Green as Gravel

Natalie Bennett, Leader of the Green Party in England & Wales (& Cornwall) was one of the panel on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? this week.  To the amazement of anyone concerned about the ecological crisis we face, she launched into an impassioned defence of massive urban development and a rejection of those measures that might keep population growth within locally acceptable bounds.

So, what’s the Green Party for?  Why does it pretend to be part of the solution when it clearly has the same analysis of the problem as all the other London-based parties?  Namely that the damage done by growth is to be cured by yet more growth.  It has over recent years courted the red-green vote, by playing up the red, but seemingly at the expense of the green.

All parties are constantly challenged to say what they would do to create more jobs.  A really courageous party would challenge the question.  We don’t need the maximum number of jobs.  We need the optimum number of jobs for the optimum size of population, given the sensible limits that define our region’s place in a sustainable world.  The UK has far, far too many jobs for its size, many of them in the wrong places and many of them financially profitable (for others) but socially useless and environmentally harmful.  That’s one reason why it’s importing folk at the rate of 250,000 a year net.  It also has a failed education and welfare system, because it has 2 million unemployed who should be matched to the jobs available and trained to do them if they lack the skills.  Come on, this isn’t rocket science, it’s the basic sustainability that corporate interests prevent us enjoying.

Growth isn’t necessary for economic reasons.  It’s necessary only for fiscal reasons, because without it the UK cannot pay the interest on the imaginary debts it’s been fooled by bankers into believing that it owes.  The continued refusal to confront this fact is what’s leading to planet-wide disaster as rising debt outstrips the capacity of the real, resource-limited economy.

The future needs green politics.  What it obviously doesn’t need is Green politics.

The People v. The Profit

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell painted a picture of the future as a boot stamping on a human face, forever.  The boot now has a name.  TTIP.  The Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership.  Hammered out in secret talks between Europe and the USA, it will make democracy illegal, by giving corporations the right to sue governments for passing laws that restrict their profits, such as laws that raise environmental or social protection.

Campaign group 38 Degrees gave evidence this week to a select committee at Westminster.  One of their members described the experience as follows:

“This week I was shouted at by a group of MPs.

I'd been asked to explain to the Business Select Committee why 38 Degrees members are so worried about TTIP.  That's the dodgy EU-US trade deal that could bring further privatisation of our NHS.  But once I got there, they didn’t seem to want to hear why we were against privatisation.  Or why we want to stop American corporations having the power to sue our government in secret courts.

Instead they attacked 38 Degrees members for wanting to have a say.  They kept arguing that 38 Degrees members didn’t know enough to have valid opinions about the deal.  And when I said we don’t trust politicians to deal with something as important as this behind closed doors, the chairman told me to shut up!”

If, like us, you’re sceptical about the value of trade and concerned about the threat that trade poses to democracy, you’ll understand where he’s coming from.  TTIP has to be defeated but, in the long term, it’s just as important to defeat the mindset – totalitarian liberalism – that thinks something like TTIP could ever be acceptable in a society that values vital democracy.  We’ve become numbed to the idea that it’s not for business to compete for access to our markets, it’s for nations to compete for the privilege of investment by businesses.  Because if the businesses are disobeyed, they have the power (that we gave to them) to lay waste to everything.  Faced with the threat of our sovereignty now being for sale, defence is nowhere near enough.  Politics must re-conquer economics or go down fighting.  A boycott of US goods might be a start?

It’s just a shame that David Babbs – the man who now complains about being shouted at – is the man who decided only last year that the voters of Eastleigh ought not to hear from Colin Bex.

Seeing the Light

Here’s a story from the North Somerset Times, a story with outlines applicable throughout Wessex, and maybe across other regions too:

“A long-standing member of North Somerset’s Conservative party has resigned from the organisation which he believes ‘has no interest’ in the area’s issues.

Arthur Terry, who is the representative for Portishead’s East Ward on North Somerset Council, has left the party and will continue his work for residents as an independent councillor.

Cllr Terry has been a Tory party member since 1981 and was elected to Woodspring Council [as North Somerset Council was then known] in 1984.

He cites issues including police funding and new housing figure demands as reasons for leaving the Conservatives.

He said: ‘Over the years it has become increasingly clear to me that the national political parties of all persuasions have no interest in this area.

