What if Labour's northern devolution plans had succeeded?

Thande

Donor
One of Labour's Big Ideas in Tony Blair's second term was to introduce elected assemblies for the English regions, something masterminded by John Prescott and starting with the northern regions (which just happen to be mostly Labour voters, purely by coincidence I assure you). OTL, only one referendum was held, for the North East, in 2004 and was decisively defeated, meaning all the plans were abandoned. What if Labour had been more successful and elected assemblies had been introduced at least for the first three projected regions - the North East, the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber?

The reasons behind the OTL referendum defeat are, as I understand it:

  • Regionalism in the North East and the distrust of a Newcastle-based parliament by the other groups up there
  • The idea that it would add an extra layer of politicians and bureaucrats for the public purse to pay. A few people did point out that Labour's regional development agencies meant there was ALREADY an assembly in each region, it just wasn't elected, so this wouldn't cost much more. They could have done a much better job at pointing this out.
  • Nascent English nationalism and rejection of region-based assemblies on the grounds that the regions were arbitrary and associated with the EU. Not all that important in retrospect I think.
  • It was 2004, in the middle of the Iraq fiasco aftermath, so people were inclined to vote against anything Labour proposed just because Labour proposed it.
 
A few points.

  • Don't wait until the second term. Have the referendum a week after the Welsh poll, the momentum would add votes.
  • Have a proper, co-ordinated yes campaign. Prescott wasn't built for this type of campaign, have someone else lead the proposals.
  • Give the Assembly more powers, at least on a par with Wales.
Had all that been done, a narrow yes may have squeaked through. How the Assembly would have been was important. If it was shown to be standing up for the North-East, then I suspect it may have led to a clamour in the North-West, Yorkshire and the South-West for more powers.

We may have seen a federal UK today. This clusterfuck of a campaign was a huge mistake I place firmly at Tony Blairs feet.
 
The problem is that Northern devolution would be very dependent upon having a Westminster government that is perceived to be London/SE leaning and highly unpopular - and that is much more likely under the Tories. The catch with this is that the Tories are unlikely to ever propose devolution.

What you would need to see is the rise of regionalist parties, but that would create a whole wave of issues. Firstly, they are likely to be fragmented around very local identities, and secondly, they are likely to take from the Labour vote, potentially making Labour unelectable at Westminster. Thinking about this one, you could see the evolution of a populist social party that takes the working class vote in the North that the BNP has had minor successes with. I don't mean a nationalist party in the sense of the BNP, but something that is appealing to discontented Labour voters in the Northern Counties. Perhaps by playing on the issues of urban decay, without playing the race card, there could be some chance of election - certainly at county or borough level.

The other alternative would be a significant regionalist element within the Labour Party - perhaps a Northern bloc of MPs that would carry significant influence within central policy and the parliamentary party. The difficulty there is that the North is dominated and represented by MPs that, at least between 1997 and 2005, were crucial to the New Labour cause - think Mandelson, Milburn, Hutton, Blair - and perhaps weren't as tuned into Northerness as an identity as the people they represented.
 
I've always found the resistance to English regional devolution a bit baffling. Ideally, you'd provide all the regional assemblies (incl. the Scottish Parliament) generally-similar powers. You'd solve the West Lothian Problem, and reduce the overcentralization in Westminster. (And you could also reduce the size of the Commons.)

I understand that most of the English don't "identify" with their regions, and I realize the boundaries are somewhat arbitrary. But numerous European countries have equally arbitrary internal boundaries, and they're hardly tyrannies. It really does seem like the kind of the thing people might bitch about beforehand but would be fine with - or even embrace - once they actually came into place.

Granted, an English Parliament could also solve the West Lothian Question, but it wouldn't do much to actually reduce overcentralization in Westminster, and would probably require an even more radical revision of the UK constitutional structure, since having a devolved parliament for 80%+ of the population would be wholly redundant. It could only really work if you were to restrict the Westminster Parliament to England and create a new "Council for the UK" to handle cross-UK issues.
 
Devolution in England...

England's unity against the Norman Conquest was real, so 1066 is written as deeply into English consciousness as 'Ochi!' (No!) in Greece. The result is that there just isn't any deep regional identity anywhere other than the North East (Tyne-Tees) and Yorkshire's Three Ridings (I was born i' Bradford, lad) and maybe Birmingham/Black Country. Oh, and 'Lunnon'. The rest is buried too deeply to resurrect or beneath layers if incomers.

