In my recent article on devolution policy, I highlighted the problem with accountability in the context of devolved power. This is an issue which needs to be pursued further, particularly because our ‘devolution on demand’ policy (F14 on pp.54-56; lines 70-76) appears to have been drafted without considering the necessary conditions for effective scrutiny.
LibDems often take it for granted that devolving power to the most local level will automatically make politics more relevant, and more democratic. But why should this be? Democracy is at its most effective if voters are able to hold politicians to account, and increased geographical proximity alone is not enough – you have to make sure that voters know what is going on at that particular level. If it is difficult to find out what politicians are doing, indeed, if it’s even hard to be sure which level of government is responsible for what, then voters simply have no chance to give a useful verdict.
For these ends, politicians’ leaflets are necessary, but definitely not sufficient. A properly functioning democracy needs the ‘Third Estate’ – media able to report without interference from politicians; in fact, it takes a whole media landscape to ensure proper accountability. Ideally, this means a combination of public media outlets obliged to strive for impartiality and a range of opinionated voices, all in lively, sometimes perhaps annoyingly shouty, contention with each other. For democracy to function we need journalists who keep themselves informed about the goings-on in government, who know the people involved and who have the time and expertise to scrutinize the information available on the surface, and to dig around for more behind the scenes. In Westminster we take this kind of political journalism for granted, and we may well find it intensely annoying – but you only realise what you are missing when you are confronted with government which enjoys significant powers without proper scrutiny. I would argue that in Wales we are witnessing a situation where the lack of an adequate media landscape has serious implications for the quality of government.
If we want to devolve power to new regional entities, we have to ensure that the new centres of devolved power can be held to account by their electorate. How do voters get independent information about the goings on in their devolved regional government? If we devolve power to areas without a developed media landscape, how do we make sure that they get one, and that people will engage with journalism at this specific regional level? It is not enough just to cross your fingers and assume that it will simply happen. If Wales has difficulties developing an appropriately inquisitive media landscape, how will new, relatively artificial entities do?
Giving away power to new sets of politicians is not, in itself, democratic: we need to give this power to the voters, and this can only happen if we make sure that they actually have the tools to use their power effectively.
* Maria Pretzler is a Lecturer in Greek History at Swansea University. She blogs at Working Memories , where ancient Greekery and Libdemmery can happily coexist.
38 Comments
I must over use facebook as I was searching for the “like” button!
Good article – I think that the problem applies not just to regional government but local government in general. Most local council areas do not have a newspaper that covers the same area – even if it does it is unlikely to be read by more than 10% of the population and even then, it unlikely to have much real journalism – let alone political thought within. Most ‘local’ papers seem to have one journalist who does all news. Political parties target winnable seats and tend to ignore the rest.
If anyone wants to know the blueprint for liberal renewal it is within this article and Maria’s previous one. We need to examine the pros and cons of all policies and not just follow dogma. Lib Dems should get behind Maria’s campaign to make an amendment to this policy.
Regards
Thanks all…..
Eddie: it’s not a campaign yet. But it might become one in time for Spring conference…. (I can’t get to Glasgow this autumn).
Caracatus –
I agree with you on the local papers (in fact, a paragraph on that had to be cut from the article because it was too long). Here in Swansea, the Evening Post is still quite widely read (as far as I can tell – I find it rather painful to read). But when it comes to politics, it mainly publishes what the different political groups send them (with a distinct filter in favour of one party, as most local papers seem to do). This isn’t nearly good enough. and the hollowing out of local papers is bad news.
However, I think that on a local authority level people have a chance to judge their council by at least some things you can spot even if you don’t read the local paper. The quality of the roads, rubbish collections, schools, care services, parking spaces, dog mess, parks ….. all crucial stuff and open to direct judgement.
