Yesterday’s news that George Osborne is to offer devolution to cities with elected mayors is worrying. Although he is right to say that “The old model of trying to run everything in our country from the centre of London is broken. It’s led to an unbalanced economy. It’s made people feel remote from the decisions that affect their lives. It’s not good for our prosperity or our democracy.” He is wrong to tell the cities: “It is time for you to take control of your own affairs.”
The reason is that cities do not exist in isolation. Firstly they depend on a hinterland of small towns that supply essential services to the people and industries of the city. Not least they depend on the countryside that supplies food and opportunities for leisure. Secondly, cities are not permanent, for example as recently as 1911 Merthyr Tydfil was the biggest city in Wales. What are the chances of George Osborne devolving power to a Mayor of Merthyr now? People will argue that modern cities are “too big to fail”, but when Merthyr was supplying rails and coal to the Empire, people would have said exactly the same thing. Our Port cities will be severely disrupted by rising sea levels, and the increased storminess that will make us rethink our need for international trade. Other cities will be effected as new technologies replace the old.
As Osborne’s city states accumulate powers, less of their tax revenue will be available to help the rest of the country. Manchester may want to help rebuild a flooded Liverpool docks, but not Newcastle, Bristol or Felixstowe. The rump Westminster Government will still be tied to providing infrastructure for London, and will have precious little to spend elsewhere. SW and NW England, Wales, and Scotland will be in an even worse state then they were when old Industries collapsed. There will be fresh waves of migration to the new City States, where chronic overcrowding and poverty will sap the hoped for entrepreneurial energy and resources. Meanwhile the deserted countryside will lack the manpower to produce the food or recreation that the cities need.
This situation could be ameliorated if Osborne allowed some of the smaller and more remote towns the same privileges as the cities. Perhaps saying that any town that was more than 40 miles from a city state could apply for city status. But this would risk chaos as very different types of city state evolved, some – such as Ferguson in the USA, and its neighbours – becoming too small to sustain themselves, other than by collecting motoring fines.
If we cannot prevent the present state where our MPs (irrespective of party) nod through huge self-defeating infrastructure projects for London, while cooperating with the delay or abandonment of equally desirable projects in more remote constituencies, then the only solution is proper regional devolution. Failure to help the outlying areas of the country simply turns them into under-performing areas and a financial drag on our economy. As a Unionist party we have to get regional government right, or preferably get National government right. Going for electoral advantage as Osborne appears to be doing is a disaster in the making.
* Huw Jones has been a Liberal since the 1960s, have stuffed envelopes, canvassed and stood as paper candidate for council posts in England and Wales. A trained farm manager, he has spent 25 years in Agricultural Research, and has now retired to a small farm in Carmarthenshire.
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17 Comments
Not a good idea??? Understatement of the century. It’s a nasty, unfair and illiberal form of devolution that makes everyone not living in one of our larger cities into second-class citizens.
Yes, the only proper solution is regional devolution. Every UK citizen should be an elector of a devolved power that gives them, as much as is possible, equal status, equal economic and political clout, equal access to anything, as any other citizen be they in Scotland, Cardiff, Cornwall, Manchester or darkest Norfolk.
“It is time for you to take control of your own affairs.” says Osborne. At the expense of the rest of us, it would seen, says I. City devolution is as bad as “devolution on demand”, which is basically first-come-first-served and again prejudicial against those living in more sparse areas or smaller towns.
I agree with every word of this article and Osborne’s particular role in developing the idea of city states as a sham form of devolution.
It’s nothing of the sort. I will suck the life out of areas around them. This is not about dispersal of power but accumulation of power in pockets and disempowerment of small cities and towns in the regions.
I often wondered why it was that Nick Clegg was so keen on this idea while we were in the coalition. I never heard any criticism of Osborne’s plan coming from us at the time, although Sheffield will not have a mayor, unlike Manchester.
Correction to my comment: ‘It will suck the life out of areas around them’
Hmmm.
I don’t think its the best solution, but what I would say is grab any powers on offer while you can. This should be seen as a process, not a ‘take it or leave it’ – we can campaign for further powers and changes to the structure in the future.
Also, much as I hate to defend George (I flippin stood against him in Tatton after all), he has offered powers to the non-urban areas as well. For example Cheshire East is going to take control of business rates revenue.
Small steps people. Look at Scotland.
Gareth, what you say seems self-contradictory. To “grab any powers on offer while you can” would be an action on the assumption that’s all that will ever be on offer and if you don’t grab it now, you’re stuffed. Acting as though it definitely a “take or leave it” scenari rather than campaign for what you believe is better?.
Once the cities have got their power and there is no way of supporting rural communities other than be direct rule and hand-out from central government, there really won’t be anything else on offer for the rest of us. There won’t be a “process” for the rest of us once the cities have hived themselves off into their own parallel dimension.
If the people of the large cities believe in fairness they should look beyond their own noses perhaps and say “oh, hang on a minute, we’re all right Jack, but what about people in the rest of the country?”
Or will selfishness rule the day every time?
Helen Tadcaster, “Clegg was so keen on the idea”. for all his good points, and there are some, a main problem is that he does not think ahead. Tuition Fees, NHS Reform, and failing to read the potential outcome from the Euro Vote are three examples.
