English Devolution

[Jie Bie]

But whats the good of all that if we only get to spend 14% of our own taxes? we can devolve decision making all we want but without control of the financials we remain impotent and still impacted by decisions made elsewhere.

An English parliament will further accelerate the breakup of the UK IMO, so that's a good thing.

However, the setting up of regional assemblies across England with the same powers as the Scottish parliament would probably be a bad thing from our point of view, as thanks to last week's No vote we would end up as just another region.

Screw Frank Field and his bandwagon jumping … some of us have been pointing this out for years: http://taboard.com/archive/index.php?showtopic=137751&p=2147353

The German model wouldn't work, partly for the asymmetric reasons Pool Q points out, and partly from the different histories of the two states. I don't have time to get into this, but it was all foreseeable and so it's shameful that the politicians had nothing more concrete up their Jermyn-Street-tailored sleeves...

Yep, he admitted on the radio that most politicians don't have the stomach for constitutional reform, and he doesn't sound particularly confident in whatever we get being anything other than a half-baked solution.

[the_fadiator]

I can't see a federal UK happening. When Labour tried regional assemblies there was little support. The 'city deals' and devolution is more popular, especially for places like Great Manchester. There'd be no appetite to lose that for working with Cumbria and Liverpool. There's another issue of how you decide the breakdown of regions. The split has previously proven a difficult one.

[thorbotnic]

thorbotnic, I agree that the idea of an English parliament is ludicrous, especially so when some people talk about building a new one in York or something. Even if an English parliament was to share the current building in Westminster, you'd inevitably eventually get a conflict between the English and UK parliaments.

What are you suggesting we do instead? You mention regional assemblies, but even they won't exactly be local to everyone. I mean, suppose they put Hampshire in the South West region, where would the SW regional assembly be located? Plymouth? Instead of those Westminster whankers making decisions for us, it would instead be those inbred khunts down in Plymouth. That's how some people would view it, anyway. Not me, of course.

To be serious for one moment - I am open minded about it, but I want it spelled out to me exactly what is being proposed and how it would improve things.

As long as we attached the need for identity to regional government (either devolved or federal) it's not going to work - certain regions of England have a fairly strong, fairly cohesive sense of collective identity (mainly in the North - Northumbria, Yorkshire) but others don't, and if the creation of a regional authority of some stripe needs this identity to be present - well, it simply won't last. Instead, we need to recognise that it is in the interests of more effective and accountable government to have power exercised more closely to the people who it effects - it's a practical necessity to improve English government. As it operates at the moment, there are virtually no provisions for regional flexibility in terms of spending priorities - even though, as is obvious, NE England has totally different priorities from SE England, as an example - and those who divvy up the funds are utterly divorced from the consequences, good or bad, of their decisions. The regions themselves are already more-or-less defined (as per EU elections etc).

[thorbotnic]

As an example, France has regions which are 'culturally' more or less arbitrary in most cases (but not in all cases, cf Brittany) but all of which have the same powers. There doesn't need to be a strong sense of connection between the people in a region for it to have political legitimacy, as long as what is focussed on is the practical, technocratic element.