Anything further up becomes a lot more abstract. This is so clear here in Wales, where people have no clue what the Welsh government does – and the governing party tries its best not to remind voters of its remit, in order to blame Westminster for the NHS, schools, etc. The problem is that Wales has not a single newspaper which has a proper reach in the North and the South, and there are no national papers producing editions for Wales (this is very different in Scotland!). And the TV coverage of politics in Wales is a depressing joke, even from the BBC.
Now imagine another devolved region, and try to work out how you can at least reach that unsatisfactory state of affairs, or top it. If we go for ‘Devolution on demand’, there is no guarantee that the areas chosen will have any chance to be covered even half properly. And since that demand won’t come from the ‘grassroots’, but from local politicians, there is a real risk that the people initiating devolution won’t mind at all if accountability is not guaranteed.
There are some regions where, if they are chosen right, this might work better than in Wales. I would expect a North-West region around Manchester to be able to develop good media provision, for example (but wouldn’t dare to try to draw proper boundaries for such a region without offending anybody!).
In any case, this needs some serious consideration, and quickly, because this is now a live issue.
This is why devolution has to be matched by a concerted effort to build accountability (though one unique problem that Wales faces is that Labour has never been out of power since the assembly was established).
Personally I think a television channel and part of the radio spectrum should be made available in every devolved area for a broadcasters covering that area only with a condition upon access to the spectrum that so many hours of news coverage needs to be provided every day as part of their content.
You can’t really achieve the same thing with newspapers but, despite its problems, at least Scotland has STV (carved off from the ITV channel) which provides a dimension of news coverage that is forced to focus on Scotland.
And in England, in some ways the newspaper problem would take care of itself. Let’s take my native Surrey for example – 1,085,000 people in it so therefore eligible for devolution under current Lib Dem policy – you already have a weekly county newspaper and if that was coupled with an additional radio channel in addition to BBC Surrey, as well as a Surrey specific channel (easy to do now all channels are digital) then it’d be quite easy for a strong Third Estate to develop if Surrey had a devolved assembly.
Maria, I wholeheartedly endorse your points. I made similar comments, although not as elequently, on my own blog last week:
http://towardsgunfire.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/mixed-messages-and-inadequate-messengers.html?m=1
I see where you are coming from here Ms Pretzler to the extent that devolution surely requires an understanding of devolution. Indeed, the severe dumbing down of local newspapers in recent years is a problem for just this reason. But at times this article skates a bit close to assuming that as long as everyone knows who gets it in the neck, devolution is working.
Take a simple example – the local health service in area A offers cancer drug X. The LHS in area B takes a decision not to offer X. If the cancer patents in B head straight to the national minister and indeed the national media then we do not have devolution.
In the ideal world, the person responsible for health in area B would go to the local media and talk about their decision and be reelected or not on that platform. But every time someone shouts something must be done in the direction of the central minister, it is a demand for centralisation. Enough people do it often enough, possibly with local media support, then I would argue it is centralisation on demand. The moment one by-passes localised authority because you don’t like the decision is the moment you don’t like localism. It is that simple.
So yes, meaningful information is important. But it is only as useful for the purposes of devolution as the extent to which things stay local. In short, are we as localisers prepared to tell the cancer patients of area B (and perhaps the local media in area B) that a localised decision is a localised decision?
The media is important, I agree with your point – but I do think that you are pinning a lot of faith in the importance of the media.
Maria Pretzler – ‘The quality of the roads, rubbish collections, schools, care services, parking spaces, dog mess, parks ….. all crucial stuff and open to direct judgement.’
Well…yes although some are county council issues and some are district issues (and possibly PCC issues) so it’s not quite so easy. Plus quangos (which may or may not be effective). Locally people seem to think that the Council exists to maintain high house prices, so perhaps I am a bit cynical.
I hope you have considered the effect one very good regional area may have I.e all will want to live there a bit like school tables is that what you want
Do the electorate really want more profesionals like GPs who don’t have the traing running finances
Can you hand on heart say this will not just create more high paid jobs that will do the best they can so as to remain in power
Can you sell this
Little Jackie Paper
I have to defer to your superior knowledge. In Wales, thankfully, local areas aren’t quite so complicated – although the reform currently imposed by the Welsh Government may produce all sorts of issues.
