From Gladstone and Home Rule, Grimond and Regionalism, Ashdown and Devolution and even Daisy’s plan to move the Treasury,decentralising the British state has always been a Liberal Democrat ambition. Glad to see Andy Burnham and the Labour Party are finally catching up. The right’s Brexit warcry of Take Back Control can be repelled like a skilled Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and transformed from scapegoating minorities to truly rebalancing our country.

However in our algorithm-driven age, the British people are unfamiliar with our approach to place, devolution,federalism or electoral reform. As Mark Carney has told us ‘Nostalgia is not a strategy! We must regain the initiative on the devolution debate and expose Labour’s belief in the State being the answer with a more considered approach. Modern politics is a battle of stories and we need to become better storytellers because we have a great story to tell.

While we should welcome Burnham’s conversion, we should push him to make truly meaningful change. Metro Mayoralties and Combined Authorities face a democratic deficit with only the Mayors facing their entire regional electorate. London is a better model with a London-wide Assembly and elected Mayor. For English regions from the South East to the North West to the Senedd and Scottish Parliament, it is time to devolve all domestic policy to regional assemblies with elected First Ministers and tax-raising powers.

Let Westminster set minimum standards but the regions and nations decide what their NHS, Health and Social Care, Housing and Infrastructure policy should look like. English Regional Assemblies will require a smaller Westminster focused on national taxation, foreign affairs and defence and finally an elected Upper House under a reformed voting system. But why should the British people care?

As the supermarkets will tell you, the closer you are to the customer the more responsive you are to their needs. Our different nations and regions require a different response crafted, created and delivered locally, a song all Liberal Democrats love to sing. Let’s push Burnham to be bolder and reclaim our mantle as the Devolution Party.

As a London Liberal Democrat, I would say far too often Westminster is mistaken for our City, they are not the same thing. With Whitehall Ministries based in our City, with a stroke of the pen, Burnham could turn over control of domestic policy to the Mayor and London Assembly. There is sufficient time to double the size of the London Assembly to 50 members by the 2028 election to ensure sufficient scrutiny.

As the heatwave has shown our infrastructure is unfit to face the ongoing climate disaster. Our unsatisfactory and unaffordable homes, sauna-like public transport, closing schools exposing our absurdly costly childcare all deserve local solutions. Let London pilot the opportunities of a devolved Britain and let us as Liberal Democrats go all out to win the Mayoralty and show what Liberal Democrat government can look like for nearly 10 million people. 

Rather than simply increasing national borrowing let’s use devolution as an opportunity to develop a domestic municipal bond market. After Gordon Brown decimated private pensions, municipal bonds for infrastructure  offer an asset for British pension funds and investment for a cleaner, greener, more affordable future. Higher education colleges teaching the skills to equip workers  to build the affordable homes, supply affordable childcare and revitalise schools and hospitals.Now that is a better story, a Liberal Democrat story we can tell on leaflets, in video and across social media.Fiscal discipline and social justice or simply Security, Opportunity and Freedom.

* John Armah is a member of City of Westminster Liberal Democrats and a digital transformation consultant based in London.