Reading I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

Brexit is an opportunity to make a federal United Kingdom Gordon Brown

856 words

28 March 2017

09:06

Financial Times (FT.Com)

Sweeping powers over migration, agriculture, fisheries, the environment, value added tax and

regional and competition policy are set to be repatriated to Britain under the Great Repeal Bill,

which will be published Thursday following the triggering of Article 50 to exit the EU.

Britain now faces a choice. Brexit could herald a further centralisation of the UK as yet more

power accumulates in London or we could seize a newfound opportunity to devolve power and

create a more decentralised and even federal UK.

The federal option is one that a past generation of British prime ministers — from Gladstone to

Asquith; Lloyd George and Churchill — grappled with more than a century ago. Then the

concern was Ireland; now many worry about the very survival of the UK.

Theresa May’s speech on Monday, ruling out a “looser” union, will do little to silence demands

from Scotland, Wales and London. And I expect that many of the powers repatriated from

Brussels will eventually end up in Cardiff and Edinburgh, Belfast and London too. But devolving

new powers to some areas of the UK will simply inflame a sense of injustice in others — not

least in the communities that tipped the balance for Leave — the northern towns and rural

communities of England who will feel even more ignored and left behind. And they have good

reason to worry about their post-Brexit future.

Recent research shows England’s poorer north and Midlands are 50-100 per cent more

dependent on European trade than London and will suffer disproportionately more job losses

from the government’s hard Brexit.

With unemployment in the north-east already twice as high as the south-east — 6.8 per cent

versus 3.5 per cent — Britain’s historic north-south divide is on course to widen even further.

Brexit will offer no cushion for poorer communities where income levels are a fraction of those

in London.

The popular theory has always been that what is good for the capital is good for the whole of

Britain as prosperity would trickle down to the least-advantaged regions. In reality, little of

London’s success spills over to the rest of the country, either in the form of business relocation,

technology transfer or contracts for northern businesses servicing the southern economy. For

years now, the capital has been decoupling from the rest of the UK and despite 50 years of

postwar regional policy a London-centric, Whitehall-dominated constitution has found itself

inadequate to the challenge of reversing Britain’s deeply embedded structural inequalities. This

is one reason why per capita income levels in the north and midlands of England, Wales and

Northern Ireland are now lower than the poorest US states — Mississippi and West Virginia —

and on a par with the poorer regions of the former East Germany.

The latest economic initiative, the return to a sectoral industrial strategy with a minimal regional

dimension, is unlikely to reverse this trend. The power of initiative for English regions to chart

their own economic future is the one option that has not yet been tried.

Plans for a more devolved — or even federal — UK have always run aground because no

solution has been found to the English question. With England representing 85 per cent of the

UK, nothing other than asymmetrical solutions are on offer. An English parliament that

coexisted with a UK parliament would either appear toothless or would override and render

irrelevant UK decision-making — and could finish off the union. Nor would it necessarily bridge

the north-south divide: sitting in London it might be as distant from and unresponsive to the

north as now.

Yet every plan for devolution to England’s regions has fallen foul of its two-tier local

government system and of a widespread belief that new regional assemblies would take power

not from the centre but from local authorities.

One way forward is a more broadly based Council of the North, serving the 15m residents of the

north-west, the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber, and composed of local authority

leaders, mayors and perhaps MPs. It could complement the predominantly urban Northern

Powerhouse and build on the locally inspired Transport for the North. By co-ordinating £300bn

of economic activity without removing any responsibilities from local authorities, it could

deliver power, resources and jobs — and a voice — to the north, head off what could become an

open anti-London revolt and blaze a trail for further devolution at a later date. Councils for

England’s other regions could complement the elected Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and

London authorities within a more federal framework.

Constitutions are not just about governmental structures but about finding ways to bridge societal

divisions. In Scotland in 1989, a constitutional convention of civic society and political parties

managed to deliver a workable agreement on a new Scottish constitution. Nearly 30 years on, a

UK-wide constitutional convention may be the best starting point for building consensus around

a much needed redistribution of power.

The writer is a former UK prime minister

The Financial Times Limited (AAIW/EIW)

Document FTCOM00020170328ed3s005ha