Reading A View from the Foothills Chris Mullin comes over as a very decent man. I'm only a third of the way through (it's 600pp and clearly I should have started earlier) yet the thought that there are many countries inside the United Kingdom over and above Scotland, Wales etc. ... arises and persists.
If Scotland can be devolved as it is now, and further after the Scotland Bill comes in, the North must be a candidate for devolved government. Not north of Watford Gap, but the de-industrialised north, the historically and culturally identified north; the North that is not just geographically distant from Greater London and the Home Counties, but the North with its wholly different ideological mindset. The decent Labour mindset displayed by Mr Mullin.
In the North embracing state provision/high government expenditure/high tax ideology makes sense. People there were thrust-up against the forces of globalisation, the export of work, the effects of wage competition so abruptly and forcefully that communities and generations'-long lifestyles collapsed. It was not just unkind and gratuitously rude to deliver a benefits culture, it was grossly inefficient.
London (and the South, its hinterland) is now an international metropolis; there, those who need the tempering of the winds of market capitalism can be sheltered by the Big Society. Those who do not like or accept market capitalism, who cleave to a more dirigiste version of social and economic justice and protection, can realise their Jerusalem among those dark satanic mills.
It is urgent that Westminster becomes a federal parliament, and that the 'one size fits all' model of governance that creates so much bitterness between us is reconsidered.
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When the EU breaks England into regions, will the south be freed from the burden of over taxation to subsidise the lefty scum of the other regions for whose benefit they have been enslaved and degraded? If so, it will be great to watch the socialists tax and regulate each other to death. Perhaps they'll build a wall separating upland and lowland Britain to keep the non-workers in their north western non-paradises.
Of course all the multicultural enrichers (and the London chatterati)will need to be moved to the northern side so the diversity co-ordinators and quangocrats can be employed at the expense of their ideological supporters now only northern slaves. Will it take more than a few years before they're eating each other as in North Korea?
Raven, not the European Union regions, they ignore even nation-state boundaries, never mind economic, political and historical internal boundaries.
What seems unsatisfactory is for a very large area of the country that wants a 'Labour' government not to have one for local affairs up to the level that Scotland can have a Scottish Nationalist government say.
If there is a sizable majority for Labour in the North then why can't they have what they want and never again be used to impose a Labour government in London and the South? And Westminster does the federal stuff.
I agree, those who are in the minority might like to move, north or south, but we'd all be less rankled by one size fits all.
Just this once I agree with your overall conclusion, and perhaps even more peculiarly so would John Prescot. Now try and convince the dominant English nationalist core of the Conservative Party.
It is worth noting that there has been a clear trend to regionalisation in many European countries in recent years e.g. Italy, France and Spain, which in no small part has been supported by funding from the EU. Some may see this as a plot by the EU to subvert the nation state, while others (especially those who can distinguish between patriotism and nationalism) may just see it as a more sensible way of organising matters.
Of course deciding what matters should be handled at which level and ensuring democratic accountability at each level is what is really difficult. But only dinosaurs believe that it is all set in stone. Didn't we think that we had separated ourselves from the Irish banking system back in 1922?
Actually, I thought Hatfield is already in the North (on the A18).
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