In terms of your point in the post above: I am not necessarily putting all that much trust in the media, but I know that without a very well functioning media, devolution leads to unaccountable politicians.
I would counter that you are putting an awful lot of trust into the local. Especially when we are talking about areas almost certainly bigger than a local authority (however it would like to dub itself where you are). I can tell you that Cardiff is NOT local to somebody in Bangor. That’s why we have local councils, too. And I think devolved regions would have to be quite a bit bigger than local authorities to make any sense (I disagree with George Potter on Surrey, and with the LibDem policy on minimum size: I think a million is too small for this purpose, and the kind of Surrey media landscape George has in mind is far too puny to do the job it needs to do).
The problem is generally what local’ means in a world like this. It’s such a loaded word. If we devolve to regions, I think it’s not a good model to use. These can’t be just glorified local authorities. Think US states or German Laender instead. And that’s not overly ‘local’, and it shouldn’t be., because you *want* critical mass.
I think you can allow yourself to make those regions smaller where you have a really strong very clearly defined regional identity (Cornwall probably qualifies) – it can work, and does in some of the Austrian Laender, some of which have populations in the low hundred thousands (but the context is different: long histories as clearly defined areas, and a smaller place altogether, with many local councils of just a few thousand, sometimes a few hundred voters, and the whole country at 8 million). I honestly don’t think you can just carve out a new region which doesn’t have a strong identity attached to it, but also doesn’t have a fairly large number of people (several million) to make regional politics really work.
And get that local stuff out of your system – that’s what the local authorities are for. This would be closer to home, but not local. Makes no sense to reinvent local authorities, and they are too small to take on some of the kind of stuff we need to devolve if we want this to work.
Ms Pretzler –
I’ve not spent much time in Wales for some years, so I’m not upto date – in some ways, perhaps Wales is a bad example. I’d certainly agree with your comment that a million is way too small for most regions. You are right that it may well be that regional politics aren’t particularly ‘local,’ and I suspect that it might be difficult to operationalize in the UK because I’m not sure that there are enough regions with what you call critical mass. For exactly that reason I think that any devolution policy in England would be vulnerable to effective centralisation by demand.
Just one other question. What do you think about Greece and the Republic of Macedonia?
Little Jackie Paper –
re. devolution: I agree with your concerns. With the best of caution, this is a tricky business. In the end, I think a lot really comes down to whether the voters are willing to engage or not. If devolution isn’t right, we’ll see it. The Police Commissioner elections are a warning example, I think. Voters didn’t agree with having those powers devolved to them, they didn’t quite know how to deal with it, and didn’t have enough information to make a decision – so they didn’t vote, and unusual numbers spoiled their ballot papers (I was one of the latter, I have to admit).
I think it’s right to suspect that some regions in England would be difficult to put together. I know Oxford quite well, and as somebody said recently, one can’t even be certain what weather region it belongs to from day to day. Where would it go? The South-east EU region clearly makes no sense at all (and not just in Oxford), but how to split it?
I assume it would be a bit easier in the North, and in the South-West, where people feel more strongly about their regional identity, and also about their distance from Westminster – although exact boundaries would have to be negotiated very carefully, and would presumably have to take into account divisions which were already old at the time of the War of the Roses.
——–
Re. Macedonia (or ‘FYROM’ – the Former Macedonian Republic of Yugoslavia). I am not sure why you are asking in this context: these two are different states, and both are determined to remain so, as far as I understand. I think both accuse each other of designs on part of their territory (attempts of FYROM to put the White Tower of Saloniki on their currency didn’t help). But ultimately, this is not about federal states, but about the dispute between two states both claiming sole ownership of a historical geographical name which happens to have a strong identification value because once, a long time ago, it was the core of the kingdom of Alexander the Great (and there the tricky question of whether Macedonians were Greek and whether anybody who doesn’t speak Greek has a right to that name)….. It’s a complex conflict about identity, and therefore somewhat opaque to the reasoning of outsiders. In the end, I hope, both sides will give in a little, so that they’ll manage to be good neighbours. I have had a bit to do with it, and certainly have to be able to tell students about it, because this is where my ivory towerish job clashes with some modern real life issues…
(and I sincerely hope that this won’t derail the thread now…..)