As a Lib Dem in a midland Shire County I can see us being squashed out of existence between Birmingham and Manchester
It’s worth noting that *cities* is in bold in Huw Jones’ essay. And Huw reminds us that the proposition, as it is evolving, is for cities with elected mayors. Maybe it will end up to be different.
Leicester is a midlands city with an elected mayor. Nottingham, up the road and of similar size, doesn’t have an elected mayor. Both cities have conurbation spread, such that there is no distinct boundary between the city and neighbouring boroughs. Both cities spread their influence over the county beyond.
Leicester’s elected mayor has expressed frustration that if he is running so many things, why isn’t he managing local transport? I think he has partially answered his own question.
Elected mayors — as they exist at the moment — are trusted to manage a few things. In some places, elected mayors preside in cities where there is little opposition at an intellectual or political level (sadly Leicester is one of those places).
So it would be daft for national government to jump on the back of an untested devolution proposition for Manchester. It might work for Manchester and for neighbouring boroughs, which is for their citizens to determine.
We have to ask more questions about whether devolution is pertinent everywhere with an elected mayor. Or we might say that it is the wrong form of devolution.
Helen you are absolutely right about devolved cities sucking the life out of the surrounding areas, one only has to think about the boundary effects of London weighting, where people living just outside the boundary for the allowance have to pay vastly inflated house prices, or the “NHS prescription charge tourism” (to coin a phrase) that happens along the Welsh borders. And those are just financial effects that will happen long before the devolved cities start using their new wealth.
I agree that devolution to cities with elected mayors is a bad idea. Besides perhaps for London because of its size. Michael Kilpatrick is also right about the problems of “devolution on demand”. Leaders have to sometimes say no, not just roll over every time someone or something weaker ask for more power.
Regards
Why is devolution to cities always linked with executive mayors as if one is necessary to have the other?
It is as if when we had devolution to Scotland, instead of having a Scottish Parliament which held the power it was insisted that Scotland must have an elected dictator who could do whatever he or she wanted, with any assembly just there as a talking shop to give advice or be ignored if the dictator so wished.
@Eddie Sammon: “Besides perhaps for London because of its size.”
From a distance, I don’t think London’s politics “sort of work” about size. On a macro level, it appears to work; at micro level, Tower Hamlets, perhaps not. (Apologies for reworking your argument, Eddie.)
@Matthew Huntbach: “Why is devolution to cities always linked with executive mayors as if one is necessary to have the other?”
It is imperative to shake hands with an equal. Something like that.
How many times did government ministers or Lib Dems visit H’angus, Stuart Drummond in Hartlepool? We have to remember that the “joke candidate won three electoral mayor elections. Did our politicians ever go there?
Matthew questions why devolution is defined about cities. I don’t think that we perceive it that way. We think more openly about how cities and regions are defined.
It seems to me that this article is a classic example of letting “the best be the enemy of the good.” The Osborne model isnt the way we would have done it but his Party just got 5 times as many votes as ours. One of the things I really like about The Osborne model is that by creating new centres of power it pushes areas next to the City Regions to organise themselves & grab power from Westminster, just to be able to compete. Its a process & it will change & mutate as it spreads to new areas.
Leaving aside the Mayors this is a Liberal idea.
paul barker: “One of the things I really like about The Osborne model is that by creating new centres of power it pushes areas next to the City Regions to organise themselves & grab power from Westminster, just to be able to compete.”
So it is just a regional power grab? Which bits of Lancs and Yorks should be grabbed by Manchester, and which by Leeds?Or should we be thinking about citizens?
Paul Barker, you don’t realise that once cities have grabbed power it may well be virtually impossible for the “areas next to City Regions” to grab power. They will have low populations, low density, very little economic power and wholly inappropriate in size and structure for any sort of powers at all. They will be left out in the cold.
We also have to remember that “City” is a very vague term. St David’s is a city. Even though it has a a very small population, it has a Cathedral, and a Bishop, and it is a place of pilgrimage for Christians, Nationalists, Ecologists and Tourists. But under the Osborne plan it would be most likely to end up as part of the city of Swansea which is two counties and over 70 miles away by car, a journey that would take nearly 2 hours. (There is no faster link.) St Davids would be part of Swansea, or left out in the cold.
The Osborne system clearly cannot be extended to the whole of the UK as the St Davids example shows. St Davids is also in Wales and the system may not be available in Wales anyway. But what about Truro, or Carlisle?
And if the system evolves how far will it evolve? Will the UK be replaced by a hotch potch of warring city states like classical Greece, or 16th Century Germany? What is Osborne’s ambition? Or did he just think it up as a wheeze to get a few more votes in the Midlands? If you set out to create new centres of power, you must have a clear idea of the limits of that power, and how that power can be used to benefit the nation as a whole. You would have thought that with the experience of Scottish and Welsh devolution, politicians would have developed some guidlines, and be better at planning devolution. But Osbornes’s proposals are even vaguer then the fact of Welsh devolution seems to be. And that is very vague indeed.
The Tories will get this all wrong, I am not really in favour of what they have in mind. I am a regionalist. I want to see Wessex raise up. I am not sure about these City regions. Wessex Yes, Yorkshire Yes, Mercia Yes, Cornwall Yes, Anglia Yes, Noththumbia yes, And some thing for Lancashire. This must not be F…k up.