Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Maybe. I think the damage - especially from Truss six weeks in charge - is going to take a long time to recover from. A lot, I agree, is because of cost of living but I think there is a degree of acceptance that there are factors there out of any government's control, the fact the Tories voluntarily did a Black Wednesday all on their own is, I think, possibly even more damaging.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Its going to be a cracking election night, comparable to 1997, drinks and nibbles will be in order i think 

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I'm expecting multi-Portillos. Definitely one for drinks and snacks.

[Josquius]

I think a lot of people are turning away from the Tories simply because of the cost of living problem and its direct effects on them. Since things are going to get worse over the next year or two I therefore expect a Labour landslide. However, the labour support is very soft, Starmer and crew will need to show excellent progress by 2027/28 or the Tory shitshow will recommence c.2029.

I'd agree here. Which is another reason why fixing the system should be a priority of labour as soon as they get in power.
Take away the tory majority by default setup of the country.

[Sheilbh]

Haven't seen one in a while, but a poll on attitudes to Irish unification:


As Alex Clarkson has pointed this poll, and the repeated polls showing stronger support for the union than independence in Scotland, points to a weirdness where there's more consensus about Irish unification and Scottish independence in England than in Scotland or Ireland. Similarly I think there's actually more of a sense that they're good ideas in England than there - nothing annoys me more than the remainer Englishman who now thinks Scotland should go indepdendent and stans Nicola Sturgeon for, I don't know, reasons.

It also indicates that, I think, the big long-term risk to the union is English indifference and I think part of this is because of how incredibly centralised England is, so all attention is focused on Westminster. But also it's weirdly reinforced by a significant chunk of English opinion basically thinking the break-up of the union is inevitable (and possibly good as some form of karma for Brexit). I'd slightly exclude Irish unification from this as I think there's different dynamics at play there.

I think Labour win a massive majority and have parliamentary time for one big constitutional reform I wouldn't go for House of Lords, or voting reform, but massive decentralisation within England.

Edit: Totally separate, really good long piece on inheritance in the UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/03/why-inheritance-is-the-dirty-secret-of-the-middle-classes-harder-to-talk-about-than-sex

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, aside from general bad governance for several hundred years I think part of why the UK has so many nationalist/independence movements is because it is (while it doesn't use these terms) basically a federation of countries in which one country is 90% of the population and economy and the rest are all tiny. It is easy to question the union in that circumstance if you aren't in England. I don't really know what it'd look like because local government in England is a patchwork of weird and varying systems, but some form of greater devolution to sub-units of England including transfer of many powers traditionally vested in Westminster, would make England seem to be less of a singular bloc in a very unequal union.

[Sheilbh]

It's exactly that.

Not only that but England itself is hugely centralised so much of our politics runs through Westminster and is focused there.

I think the reports of Labour's constitutional reforms (review led by Gordon Brown) seem to be putting the cart before the horse too. For example abolishing the House of Lords and replacing it with some form of chamber of the nations and the regions is a good idea - but it feels like you should first define "the regions" bit of that.

Similarly the reports of Brown's proposals sound very New Labour - devolving responsibility and duties around delivering services but keeping tax and spend powers very tightly controlled in London/the Treasury.

I think covid really highlighted a lot of the issues around this with measures being imposed from the centre, a political media class not really comprehending how the country actually runs (it took several weeks for really heavyweight BBC and ITV journalists to get their head around devolved administrations) and, in Andy Burnham's use of his platform, a hint at how politics could be better.

[Gups]

I'd love Labour to bring back the regional development agencies, abolished by Cameron for no good reason at all. They were great at bypassing nimbyism

[Zanza]

You could use the EU NUTS regions.

[Sheilbh]

You could use the EU NUTS regions.

Those are the regions at an administrative basically for everything, including the Regional Development Agencies - they were the European Parliament regions/constituencies too.

The big problem with devolving power (or having them elect Lords/Senators) is that, with the exception of London, none of them have any democratic decision making institutions at a regional level. I know Jos will hate me for bringing it up but there was a local referendum for a North-East Assembly - and (on relatively low turnout) 80% voted against it. It more or less killed Labour's interest in regional devolution in England last time they were in power. If London started something (without a referendum), the North-East ended it.

Osborne had more success with metro mayors - in part, perhaps, because there wasn't a referendum/people weren't asked.

[Josquius]

As I've said before pretty sure I voted against the north east assembly.
It was a terribly ran referendum with minimal advertising that just seemed to be another layer of government for no good reason.

Also interestingly at the same time the assembly was defeated on a 30% or so turnout so too was the suggestion to make Durham County Council a unitary authority... But they did it anyway.

[Sheilbh]

Turnout was about 50%, which is bad but given that turnout in the elections around then was only 60%, not the worst.