The more I think about this, the more I think the biggest problem is hype and misdirected enthusiasm. Devolution in itself is a reasonable idea, but as a solution to life, the universe and everything, it’s about as much use as a faster PC or a granite worktop.
Our real global problems are an impending climate catastrophe, a malfunctioning financial system, and massive rapid changes in energy, production, trade, employment, and migration.
Farage, from the Right, would like to scapegoat the EU for all the problems. Salmond, from further to the left, would like to scapegoat the UK. Both can make a few valid points, both are missing the main point. That is, that their solutions are like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Once it has been done, the new regime will still not have a clue what to do about the iceberg.
Now we have Redwood pointing out reasonably that if (after a No vote) Scottish MSPs can fix the Scottish income tax, it is hard to justify letting them come to Westminster and help fix the English income tax as well. Redwood less reasonably goes on to demand an English parliament. So “Devo-Instant” is already falling apart in confusion and disagreement. Sadly, even with “No” we shall be mired in problems for a long time yet, as we try to unpick Brown’s rash promises on timescale without totally betraying what has been promised to Scottish No voters.
Maria’s caveats are justified in themselves. They are also justified in terms of putting a vital brake on Devo-Instant.
David Allen,
The fact that there are various other problems we have isn’t a reason not to tackle this.
I am not a believer in devolution as a solution to everything, but the reason why I think we need it is that it isn’t just voters in Scotland who no longer feel represented by Westminster, but there are lots of voters like that in England, too. The north of England and the South West in particular need some better way of expressing their different political cultures and interests, and I assume that also applies in other parts of England (the fact that I haven’t become aware of it so clearly doesn’t say anything at all).
Voter apathy and alienation from the system is a very serious danger to democracy, that’s why I think we have to tackle this. But I while I wouldn’t want to procrastinate endlessly, I certainly would want us (or any UK government) to do this in a very thoughtful, considered manner.
Good questions, but we have to live with the world as it is, and I don’t think there is any practical possibility of the media unilaterally restructuring itself to serve politicians plans for devolution. My view is that we need to simplify local government in order to devolve power to it. If everyone had only one layer of local government, with more devolved powers, and one election (using STV), they would find it easier to understand who was responsible for what, and then to hold them to account. if local elections mattered more, to more people, the media would cover them.
Maria you write — ” For these ends, politicians’ leaflets are necessary, but definitely not sufficient. A properly functioning democracy needs the ‘Third Estate’ – media able to report without interference from politicians; ”
In the back of my mind I seem to remember Michael Steed In the late 1960s or early 1970s aying something about the fact that there was no newspaper any more that supported The Liberal Party — so we would have to provide our own. This was followed by a radical suggestion, possibly by someone else, to produce, print and deliver our own newspaper free door to door. If this sounds a bit like the Focus Community Newspapers (as some used to describe them) it is no coincidence. Before the days of slick, centralised Liberal Democrat leaflet production 1970s and 1980s community newsletters varied enormously from place to place. This was the age of various Free Press initiatives by other community groups unconnected with the Liberals. As part of the growth of community politics and making use of the changes in printing technology local activists provided A4 news sheets which filled the gap where there was no newspaper supporting us or doing much to work with local,people to take on unaccountable centres of power.
