The new prime minister admits Britain is broken, but his devolution plan fails to spot the elephant in the room, writes TERRY MURDEN
When Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered her Oxfordshire address early last year she outlined ambitious plans to rebuild the economy, creating Europe’s Silicon Valley, investing in new railways and airport expansion. It didn’t go unnoticed, however, that her plans offered nothing more than a few titbits of support for the north of England. And nothing at all for Scotland.
It might be said that her speech contributed significantly, not towards a Labour-driven economic miracle, but to the demise of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership and the collapse in the party’s support in the opinion polls. Labour had become the party of the south east, of institutional money and winning over Home Counties Tories. It had abandoned its roots in northern Britain, paving the way for an internal revolution led by Andy Burnham.
He has made no apology for accusing the party of falling out of touch with its traditional supporters. He wants to reverse this concentration of power at Westminster by rolling out “Manchesterism”, giving power back to the people, though even he could be missing a trick.
He says the UK is broken, partly by being too centralised. OECD data backs him up by showing Britain is one of the most financially centralised countries in the developed world, even after 30 years of devolution. Burnham talks about more devolution, more city regions and mayors. There is even a call to relocate the House of Lords to his new No 10 North.
However, Britain is also disjointed. Those three decades of devolution have not spread power evenly and there is one fundamental reason why. Three of the four nations have their own parliament or assembly. Why doesn’t England have one? A full-blown England-affairs-only parliament.
Mr Burnham has ruled out a new referendum on Scottish independence, but this means no relief from the arguments and blame games between Holyrood and Westminster. Without making more concessions he risks re-energising the independence campaign, creating continued cross-border friction.
Creating an English parliament (or perhaps northern and southern parliaments) with similar powers to the other devolved parliaments might help level the playing field and ease these tensions. Fundamentally, it would help overcome criticism that Westminster is a de facto English parliament that dishes out occasional sweeteners to restless natives in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The sight of Sir Keir Starmer in an England football shirt adds to this assumption that the UK equates to England and that the notion of Westminster speaking for all nations and regions equally is, at the very least, a dubious one. It goes deeper than football affiliation. The economic levers are pulled largely in response to circumstances (employment, wage growth etc) in England.
Starmer not only failed to don a Scottish shirt during the World Cup campaign, he failed during his two years in office to make a single visit to Aberdeen and hear first hand from the oil and gas workers and companies concerned that his government was ignoring the wishes of the region. Bailing out British Steel, while doing the bare minimum to support the Grangemouth workers also reinforced the view, rightly or wrongly, that Westminster is an English parliament in disguise.
A federal system could not guarantee that these disparities and apparent prejudices would be eliminated, but it could help to even them out. It would see the UK parliament responsible for defence, foreign affairs, security, health, welfare and energy.
All four nations – with the the additional Burnham powers – would be put on an equal footing to look after those issues that need to be managed at devolved level. These include city and rural development, housing, crime, leisure services, transport, as well as powers over raising revenue, including limited borrowing, immigration, employment law and other issues in response to local needs. This would require a re-writing of the Scotland Act or, as Burnham has indicated, a written constitution.
Crucially, it would force each nation to raise its game by turning political rivalry into commercial competitiveness. There would be no independence for Scotland, but it would be a truer test of John Swinney’s claim that Scotland would be more productive and its people better off if given more powers to run its affairs.
Terry Murden was Editor and Business Editor at The Sunday Times Scotland, Business Editor at The Scotsman, and Business and City Editor at Scotland on Sunday. He is now Editor of Daily Business.
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