Devolution and deviousness

Devolution is the word used by government to describe the regionalisation of the United Kingdom. It brings to mind the separate parliament of Scotland and the Assemblies of Wales and Northern Ireland. But there are 12 devolved parts of the UK and it is illuminating to think of 12 United Kingdom regions, each with a regional assembly, of which 4 are elected by proportional representation - Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London. The other 8 regional assemblies are appointed by central government from a mixture of elected representatives of lower level local authority bodies, community stakeholders (religious, local business, cultural groupings, state-funded various) and rag, tag and bobtail others.

These regions are the product of European Union statistical entities created for the purposes of collecting the data etc., needed for European Union allocations both of statuses and resources. In England the majority have no responsiveness to geographical, historical, economic, social or cultural links. They are a grid.

The largest is the South East followed, in order of size, by: London, the North West, the East, the West Midlands, Scotland, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West, the East Midlands, Wales, the North East; the last is Northern Ireland which is such a special case it is not part of this post.

The appointed regional assemblies in England have yielded an enormous bonus to central government in terms of party control. Budgets for these assemblies run into billions of pounds of tax revenue returned to the UK by the European Union. We are funding a government administration countrywide network of jobs, investment, cultural allocations, environmental spending and a host of other forms of patronage. The regional assemblies drain power from directly elected local authorities, money is directed to them and diverted from other local authorities, and they have direct connection with the European Union’s Europe of the Regions.

Such an executive power base is not going to be left to any other governing party should there be a general election. Before leaving office the Labour government will activate electoral procedures for the English assemblies under proportional representation, as already exists for London, the only elected English assembly. This will have the advantage of wiping out the importance of widespread losses in the May local elections, and make the case for election by proportional representation to the Westminster parliament immensely strong. The heterogeneous nature of these regions does not aid any conservative, large or small "c", bid. And should there be a Conservative administration in Westminster, it will face elected power in some regions that are bigger than Scotland.