Many of these were not called Focus and the diversity of style, name and approach was truely amazing, genuinely local and sometimes eccentric. Before the age of the lap top it was an education to go to Liberal Assemblies and collect examples of other people’s newsletters, steal their ideas and artwork and produce your own. It has to be remembered that these were a radical change from traditional party political leaflets which had gone before. They were genuinely delivered “all year round not just at election time”. The purpose being to engage with local people on their own terms on the issues that concerned them rather than to produce a traditional glossy political biography for a candidate which said what they had done in the war, what their interests would be when they were elected, and maybe a photograph of the wife and kids.
If you do not know who Michael Steed is read —
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Steed
This wiki entry mentions Steed’s efforts in the mid 1970s to campaign for devolved government — “In 1975, with his former CHE colleague Paul Temperton, he founded Northern Democrat, a magazine calling for democratic regional government. This later developed into the Campaign for the North, an all-party group pressing for devolution for the English regions as well as Scotland and Wales, with Steed as Chairman and Temperton as Director, using funding from the Rowntree Trust.”
Getting back to Maria’s piece — it would be nice to think that some sort of top down change could be engineered to provide a media that would hold power to account. But it ain’t gonna happen. Just look at the London bias of the BBC in the referendum. The very powerful media moguls will make sure that their profit and influence is kept in tact. See Leveson Enquiry and ths failure to make any headway thereafter.
It used to be that politicians bought newspapers; since the emergence of Murdoch and Blair newspapers have bought politicians.
So what to do to get that accountability that Maria and any good Liberal.wants? I would not rule out paper and print community newsletters as used in the 1970s, but these only work on a genuinely local level no more than the size of a ward. For a devolved regional authority area it may be that as in the 1970s a recent change in technology provides the answer. Use of Facebook is one example where a bottom up, do it ourselves alternative enables anyone to provide their own alternative to traditional media. Where I live there is an interesting Facebook group which puts out old photos of Kingston mixed with shared reminiscences , something that used to be done by the old pay for local newspaper. Campaigns of all sorts grow like wild fire thanks to this type of media, often taking the old guard by surprise. The YES campaign in the Scotland referendum was operating under the radar of Westminster and what we used to call Fleet Street. There are lessons that some people need to learn.
U-tube offers the chance for campaigning and working with ordinary people that traditional TV has always denied. Five or six years ago my daughter then in her mid teens got involved in a u-tube gathering in London. There were 17 teenagers who had become fans on-line of the Green brothers (from the USA) and others around their own age who broadcast on U-tube – which at the time was a bit of a novelty. They provided things of interest to their audience rather than fifty year old repeats of Dad’s Army. They are the generation that seldom watch TV. Why would they whenhey have a lap top and can watch what they want, when they want it, or even make their own?
This annual gathering has now grown to a major annual event, still with teenage girls as the main participants but attracting thousands of teenagers to meet with the stars of this type of broadcasting. These young U-Tubers have made international stars of the Green brothers and others who have come along since. The Green brothers’ motto Don’t Forget to be Awesome (DFTBA) can be seen on tee-shirts and other places — it was recently used by President Obama. Teenagers producing and broadcasting their own TV.and influencing the world. I doubt this phenomenon has even been noticed by most readers of LDV.
A recent thread in LDV about the rather trivial question about what song to sing at the opening of the Liberal Democrat Conference produced within hours a variety of u-tube clps of songs and satIrical comments. It was highly entertaining, but there was a clear political message for the top of the party, which had not been expected by the person who wrote the original pieces askiing for song suggestions.
Apologies for rambling on at length. I hope some of the connections in what I have written make some sort of sense to those who are too young to remember the 1970 s or too old to knowaoutthe young U- tubers London gatherings.
DFTBA
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=DFTBA
In most areas we already have 5 layers of government: parish/town, district/borough, city/county councils. central UK government and Brussels. Where there are unitary authorities, it’s 4. Most people don’t know what is dealt with at which level. If a 6th level ( south east for example) were introduced, then the 3 layers of local government clearly need simplification. Even now, people write to their local MP about things that really should be dealt with by their local councillor at the the appropriate level.