‘This is demonstrated by their repeated failure to address the serious inequities in the distribution of the revenue support grant to our local authorities and it would appear the consistent failure of our local Members of Parliament to influence this.

‘Clearly as a lone voice I can do little to influence these issues, but I can be honest and no longer represent a party that has no interest in the views and concerns of ordinary members.’

Comment is barely necessary.  Centralist diktat steamrollers on, oblivious to promises of localism.  Unfair funding arrangements continue.  Protests to those at the top of the London-based parties go unheeded.  Experienced local councillors draw their own conclusions, and so we see the centuries of deference to London dominance slowly start to wither and die at the root.

Scotland the Bold

How’s this for a map to follow?  Not perfect, indeed, but certainly perfectible, as much for Wessex as for Scotland.

We too have the ability to wake up and grasp a better world.  Let's give it a try…

Scared As A Bully

On 9th November 2014, Catalonia voted 4 to 1 for independence from Spain.  Madrid isn’t ready to begin talks on separation.  Instead, it’s determined to prosecute Catalonia’s leading nationalists for organising the vote.  Will David Cameron protest?  Will there be airstrikes?

On 20th November 2014, the French Parliament voted to abolish many of the historic regions of France through forced mergers, against the wishes of those affected.  An amendment calling for the reunification of Brittany – split since the Vichy era between two regions, one predominantly non-Breton – was haughtily rejected.  Will David Cameron protest?  Will there be airstrikes?

In both these states, the full force of the law is being used to crush democratic feeling.  All in defence of the outdated primacy of ‘France’ and ‘Spain’, and of the power of centralist politicians to glorify a long-dead past and view other, more human-scale loyalties as a threat.  This is what happens when the Europe of a Hundred Flags steps up from bookish theory to impassioned practice.  There are those who really don’t like the idea one bit.  Warmongers, austerity-merchants and lovers of technocracy.  David Cameron is among them, so watch this space.

Let’s step back to 14th November for an insight into the true depth of establishment paranoia.  Cornelius Adebahr’s article for the Carnegie Endowment explores the problems facing a fragmenting Europe, from the perspective that fragmentation is somehow a ‘bad thing’.  Xenophobic hatred certainly is, but that isn’t the subject matter of debate among Europeans seeking greater autonomy.  All we want is genuine subsidiarity free from centralist manipulation.

Including the power to judge for ourselves what functions we’re capable of exercising.  Europe is in crisis because it has become a project of elite dominance, the preserve of a managerialist class that denies the right – or even the ability – of ordinary folk to shape their own governance.  Adebahr sneers at what he terms ‘populism’ because it’s too democratic.  He sneers at nationalism because it isn’t driven by a narrowly economic conception of rationality.  Because it rejects that ‘rationality’ in which economic power rests not with democratic states but with anonymous global ‘investors’ shopping around for the choicest bargain.

The Europe of the Investors is an integrated economic space in which barriers to the movement of capital do not exist and democratic ownership of key economic assets is repeatedly eroded.  Together, these two things make it easy for markets to punish policy-makers who dare to be different.  (UK governments make things more than usually hard for themselves – and for us – for contorted ideological reasons that stem from City overlordship of our political system.)  Populism is labelled as bad because it’s the opposite of what we might call investism.  TTIP and the Lisbon Treaty are part of the process of declaring democracy illegal worldwide because it cannot be guaranteed to put investor interests first.  And we now see in France and Spain on which side of the argument nationalists and regionalists are judged to stand.  Voting is the way to change everything, or it is nothing.  OK, nothing it is then.

We’ve made clear our own view that vital industries, utilities and public services must be owned and controlled locally and regionally – not bought and sold by the multi-nationals.  Common ownership is a widely held ideal, even among Conservatives.  The consensus now needs to be put into effect.  Obviously, not through Labour or its continental equivalents, all tainted beyond recognition, but through radical nationalist and regionalist alternatives.

How radical?  Should compensation be paid to the present owners?  And if so, how much?  If the aim is to achieve common ownership, in the public interest, can the private (or foreign public) interests represented by compensation claims be viewed as anything but self-centred trivia, irrelevant to the core issue of achieving economic democracy?  Or should those who invested in good faith be reimbursed, it being no fault of theirs if they sank money into a politically sensitive industry?  In short, is the current set-up a crime against society or just a mistake?  Have the investment giants earned our rage or our pity?