An artificial division across the Shires will be as popular as calling Shropshire 'Salop' or a Yorkie tyke a 'woollyback'.

It's a non-starter, lad. Sorry.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
England's unity against the Norman Conquest was real, so 1066 is written as deeply into English consciousness as 'Ochi!' (No!) in Greece. The result is that there just isn't any deep regional identity anywhere other than the North East (Tyne-Tees) and Yorkshire's Three Ridings (I was born i' Bradford, lad) and maybe Birmingham/Black Country. Oh, and 'Lunnon'. The rest is buried too deeply to resurrect or beneath layers if incomers.

An artificial division across the Shires will be as popular as calling Shropshire 'Salop' or a Yorkie tyke a 'woollyback'.

It's a non-starter, lad. Sorry.

You do realize that Salop as an expression for Shropshire goes back to the middle ages, and that your whole thing about unity is 19th century bullshit romantic historiography, some of the saxon aristocracy sided with the normans.

That said, the regions need to be revised from what they are; iirc they were not only wholly arbitrary but based on the ministry of defence's regions.
 
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Super local authorities (as in big not as in wonderful) managed to tie together places like Greater London, the West Midlands, Merseyside etc and were generally successful in combining and creating an identity that had not wholly been there.

I can see the regions attempting to do so on a larger scale, bringing counties and authorities together to create, or recreate, an identity.

I think there needed to be a larger-scale plan as to what was intended, not just a trial "Shall we start with one up here?" approach. Decentralisation from Westminster needed to go hand-in-hand, but of course that wasn't really what Blair wanted or intended in all of this

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Perhaps do it in Yorkshire first, where regionalism is strongest?

Also it wouldn't hurt to give the Assemblies some teeth.

You could also butterfly away 911/Iraq which would probably allow the Labour party to remain a much stronger player in persuading the British people or a certain policy.

As for the effects? Well firstly there would be much greater focus on inter-regional development in: sustainable development, economic development, spatial planning, transport, waste, housing, culture (including tourism) and biodiversity and a solution to the West Lothian Question which is always a bonus. If more powers were on offer, changes to education and healthcare coverage would have been on the table. I imagine the three Northern Councils would have a similar view to Scotland and Wales on Academies, Polyclinics, tuition fees, nationalised utilities etc. Also I think we can all agree London benefited greatly by having the London Assembly

If Yorkshire and Humber had chosen option two, Harrogate and Craven would be much more integrated into Leeds' economic sphere imho.
 
Perhaps do it in Yorkshire first, where regionalism is strongest?

Sorry, but regionalism is NOT strongest in Yorkshire, whatever you'd like to believe as a native. By every polling measure - belief in a regional identity, support for devolution - it's almost always recently been strongest in the North East - which was of course why Labour used that as their tesbed. If it couldn't work in the North East, it couldn't work anywhere else.

I'm not sure I can see it happening in any region other than the NE tbh, although of course it would depend upon how devolution there was recieved by the other regions. Is the NE viewed as a peculiarity, with a regonal government which doesn't actually do anything for it, or something which has enhanced the NE?

Devolution in the English regions/NE would certainly enchance the idea that the UK is now 'quasi-federal', but whether that would lead to further devolution, I don't know.
 

Thande

Donor
Sorry, but regionalism is NOT strongest in Yorkshire, whatever you'd like to believe as a native. By every polling measure - belief in a regional identity, support for devolution - it's almost always recently been strongest in the North East - which was of course why Labour used that as their tesbed. If it couldn't work in the North East, it couldn't work anywhere else.

Aye, but I think what Kvasir meant was that 'the idea of Yorkshire' as a unitary entity is strongest. The North East has a lot of regionalism but it also has considerable tribalism between the groups there, which you really don't see in Yorkshire. Us Danians' mild mockery of the Dee-Doughs over in Sheffield doesn't hold a candle to what happens if you accidentally call someone from Sunderland a Geordie.
 
Is there a European country that's undergone devolution that hadn't been ravished by civil-, world- or Cold-war?

Though a quick google tells me Sweden has regional government.

SlideAway said:
I understand that most of the English don't "identify" with their regions, and I realize the boundaries are somewhat arbitrary.

"I'd rather be governed from Brussels than from Bristol"--A Cornishman back around the time of the devolution votes in Wales and Scotland.