Polly Toynbee has said what I’ve been saying that regional devolution could increase inequality and harm the poorest regions. Maybe now people will listen to my warnings more and not just cuddle ideas about localism without thinking about the consequences.
The idea of an English parliament should be back on the table.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/16/scotland-referendum-devolution-localism-england
No, I simply find myself disagreeing with Polly Toynbee as well. When you have a properly designed federal system, you have wealth transfers that take place from richer areas to poorer ones that are actively managed by government. The United States is a good example, actually, with rich states like New York subsidising poor ones like Mississippi, paying more in than they get out but accepting this because either side of the divide both sets of people are Americans and so they act in solidarity.
Unitary states like the UK have always failed at running these sort of wealth transfers. They struggle to find consent and they suffer badly from a lack of accountability at both ends. It needs to change, but a single English Parliament will only recreate the same London centric system we have with the UK.
Very much agree John, what you say about the US is the heart of my objection to the eurozone as currently structured:
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/thoughts-on-the-enduring-weakness-of-the-eurozone/
@ John Tilley
Although I do agree with your points regarding Facebook etc – today’s technology would allow a Liberal newspaper to be developed quite cheaply, along the lines of the Huffington Post. There really are not very many news stories to be covered each day/week – and the readership of the most popular titles is rapidly veering towards on-line readership from those who actually buy the paper. If local parties wanted to print this and deliver it to their constituents – they would be able to.
There is a great need for a newspaper that does tell ‘what is really going on’ – so that the owners of the most popular titles cannot continue to feed the public the version of events that suits their purposes unchallenged – and the Party’s activists are well placed to provide that alternative.
The Liberator has a nice ring to it!
John Roffey
Yes I agree. I cannot even guess what other innovations in technology might be used to hold power to account.
We used to concentrate on the power of democratic organisations such as local councils. But what about other centres of power?
How do we hold TESCO to account.? A corporation which has had more impact on High Streets than local councils or The Town and Ountry Planning Act.
How do we hold to account the shadowy international corporations who hide behind lobby organisations such as The Institute of Economic Affairs or The Tax Payers Alliance.?
Who holds the BBC and other opinion formers to account?
What do we do about the bankers who have laughed all the way to their multi-million pound bonuses whilst cheating, deceiving and generally breaking the law. Not one has gone to prison for their crimes in the UK. Why is that?
@ John Tilley
… and we ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’ – if the usually reliable George Monbiot is correct about TTIP:
The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/us-trade-deal-full-frontal-assault-on-democracy
@Maria Pretzler
Actually I favour units even smaller than 1 million – but let’s say we do only go for units equalling 1 million or bigger.
That’s about the same population as Estonia, an independent, sovereign country with it’s own fully developed third estate. It’s also about the same population as the US states of Montana and Rhode Island – each of which have an elected head of state, a bicameral legislature, a supreme court and a military (in the form of the National Guard). I really don’t see why something similar couldn’t work in the UK – and let’s not forget that, of the German Lander which you cite, Saarland only has 1 million people while Bremen has just 660,000 people.
@Jenny Barnes
Personally I think that, in England, we need a top level of UK federal government, sub-regional assembly government and then unitary local councils (possibly with parish/neighbourhood councils below that) for a simple three (or four) tier system of government.
George Potter – I think the problem is that you can’t express it in numbers.
It absolutely depends on whether a region is a functional unit for this kind of politics or not. I think it comes down to a combination of critical mass and the strength of identity in relation to that unit. If people actually feel that they have a stake in their region (however it has come about), you’ll find less of a problem with scrutiny. People won’t find it odd to engage with media at this level, and will actually have a sense of how to engage with that area. Many of the areas you mention had a long tradition already, some were independent states until the 19th century (in Germany, also in Italy). That is very different from trying to turn Surrey into such a region! But I think that Cornwall or Yorkshire may well work., because people are really very much engaged in that particular regional identity. I can’t really remember ever meeting somebody from Surrey who could wax lyrical about being from Surrey as Yorkshire people or the Cornish can…
If you don’t have that regional identity and engagement already in place, you have to work out how to create it. And I think this is a lot easier if your regions are bigger, so that a proper media landscape for that area makes sense. I think that the North-West around Manchester is already served almost as well as Wales, and I assume it’s easier to get everybody to engage with media for the region (unlike in Wales!!).
