John Prescott: to blame? (picture Steve Punter)
The dog days of summer lend themselves to the more minor issues of political campaigning. Across the country, Conservative MPs and PPCs are trying to pick a fight over elected regional assemblies, claiming that Labour intends to reintroduce the plans that were dropped after the 2004 referendum defeat in the north east. Labour, for its part, denies any such intention.
Regional assemblies in England are unpopular. The north east proposal failed because it was seen, not wrongly, as a centralising move – taking powers upwards from local government – rather than as a decentralising move – taking them downwards from Whitehall. One of the major advantages of regional government is precisely that too much is done at the centre and that powers ought to be exercised closer to the people, but that was not what the north east proposal would have done. Conservatives find it quite easy to blame John Prescott for this – he was the minister in charge at the time – and who is to say that they are wrong.
The consequence is that the idea of English regional government has been contaminated, perhaps for a generation. And this is a shame, because the most successful economies in Europe have a level of government with real power over a community of 5 to 10 million people. The English ought to emulate this, but they do not.
Perhaps a bigger shame is that despite, the No vote in the north east, regional government in England goes on. A whole range of national government policies – health, environment, transport – have a regional dimension with a regional bureaucracy set up to service them. Elected regional assemblies would have brought this regional bureaucracy under direct democratic control. As we find so often in modern life, government goes on even if politics does not.
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I oppose regionalizing England because England is one country. Why doesn't anyone talk of regionalizing Scotland and Wales?
The case for breaking up England is that it is the most populous country so if it had a single parliament it would challenge the UK, or upper-level federal parliament. I don't see how this is possible because England's and the UK's parliaments would have very different responsibilities and mandates. And these ought to be clearly spelted out in a written constitution.
No one supports the regionalization of England because England is ONE COUNTRY! Not a vast geographical no-man's-land to be broken up at will.
Cornwall has huge support for devolution in the form of a Cornish Assembly, and is probably the only place in England that does.
That is evident in the Government of Cornwall bill presented to parliament by Lib Dems last month, and Mebyon Kernow beating Labour in both the local and Euro elections in June.
@Sam
The Tories won the majority of the seats in Cornwall. Not a clean sweep, granted, but a majority is a majority. MK won like 3 seats! Hardly a ringing endorsement. Yes, maybe in 50 years they'll win a majority, but not today. Cornwall anyway is a Duchy and a it's status is moot at worse, debatable at best. Either way, accommodations for Cornwall can be provided within a unified England. South Tyrol, a German-speaking region in Italy, has very specific laws and a lot of autonomy. I bet you no one knows about South Tyrol outside of Italy and Austria. But they are Italian and Tyroleans.
The devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and NI have all been remarkable successes, developing policies and strategies to suit their own circumstances and there is no denying life in these nations has improved dramatically since devolution. It says it all when none want to revert back to pre-devolution days but all are seeking more responsibilities and powers.
Even the considerably weaker London Assembly (weaker despite a population and economy greater than Scotland, Wales and NI combined) has proven incredibly successful for London, turning the city into one of the most dynamic and successful cities in the world. Pre-Assembly, London as a city was ranked below the likes of Paris, Rome, Sydney and Milan. Today, it sits with New York at the top of the rankings as a world economic, political and cultural centre.
Currently, each and every English region is run by the largest party in Westminster, even if that region did not vote for that party. For 13 years, the Conservative-supporting south were run by a Labour government. Today, the Labour-supporting north are run by a Conservative-led coalition. How is that democratic? Wouldn’t it be fairer if regions were governed by the parties they voted for?
When the various regions have little in common regarding socio-economic needs (London has little in common with the NE, which has little in common with the SE, which has little in common with the SW, which has little in common with the Midlands etc.etc.), why does it make any sense for them to be subject to a series of England-wide one-size-fits-all policies, instead of policies that meet their particular needs?
And to suggest ‘this would have led to the break-up of England’ is a shrill over-reaction to say the least. Has county government without an English parliament broken up England? No, of course not. So why would regional government?
That the rest of England has been denied this due to the vote of one region is an unjust tragedy. We should all have been polled, with those rejecting the move remaining under the control of Whitehall, while those that accepted were given the powers to run their own affairs.
England has a population of 52 million out of 62 million in the UK as a whole. This would create a situation where the English parliament would end up completely dominating and becoming more important to many than the UK Parliament – hence probably eventually cause the whole Union to collapse as this became apparent.
A better solution is a move to a full federal Union where the population of each federal region is as pragmatically equal as possible (as was Labour’s original plan for devolution). England is not one homogeneous region, and has a clear north-south divide. Federal regions would allow less well off regions to introduce policies that would be more befitting to the more local needs e.g. the North East could reduce corporation taxes to attract more investment to that region. This would help to reduce the north-south divide by reducing the excessive concentration of political and economic power that currently exists in the South East.
Another good idea would to be to give the English federal regions more meaningful names than the purely geographical “South West” or “North East” etc. These names could be taken from the rich ancient heritage of the regions e.g. Dumnonia & Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, Brigantes etc.
Given the initial opposition to this in the North East, a good way to get the ball rolling would be to start pushing it form Cornwall and the South West where it’s more likely to get support.
I am sorry but the correspondents proposing the regionalisation of England are completely wrong. You can only have political regions of England if England exists as a political entity, which is doesn’t. That didn’t matter when there was no Scottish or Welsh political entity either, but it does now. I live in the North East of England and the reason why the people rejected devolution was because they realised it would have no real power in comparison to neighbouring Scotland. All it would have been was a bureacratic, costly, talking shop for yet more politicians. I find it hard to believe that the people of Cornwall would want this either. There may be differences between parts of England, but we still identify ourselves as English. There are differences between the highlands and lowlands of Scotland and betwen the north ans south of Wales,too. We need an English parliament first and foremost and a slimmed down UK parliament (with say one or two hundred representives) to represent the home nations plus perhaps the Isle of Man and the Channel Isles, which could be balanced by giving English representatives less than 50% of the voting power.