And I've just checked - there was a local referendum on a London mayor which was over 70% in favour (though only on turnout of 35%).

[Zanza]

What kind of competencies do councils and mayors have in England? Those are democratically elected, right?

And you still seem to have those historical counties as well, or not? Are they political entities with actual competences?

[Sheilbh]

What kind of competencies do councils and mayors have in England? Those are democratically elected, right?

They are elected. The system and franchise varies in the nations and there are variances in England too.

There's lots of differences because there's different types of councils. Similarly there are differences between directly elected mayors and metro mayors. But broadly they're responsible for lots of stuff - education, arts, building/planning, children and adult's social care, transport, waste, public health, emergency planning, elections, libraries, licensing, parking, parks, leisure/sports centres, trading standards, housing. Basically, with the exception of the NHS (and to an extent, post-Gove, education) most of the interactions people have with the "state" are with their local council.

A huge amount of austerity has been delivered through local council cuts to those services, which is why the public realm feels so threadbare and there issues with planning etc. In general councils have cut back on more or less everything except for social care and children's services for obvious reasons.

The reason for that is that they rely very heavily on central government grants (from Westminster, Holyrood or Cardiff generally) and all parties in government have found it easier to make austerity "invisible" if they basically pass the buck. So they cut the funding for councils and let them take the hit of cutting services. This was particularly severe during the coalition years in England - Scotland and Wales delayed that approach to austerity but have embraced it in the last five years or so.

That points to the bigger issue that councils don't raise much of their own money. There are property taxes - council tax on individuals and business rates on commercial properties - but these are controlled by central government. For example business rates are collected locally but then 50% is redistributed nationally largely to top up poorer councils with less valuable property/businesses. I think there's some stat that shows local government in the UK is a wild outlier in how little control it has over its own finances - but I can't remember it

And it's been a post-war, cross-party problem. In the interwar years and before the councils were the centre of social reform. They were really powerful and often the base of future national leaders - famously the Chamberlains but also future Labour leaders like Lansbury and Attlee. But you had councils with council-owned water companies, health providers, gas companies etc. There's loads of welfare at the local level in the UK before 1945 - but I think the fact it's so little known slightly indicates the problem. We tell a national story which misses the differences, failures and innovations at local levels. But even at the time, especially from Labour, it was viewed as unjust for there to be differences between councils on services.

After 1945 Labour and the post-war consensus is largely about nationalising lots of those areas to deliver an equal, national service (to this day you will get front page stories about a "postcode lottery" of one council funding something and another not) - whether in health, utilities etc. That process includes an element of nationalising the tax base and councils as an alternative or indpendent centre of power go into decline. It's radically accelerated under Thatcher who basically (and correctly) views local government in some big cities as used by Labour to politically challenge the government - Liverpool, famously, but she also breaks up the Greater London Council. Then under New Labour there's an approach of councils being used to identify social issues/problems and deliver services to help - but it is controlled by the centre especially in terms of spending (and I worry, from what's been reported, that Brown is going to recommend this again). They don't give power to councils they use them as diagnostic tools and ways of directly targeting services at the point of most need. Then you have the Tories who talk a lot about decentralisation but mainly deliver cuts.

And you still seem to have those historical counties as well, or not? Are they political entities with actual competences?

No. I don't think historical counties have any powers.

But, you're right they still exist. That's basically I think a long, lingering cultural impact. There's exceptions - like London - but many people seem to know and identify with their historical county more than the actual administrative unit of local government they live in. There is a bit of me that wonders if you took it back to the late 19th century state where the historical county was also the administrative unit if there'd be more support for or caring about local government because it would be aligned to people's mental maps.

There's other problems with it like some are basically tiny and don't work as a unit of administration. They're not really aligned with local cities or the local economy. But there are areas of the country (I think Yorkshire and Lancashire especially) where local government reorganisations very much cut across local identities.

[Josquius]

Traditional counties are dumb in the modern day.
Their borders were drawn in medieval times, heavily following rivers since they're obvious natural borders.
Rivers are also prime sites for industrial development in later times.
This meant you got way too many examples of urban areas that logically should be managed as one split between two counties.

Again a pox upon thatcher. Abolishing the metropolitan counties is a crime of hers that doesn't get the attention it deserves.

I've been wondering whether a good way of doing devolution might not be to do as many places do and have a seperate tax for your local area (a replacement for the idiocy of council tax).
We could learn from Japan on this and have the concept of a home town tax where you get to send part of this away back home.
The bother there of course will be selfishness and people choosing where they live over their hometown - in Japan the problem they have is outright bribery from towns for people to choose them - so I wonder whether some kind of mandatory nature could work. The tax is split in 18ths and distributed to where you grew up.