In the most positive scenario I doubt he would've been satisfied with the regional seat being any further away than Plymouth. Which in turn would tend to disenfranchise the Bristolian...

Fifty milion people in England, that means creating a number of entities that will have more people than the largest states in Australia or the largest provinces in Canada.

I think having the other large cities adopt Greater London style modern government might spur devolution along for the non-metropolitan areas, otherwise it's a hard sell.
 
The problem with regional assemblies is that their areas don't correspond to anything. Here in the South West someone from Gloucester is supposed to feel something in common with someone from Penzance, that's just madness!

The only way devolution could work in England would be through the devolution of powers to ressurected counties and urban authorities where appropriate, anything else just won't correspond to anything and will likely be rejected.
 
Aye, but I think what Kvasir meant was that 'the idea of Yorkshire' as a unitary entity is strongest.

Well, this is pretty much the same thing as what I tackled. If what you're saying is that Yorkshire has a more prestigious history as a concept, then I'd agree with you, but that don't means it has the biggest regional identity today.

The North East has a lot of regionalism but it also has considerable tribalism between the groups there,

Not really. The only major divide is Tyneside/Teesside, which in any case is much less than the ones you have in Yorkshire IMO, namely North (rural, Tory) Humberside (mixed; bit of a chip on it's shoulder) and then you have West/South. I don't know how big the divide is between West Yorkshire and South, but I'd bet it isn't all sweetness and light.

The Wearside-Tyneside thing is wildly overrated IMO - outside of footy and pub jokes, nobody really cares in my experience. Most people in one almost always have family and friends in the other.
 

Thande

Donor
I don't know how big the divide is between West Yorkshire and South, but I'd bet it isn't all sweetness and light.

There's no real cultural barrier between West and South Yorkshire. The only real one in Yorkshire is north/south rural/urban, and that's more of a class divide.
 
The problem with regional assemblies is that their areas don't correspond to anything.

In the south and Midlands, they're pretty artifical. But Yorkshire, for example, doesn't correspond to anything? You're talking about a concept there which effectively pre-dates the Norman conquest.

The same goes for the North East, which has a long history of being semi-detached as a unit. Until fairly recently, historically-speaking, it pretty much governed itself anyway.
 
There's no real cultural barrier between West and South Yorkshire. The only real one in Yorkshire is north/south rural/urban, and that's more of a class divide.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by the idea that people living in, say, Scarborough feel the same level of affinity with people in Bradford that people living in Darlington feel with people in Chester-le-Street. The North East is much more geographically compact than Yorkshire and it's much more homogenous IMO.
 

Thande

Donor
I'm not sure I'm convinced by the idea that people living in, say, Scarborough feel the same level of affinity with people in Bradford that people living in Darlington feel with people in Chester-le-Street. The North East is much more geographically compact than Yorkshire and it's much more homogenous IMO.

The North East is more economically homogenous, yes, but that doesn't mean it has more of a regional identity than Yorkshire. And size and diversity don't necessarily make a regional identity problematic: Yorkshire is often compared to Texas in the US, where a large state containing both cities and rural areas and with the cities having their own rivalries does not prevent a very strong regional pride and identity.

Obviously, the only way to settle this question is with a Harry Hill esque fiiiiiight.
 
Thande pretty much hit the nail on the head in interpreting some dodgy grammar. The idea of "Yorkshire" is much stronger than the North East where each city has a very different idea of their identity. I remember once describing a friend from Hartlepool as "from Newcastle" accidentally which didn't go down so well :s

But from the Holderness Coast to the Yorkshire Moors, Humber Estuary to Leeds, Tadcaster, Barnsley and Doncaster there is an underlying identity of "Yorkshire".
 
The only regionalism in the UK is by football teams supported... so we could organize local assemblies on that basis.

Although of course the Man U assembly would represent areas entirely outside Manchester!
 

Thande

Donor
The only regionalism in the UK is by football teams supported... so we could organize local assemblies on that basis.

Although of course the Man U assembly would represent areas entirely outside Manchester!

A fun little concept, it's true. The Man U assembly: "The Speaker recognises the right honourable member for Shanghai" "Thank you Mr Speaker, I wish to protest to the House as regards the treatment of my constituents on a container ship by the constituents of the honourable member for Mogadishu in the Chelsea assembly..."
 
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