It is easy to see why Labour leader Keir Starmer should find himself tempted into the idea of greater devolution. Electoral geometry indicates that he might end up having to negotiate with the SNP after the next election. It is harder to see why Gordon Brown’s advice should be sought, given how badly his own attempts at devolution have backfired.
As Tony Blair’s shadow chancellor, Brown argued that a new parliament in Edinburgh would scotch the snake of independence. It was a view widely held by Labour at the time. In the words of the then shadow Scotland secretary, devolution would kill the SNP ‘stone dead’. This has not, to put it mildly, gone according to plan. Had Brown not retired from the Commons in 2015, voters would have done it for him: all but three seats in Scotland were won by the SNP. Devolution has left Scotland in a trap: on one side a powerful independence movement which will not give up, on the other a decisive ‘no’ vote in the 2014 referendum.
None of this, however, has dissuaded Brown from putting forward yet more devolution – a proposal that Starmer has happily adopted – for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and also for English regions. It is hard to see what problem the former prime minister thinks such a programme would solve, nor whose support he hopes to win by proposing it. Brown has even failed to spot the contradictions in his suggestions. He speaks of wanting to ‘empower towns, cities and regions’, but you cannot empower all three at once. If you want power to rest with the regions then you will take it away from cities, several of which would inevitably end up competing to dominate regional politics.
As Labour found to its immense cost in 2019, there is a big difference between the interests of cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds – which have enjoyed a strong economic revival over the past few decades – and the smaller, more remote towns of the Midlands and North. If you live in Workington, on the west coast of Cumbria, Manchester is nearly as remote as London. From the vantage point of the Shetland Islands, being governed from Holyrood is hardly any more local than rule from London. North Wales is more connected to Merseyside and Cheshire than it is to Cardiff.
When voters have been consulted on devolution, they have generally taken a dim view of having extra layers of government. More often than not they have rejected the idea of metro mayors and regional assemblies, and even when they have approved them they have, in the case of elected mayoralties in Hartlepool and Bristol, later voted to abolish the positions. Yet the idea keeps resurfacing, both from the Conservatives and now from Labour.
The idea that a Scottish parliament and a Welsh Assembly would somehow provide more innovative ideas or grown-up leadership has, sadly, not come to pass. The Alex Salmond imbroglio, whereby he said Nicola Sturgeon had tried to frame then jail him, shows how Holyrood struggles to scrutinise the government: MSPs were warned that they might break the law if they asked the wrong questions. Civil servants have refused to give evidence and committee findings are routinely ignored. In practice, more devolution has meant less scrutiny.
For citizens, public services are the most obvious test of devolution. So how is NHS Scotland doing after a quarter-century of being run from Edinburgh? ‘Unscheduled care is going to fall over in the near term,’ said leaked minutes from the Scottish health boards, ‘before planned care falls over’. Scottish schools, meanwhile, have been lagging behind for years, with a scandalous attainment gap between rich and poor. Holyrood has passed more bills than Cardiff Bay or Stormont, yet far more Scots die from drugs than anywhere else in the UK or Europe, in spite of high state spending. Scotland now produces the most expensive poverty in the world.
Some aspects of Brown’s constitutional proposals are glaringly unworkable. He suggests allowing the Scottish government to sign its own international treaties. That would mean Scotland being subject to a UK trade policy negotiated by Westminster as well as to another negotiated by the Scottish government. You can be sure that an SNP-led Scottish government would deliberately exploit contradictions in international treaties in order to push for independence.
It is true that many people all around Britain feel poorly served by their politicians. But the solution is not to give more power to local and regional government; it is to empower citizens directly, to give them greater control over their lives. This was one of the better themes of the Cameron government, which allowed parents to set up free schools, allowed patients more autonomy over their health treatment and allowed everyone, via tax cuts, more control over their own money. It is an undeniable truth that people make better decisions for themselves than government can ever make on their behalf.
The Conservatives should return to this theme, not least to differentiate themselves from Labour’s new-found enthusiasm for devolution. If the public has lost faith in politicians, the best policy is to give them less command over our lives, not to create new, local classes of officialdom. It is not regions, cities and towns to which powers need to be devolved, but to the people that live within them.
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