In any case, splitting England into regions of a million or even smaller wouldn’t create a really good middle level between councils and Westminster, and that’s what we need. I know it’s tempting for many LibDems just to wish for glorified local authorities, but this isn’t going to be sensible if we want a proper federal UK (with or without Scotland).
John Tilley, John Roffey –
It’s quite lively to read you reminiscing about LibDem leaflets and community newspapers and so on. But it’s no good suggesting that democracy can be served sufficiently by such publications. It’s good to have them, but it’s not democratic to suggest we can do only with those (and whatever equivalents other parties put out).
You may be ranting about no paper supporting us – but in fact, that’s exactly what we (and every other party) need. Come to Wales where Labour dominates the media landscape, and perhaps you’d get it a little more easily just how important this point is.
And the internet is no magic bullet, either. Perhaps it can allow you to put out more party content, but that’s still not sufficient.
And the kind of scrutiny we need till requires investigative journalism, however it gets its output to the readers.
In any case, the idea that politicians’ leaflets are enough to ensure proper voter scrutiny is simply wrong. I think everybody who cares about democracy should understand why this is – it’s pretty basic.
@Maria Pretzler
With respect, to the best of my knowledge you are not English. But I can assure you that, as an Englishman, most of the people I know in England are conscious of what county they live in or come from.
Obviously some places have stronger identities than others but you only need to look at the abolition of Herefordshire, for example, to see how strongly people can feel attached to an identity when it is threatened.
Obviously nowhere in England (with the exception possibly of Cornwall) has the same strength of common identity as, say, Scotland but in many ways that’s to be expected when there aren’t institutions to give strength to that identity. And in any case, those identities (specifically the historic counties in most places or the large conurbations in others) are far stronger than artificial regions which have no basis in history. Let’s also not forget that it was only thirty years ago that children in schools used textbooks with their county coat of arms on them.
When it comes to devolution, or federalism, there are two tests which need to be met in order to determine suitable units. The first is size and the second is some sort of common identity. It’s clear from foreign examples that units as small as 500,000 people can be made to function successfully and it’s clear from English history that the county is the strongest subnational unit that people associate themselves with. So, broadly speaking, and perhaps with some boundary changes, the historic English counties (and the modern large conurbations) seem to be the best starting point for an English model of devolution.
Your initial point is that a strong third estate needs to be developed to provide accountability for new political units – and that I agree with and believe it’s relatively easy to do. But so far you don’t seem to have any ideas on how to actually come up with political units other than the obvious examples of Cornwall and Yorkshire (and if Cornwall, why not the more populous Devon next door) which would merely continue the problems of uneven devolution across the UK.
If it were me I’d start with Cornwall, Greater London, Greater Manchester, Birmingham and Solihull, Merseyside and Yorkshire as units for automatic devolution with the rest of England being divided up broadly on the basis of historic counties or conglomerations thereof which had a large enough population for efficient service delivery. That would certainly seem to be a better way forward than artificial super-regions which hardly anyone identifies with.
In fact, the lesson of Germany seems to be that states can be of vastly different sizes as long as they have some sort of core identity to begin with. I really don’t see how anyone can argue against applying the same logic here.
Maria Pretzler
I think you may have missed the second half of my very long comment. Or overlooked the fact that I myself said that 1970s style community paper and print newsletters are appropriate only at a very local level.
I was agreeing with you for the need for something more at a regional or in your case a Wales level.
I am not completely ignorant of the politics of Wales .
