy work at regional level had to be done, SERPLAN for example, they definitely did not follow the current regional boundaries - SERPLAN would not work on that basis. In fact, spatial planning around London now does not now work properly any more, as any professional planner will tell you. Possibly regional governments and parliaments for the North, the Midlands and the South (the latter possibly split into two for the South West and the South East) with real powers might get some measure of public support, particularly if people were asked what region they considered they were in (a radical suggestion for this centralist government I know), and be viable as an instrument of government but then …
3. The career politicians at Westminster and the civil service would not give up their existing powers or centralist thinking lightly, and real devolution to larger regions commanding popular support capable of exercising real power with law making powers would simply not occur, because such real devolution would leave such career politicians with a lot less to do. For them, bluntly, England is the prize. Any “devolution” would in practice end up being pretend devolution. For the Labour party, electoral arithmatic might also dampen any real desire to devolve substantial powers in England. I believe current devolution arrangements put the United Kingdom at peril and I don’t think regional devolution as you propose it will significantly address that.
4. Larger regions with institutions wielding real powers would suffer from the same downside you suggest would exist with an English Parliament - yet more bureaucracy.
[...] First up - Dave Cole thinks its A Long Way to Westminster. [...]
[...] Cole argues that it’s “a long way to Westminster” and the English devolution should be provided on a regional level - but he doesn’t [...]
[...] Cole argues that it’s “a long way to Westminster” and the English devolution should be provided on a regional level - but he doesn’t [...]
[...] in the Wardman Wire’s series on ‘Devolving England’. It follows on from pieces by Dave Cole, Garbo, Matt Wardman and the Thunderdragon. If you would like to contribute a piece, please blog AT [...]
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A good article. The key is of course to have the power to raise taxation and keep hold of it at Regional level,as in Spain and Germany. Then proper power comes to politicians that actually mean something rather than the fake stuff the UK specialises in. Not that I’m for politicians in any guise particularly.
The North of England is certainly ready to secede from a Westminster system it simply isn’t properly represented by. But it has to be able to keep hold of the tax revenues it raises so that it can invest in things its electorate see as important.
[...] First up - Dave Cole thinks its A Long Way to Westminster. [...]
[...] First up - Dave Cole thinks its A Long Way to Westminster. [...]