It had all started with the Scots of course. (Well, and the Fleggers, but nobody paid much attention to them unless they were blowing somebody up). A couple of centuries of minor griping, followed by a few decades of more intense complaining, and they'd finally worn down Blair enough to give them back their Parliament, with all the constitutional issues of asymmetric devolution that entailed. Perhaps if it had ended with that ghastly monstrosity in Holyrood they wouldn't have had any issues- special treatment for Scotland was nothing new after all. But Blair had brought back Stormont and decided to give the Welsh the same treatment, so suddenly there were certain expectations that needed to be met.
Of course, 20 years was a very long time in Politics, though perhaps it simply took that long for sufficient resentment at the West Lothian question to build up for English devolution to actually become a thing. Maybe if the referendum hadn't occurred, Greg mused to himself, he wouldn't have to deal with this, but he had a feeling that he'd have been dealt with the inevitable anyway, either in this Parliament or the next. Of course, an English Parliament was out of the question- nobody else in the Union would have any truck with it, and nobody in Westminster was particularly keen on the idea either, so it was going to have to be the regions.
Problems had arisen almost immediately. The Euro-Regions were far too cumbersome and except for a couple of cases (Yorkshire, London), lacked any sort of cohesive identity for devolution. Most of the counties had some sort of identity but were either too small to be feasible devolved entities, or had borders in all the wrong places, and there were always concerns about whether the Municipals would want to go back under County authority.
So they'd opened it up to the councils to come together and decide their own groupings- a perfectly natural process that had been happening on a less formal scale for decades anyway. Some overlaps had probably been expected, some idiotic ideas were probably inevitable and some of them were just unworkable. He'd had to have serious talks with council leaders about why Herefordshire, Norfolk and Wiltshire just wouldn't work by themselves, and goodness knows what he was expected to do about the applications from Cardiff, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, though he had a perverse desire to approve the Inverness City Region just to see what Sturgeon did about it.
Still, they were making progress- Liverpool had come through after having some heads bashed together in St. Helen's, Greater Manchester had finally got past the approval stage in Wigan and Oldham, and he'd just finished up on the deals for a proposed East Anglia region in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (despite concerns from Cambridge itself) and the new 'Solent City' encompassing Portsmouth, Southampton and, surprisingly, the Isle of Wight. Beyond that, Leicestershire and Rutland looked to be going ahead, the Greater Lincolnshire plan was probably going to pass easily, and he was very close to finishing up on the West of England (wasn't that just the old County of Avon idea again?).
There'd been more than his fair share of headaches though. Greater Essex was a nightmare of overlapping concerns with London, the North Midlands plan was being rejected by council after council, with Chesterfield and Bolsover flirting with joining up with Sheffield instead, and he was getting a constant barrage of letters from the West Riding from people up in arms over the Leeds Plan. A fair few from outside it as well, mainly from the Greater Yorkshire supporters and County Preservationists, and it was holding up the otherwise simple East Riding and Hull plan.
The biggest issue was the Mayors of course. Greg wasn't sure about the Mayors, and really why couldn't they be Lieutenants, or County Governors, or Presidents of the Council or really anything other than a title never intended for something larger than a city? True it had worked well enough for London, but did they really want a whole lot more Borises or Kens? Still Dave had insisted on 'increased democracy' grounds, and at least he'd have less council leaders to deal with in future. Anything to save him from more headaches would have been preferred though.
Setting aside the latest letters to Ulverston and Bodmin he turned his attention to what was proving to be the biggest of those headaches: The North East Devolution Plan. A particularly thorny question that had 40 years of unsuccessful plans behind it going right the way back to various proposals from the 70s. All of them had floundered on either disinterest from Central Government, or the intractable rivalries of the local communities up there, a maelstrom that had sucked in everyone from Redcliffe-Maud and Derek Senior to Prescott's ill fated plans for a second stage of devolved Assemblies back in 2004.
Certainly there were other strong rivalries to be negotiated with, Southampton-Portsmouth had been no picnic to arrange, Brighton and Hove were hardly on the best of terms, and he hadn't even dared suggest a cross-Tamar devolution bid. But with even Solihull signing on for the West Midlands plan, it seemed that only in the North East were these rivalries- Newcastle against Sunderland, Tyne against Tees and Metropolitan against Rural- proving to be truly debilitating. Greg was beginning to seriously wonder if it was worth just leaving them under direct control until they agreed to get along, though that hadn't really worked in Belfast.
Still, despite the glacially slow progress nobody had actually rejected the plan yet. True they'd only actually got Newcastle, Blyth, Hexham and Easington to actually sign up, but there were promising noises coming out of Gateshead and he'd been assured that getting a sign up from the City of Durham was only a matter a time, and once the ball got rolling, they'd be able to whether a few rejections and use weight of local agreement to bring them in line. They just had to get out the crunch stage.
A knock at the door roused him from his reverie, and one look at the secretary's face told him this wasn't good news. Bracing himself for the worst, he gave an almost imperceptible gesture towards the open file on the North East, a large map of the proposed area clearly visible, and to his dismay the woman at the door nodded.
'There's been a rejection hasn't there' he asked, already knowing the answer, 'From the North East.'
'I'm afraid so Minsiter', the nervous reply came. Very bad news then, Greg thought as he ran through the options. Not Darlington- it had always been an outside shot and if they rejected this they'd just expand the Tees Valley option. Probably not Berwick either- they were definitely a bit special up there but it was felt they would come along with the rest of Northumberland if push came to shove. No it definitely had to be one in the Tyne and Wear area- Jarrow wasn't due to vote for a bit, Blaydon and Washington were probably on board, and Tynemouth were going very slowly, probably in the hope that it would collapse before they had to make a decision. On the other hand there was one likely culprit, the one which almost everyone expected was going to vote against the deal out of principal. Yes, if it was them they'd be able to manage expectations neatly.
'Please' he began once he realised the secretary was still standing by the door, 'tell me it's Sunderland.'
'I'm afraid not Minister' came the reply as the Secretary moved to place a printout on his desk, 'it's Chester-le-Street Rural District Council.'
There was a moment of silence in the office, dragging out for several agonising seconds before Greg spoke once more.
'Fuck.'