Does Labour still love devolution?
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When the verbs disappear from a political speech, it’s crowd-rousing time. At the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this year, the Prime Minister went verbless early. He was describing work begun and “only just getting started”: “more teachers, more neighbourhood police, more operations”. Tucked into the to-do list was: “devolution to our nations, regions and cities”. More devolution? In all of these?
Between 1997 and 1999, Tony Blair’s first government passed, after successful referenda, three devolution Acts. Two created devolved legislatures for Scotland and Wales. Within the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, a third established a power-sharing assembly and executive for Northern Ireland at Stormont, replacing direct rule from Westminster.
To describe these various configurations of executive power as asymmetric is something of an understatement. England, with by far the largest population, lacks almost any devolved government — unless you count the patchwork of Metro Mayors, who have proved rather popular — and is governed by MPs serving in the national Parliament at Westminster. The “English question” did bob up between 2015-2020, but subsided. The name United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not a strict reflection of reality, but Starmer’s intimation of more powers for different parts of the Kingdom is important.
And what of our “regions and cities”? Past attempts at creating English regional middle-level political authorities have struggled with two problems: hostility to the notion of another layer of politicians and central government’s inadequate financing of local government. In November 2004, Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott tried and failed: a postal ballot in the North-East was negative. Metro mayors, though, have some regional responsibilities.
Devolution has traditionally been seen by the Conservative Party as the proverbial “don’t go there” minefield. Apart from David Cameron, whose arrogant self-confidence in calling a badly-framed, ill-judged referendum in 2014 narrowly missed causing Scottish secession, Conservatives tend towards limiting devolution and maintaining centralised government, in keeping with the party’s name: the Conservative and Unionist Party. Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, champion local government. Labour broadly promotes devolution, though opinions vary. But by far the strongest argument for greater devolution is that decisions made in Downing Street and Whitehall do not accurately address the needs of “our nations, regions and cities”.
A new book by the Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge, Michael Kenny’s Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty and the Fight to Save the UK (Hurst 2024), provides a comprehensive history of devolution in the UK. Professor Kenny makes comparisons with the experiences of Canada with Quebec, Spain with Catalonia and even the breakup of Czechoslovakia — a lesson in how to lose nearly half of your territory (Slovakia) peacefully.
The book’s title suggests crisis and high drama, but the text is scholarly with the moderate tone and attention to detail of a civil servant – which Kenny isn’t. He is non-judgemental about the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) of Northern Ireland, who contributed to the UK ending up with the most radical option for Brexit. The DUP subsequently complained about the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol which dealt with the intractable border issues, a direct consequence of the radical Brexit to which they had contributed. He does emphasise how Boris Johnson further aroused Scots nationalism over Brexit, a rejection of Scotland’s significant Remain vote. Unhelpful differences in approach also emerged over Covid strategy. There is a particularly helpful chapter for politicians on future proofing the Union, how to prepare for the undermining of devolved authorities by events, and how to increase cooperation between different layers of authority on key topics such as health, housing, transport, and employment.
Kenny’s book went to press before the General Election and the dramatic change in political fortunes in Scotland, the implosion of the SNP and Labour’s electoral victory. Luckily for the Labour Party, pressure for a Scottish referendum on independence looks as if it has gone away for at least a decade. But this is not the case for Northern Ireland, where Irish nationalist demands are becoming more prominent.
It will not have escaped the Prime Minister’s attention that the President of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald, attended the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool and spoke at a fringe meeting on Monday 23 September. Her message was that the UK government needed to make clear its intention “to trigger a referendum on Irish unity” before 2030. This sally was one consequence of the restoration of a power-sharing government in Stormont with a Sinn Féin majority. Michelle O’Neill, now First Minister of Northern Ireland, has been making the same demand. But in the Republic of Ireland, which needs to agree to reunification, Sinn Féin received only 12 per cent of the vote.
Sir Keir Starmer has said that an Irish unity referendum is “not even on the horizon”. But that horizon is specified in the Good Friday Agreement, an international treaty. It is binding on the Prime Minister of the UK to call a border poll under certain – somewhat subjective – conditions: “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a United Ireland”. Polling suggests that 40 per cent of Northern Ireland voters currently want unification with the Republic, against 50 per cent opposed. But the Republic isn’t keen to take over Northern Ireland, with its £10 billion subvention from the UK. Nor to face the cost of raising salaries there to levels south of the border, where they are on average 10% higher. Nor to incorporate a large and hostile Protestant minority. Who could blame them?
True to his word, within four days of entering Downing Street, the Prime Minister was meeting the UK’s metro mayors and out visiting the leaders of the UK devolved authorities. During the March local elections, he had spoken of seeking “full-fat devolution” and wanting to “push power and resources out of Whitehall”. Nestling in the Liverpool Conference speech, where every word will have been pored over, “devolution to our nations, regions and cities” should have got a little more attention. It suggests a significant transformation of governance in the UK. It may also forestall the growth of popular demand in Northern Ireland for unification with the Irish Republic.
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