We need a new way to run a truly United Kingdom
|
Version 0 of 1. The former prime minister warns that each region and nation must have a voice if we are to solve future health and jobs crises In a country that promised to do whatever it takes to keep people in work, it is barely believable: by November, 1 million young people in the UK will be unemployed. According to a new youth report from the Alliance for Full Employment, the crisis of 2020 is creating a Covid generation as lost and as neglected as the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) generation of the 1980s. Now, as then, youth unemployment in cities in the north, Midlands, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and in the inner cities will exceed 20%. Young people need local and national government working together to help them through. But the very areas with the greatest needs are the ones that are protesting that the centre listens to them least. For Covid is revealing that our nation suffers another illness: a fatal flaw in the way we’re governed, for which we must now also find a cure. On the one hand, we have “the man in Whitehall” who thinks he knows best. On the other, we have local and devolved leaders who know their area better. The former has shut out the latter: local lockdowns imposed without local consultation, communities discovering their fate through leaks without – until last week’s furious rows – the courtesy of a phone call in advance, not even from a junior civil servant. When urgent letters from the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, don’t get an acknowledgement far less a reply, we are in the realms of a Whitehall farce. Examine the record until a day or two ago: seven months into the crisis, most metro mayors have had little more than one phone call with Boris Johnston. Even the Conservative mayor of West Midlands, Andy Street, has joined the protests about the lack of consultation. Little wonder then that Wales has broken ranks by protecting its border; in desperate need of financial help, Manchester and Liverpool have declared their own form of UDIs with their own programme of business support; and, of course, most threatening of all, a poll in Scotland has said 58% of people want independence. Never has the United Kingdom looked more divided and more polarised. In short, we have devolution but still a centralist mindset. We have, in theory, a decentralised constitution with supposed local powers of initiative, but a unitary state that won’t let go. Ministers pay lip-service to localism (and will soon be announcing 50 new elected mayors) but in truth power remains in SW1. Whether it be the Brexit “internal market” bill, industry policy, social care or questions of fairness, the constant complaint I hear from people cross the UK is “whoever in London thought of that?” For after 20 years of devolution and decentralisation, there is no real capacity for joint working between London and the regions and nations. All the mechanisms put in place for coordination, like joint ministerial committees, are broken; ministers have yet to wake up to the significance of what they are creating – strong, powerful mayors with their own mandates who now complement parliaments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. They cannot accept that the UK body politic is no longer made up of just MPs and local councillors, but also elected legislatures in the nations and elected mayors in the regions. Johnson has yet to understand that it will soon be impossible to hold together our multinational UK of distinctive nations and regions within the straitjacket of a centralised state. There can be no unity without diversity, and no national integration without inclusion. That is why I believe that the minute the immediate crisis is over, the UK needs to be rethought and rebooted – starting with a convention engaging all nations and regions and built out of local citizens’ assemblies to discuss how, through joint working and the sharing of power, we manage practical challenges like disease control, social care, regeneration and employment. I believe the solution, if there is to be one, will start from Scotland. Here, there are daily Scotland-UK disputes over who does what, and Scotland has the most experience of the tension between different levels of government and of the struggle to find a balance between the local autonomy people desire and the cross-border cooperation that we need. Youth unemployment is, indeed, illustrative of the problem: neither the UK nor the Scottish government can tackle youth unemployment on its own; yet, unable to find a way of cooperating, each has separate schemes and, in the confusion, the young unemployed suffer. With one foot now out of the door of the UK, Scotland has also to think more deeply about whether it really wants to give up on all forms of cooperation within these islands – 58% of Scots say they want separation from the UK, but a far bigger majority – 75% – say they want cooperation within it. And if constitutional options for better joint working and the sharing of power were brought forward, the many Scots who, out of frustration, now say they want to go it alone, may discover they have much more common cause with Wales, the north and the Midlands than any “us versus them” nationalist alternative. But devolution will not bring unity unless each region and nation’s voice can also be represented at the centre of UK government. Most of all, we need to understand that the enduring unity of our country depends not on a nostalgic deference to ancient institutions that are not working but on forging a new story about what it is to be British. The millions who clapped every Thursday in support of our NHS created one shining moment when a whole country stood together, united not just around our common experiences of Covid but around values we share in common: values of empathy and solidarity with each other. If we want to build on that spirit, re-emerge as a united country and solve health and employment crises, then it is time to agree a new way to govern ourselves. Gordon Brown was chancellor from 1997 to 2007 and prime minister from 2007 to 2010. He has recently joined with Labour metro mayors and the Welsh first minister to form the Alliance for Full Employment. |