Nobody as far as I see has offered you a magic bullet. But I think you would be unwise to ignore what is happening. Check out the terminal decline in sales and readership of print newspapers.
My daughter’s tweety something contemporaries do not watch TV or buy newspapers. They get their information from their I-pad or their phone. Not a magic bullet but reality.
I am not entirely clear what you meant in your piece about a “developed media landscape” in Wales. When I stayed near Aberystwyth not so long ago it appeared to me as an outsider that there was a thriving local media but very apart from Cardiff. The problem with Wales is there is a clear and distinct divide between the south and the rest, partly to do with the language partly to do with Labour domination in the south reflecting the history of nineteenth century industrialisation.
Maybe you could clarify what you mean by “developed media landscape” in the context of the whole of Wales?
@ Maria Pretzler
In truth – I wasn’t reminiscing – I was pointing out that today’s technology would allow an on-line newspaper, like Huffington Post, to be produced quite cheaply – to counteract the MSM’s dominance by multinationals along with Liberal solutions.
At present we seem to be seeing a psychological reprogramming of the population where values that have been adhered to by the most successful civilizations throughout time are over-written for the benefit of these multinationals.
Below the belt from George Potter to say Maria isn’t English so her view is less valid. I know who I would rather be represented by.
@Eddie Sammon
When it’s a topic about how associated the English are to their counties I’d say that there’s nothing below the belt about pointing out relevant lived experience that one has and another hasn’t.
We should all pause for reflection.
Focuses are not the answer. They do not provide genuine accountability for devolved government. They are one party’s view. Accountability requires an independent view.
We will not devise a sensible plan for devolution under the panic conditions which apply now, ahead of the Scottish decision. We should not try. If there is a No vote we will have time to think it all through.
The risk is that people just decide that since Gordon Brown’s timetable is unworkable, therefore it will all just be dropped. It would have been better to take much more time but promise to deliver workable devolution within UK – or failing that a second referendum offering the independence option.
Any devolved units within England will ultimately be arbitrary. They will develop their individual identities in the future, as a result of their people having to work together on shared issues; they will not derive their identities from the past.
George Potter 16th Sep ’14 – 5:15pm
“….in England, we need a top level of UK federal government, sub-regional assembly government and then unitary local councils (possibly with parish/neighbourhood councils below that) for a simple three (or four) tier system of government.”
George Potter is absolutely right. In fact this is the system we have in London and have had since 1964 with a few variations at the regional level over the years. It works, which is why it has survived for fifty years.
The rest England could easily be organised along these lines. Indeed the steadilu growing number of unitary authorises over twenty years, replacing the old county/district levels shows it works elsewhere. Unfortunately the Tufton Buftom tendency in all political,parties who want to cling on to counties with the same names as cricket teams, or want to hang on to their own privileges having got themselves elected at county level, have often prevented a more logical arrangement in their patch.
We need a national level decision to put George Potter’s simple and sensible suggestion into operation. Unfortunately I do not imagine that Nick Clegg and his fellow Unionist party leaders, Cameron and Miliband will do this. It seems that not one of the three of them has the slightest interest in devolved power outside the Westminster Bubble.
Interesting point. I do think smaller and more local authorities are more easily held to account. For example, an active councillor will be recognised and approached in the supermarket, the pub or the street and should have time to respond. A higher proportion of the issues tackled will be things local people can actually observe – the state of the municipal park or a residential street used as a rat run, whether the kids from the local school still drop lots of litter on the way to and from school – and so be informed critics of propaganda.
But if we look at democracies where power is effectively devolved to provinces or municipalities, we find active local media which don’t just feature what they’re told. We have beginnings – regional TV news, for example – but we need much more.
Simon Banks
You make some very good points, especially about the local councillor who can be recognised in the supermarket/pun/street and people can feel confident to go up and give a view or seek help with something. that sort of local direct democracy is priceless. It can provide a very solid foundation for higher levels in the democracy regional/national/EU.