Any such theories of ‘fairness’ can be laboured so as to slow down necessary progress.  Even to visualise the issue as a transaction is to bow to a hostile point of view.  Why not decouple progress from that which retards it?  Why not take back now, and pay back later (if at all)?  Our thinking has been so polluted by investism – even governments claim to be 'investing' in roads or a better NHS when what they mean is they're devoting more resources to transport or healthcare – that we miss the most obvious, direct answers to our problems.  Cut the Gordian knot.  Or perhaps, in the case of PFI, the Gordon knot.

Bear in mind (a) that many of our nationalised industries were created by seizing municipal assets without compensation (and this sort of thing still goes on, quite shamelessly), (b) that they were then privatised at an average 30% discount on the market price, (c) that as natural monopolies they have continued to be cash cows ever since, and (d) that corporations spent – and spend – millions on subverting the democratic debate, belying the idea that they exist only to serve.  False title.  False value.  False benefit.  False intent.  It would be entirely reasonable to conclude that the owners are worth rather less to us than they claim.  Moreover, the owners aren't the ones who know how to run buses, trains, power plants or treatment works in Wessex.  Their only expertise is in financial engineering, which any sane society would be better off without.  So how do we value their contribution?  On balance, negatively.  THEY should be paying US.  At the very least, let's start the negotiations at nil and work upwards EVER so reluctantly.  We can't increase taxes or borrowing, so the third option it has to be.

What we need is not so much ‘UK plc’ as ‘Wessex Common Estate’, our resources managed for this and for future generations.  Public assets belong to everyone, born and unborn, and should only ever be leased, never sold, let alone given away.  We need a politics of stewardship, not a politics of trading.  Friends are motivated by love to share, willingly, within the restraints of a common bond.  Enemies are motivated by fear to trade, suspiciously, without the restraints of a common bond.  It’s true for us, it’s true for Europe, and it’s true for the world.  You share with your friends and you trade with your enemies.  What does that say about those who want global trade to grow?

Europe stands at a crossroads.  A second Berlin Wall can come tumbling down, destroying the needless political centralism of old global empires AND, if the will is there, the needless economic centralism of new global corporations too.  These are two causes that can make common cause in delivering what folk clearly want to see happen.  Either that, or the military will be on the streets to make sure it doesn’t happen.  That’s how scared the bullies are.

May It Be

Thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 we know that the next General Election will be on 7th May 2015.  This means that small parties with few resources and little flexibility now have the same chance to plan ahead as the London-based big battalions with their ear to the ground at Westminster. 

WR President Colin Bex and Secretary-General David Robins were in Bridgwater today, in one of the Party’s possible target seats.  Bridgwater is a much under-rated place, proud of its past and with good reason but, as a working-class town hit by plant closures, also one concerned about its future.  There were some cracking good conversations to be had on the main shopping streets, and real interest in an alternative to the status quo.

Colin was being shadowed by an independent film production company looking to follow him throughout the campaign.  Along with the flag, they proved to be a valuable visual prompt to passing members of the public to stop and talk.

After Bridgwater, Colin travelled on to Truro for the Mebyon Kernow Annual Conference, an event WR members try to attend whenever possible. With the Cornish now recognised as a national minority and the campaign for a Cornish Assembly again making waves, it can only be a matter of time before those in the English regions look closely at their Celtic neighbours and start to ask why they can’t have some of that new politics too. Our power.  Our wealth.  Let's have them back.

Little Things Please Little Minds

The Scots recently held a referendum on independence.  They discussed what currency to use, whether to join NATO, and what to do about Trident.

BBC West’s televised debate on devolution this week took a different approach.  At one point, the politicians on the panel were challenged with the problem of different wheelie bins on opposite sides of the same street in Kingswood, on the Bristol fringe.  It’s a common enough phenomenon on the boundaries between London boroughs but Londoners have other things to get excited about.  Like what to spend our taxes on next.

Anyone watching from Dorset or Wiltshire must have been deeply disappointed that Bristol hogged the limelight.  It wasn’t even as if the politicians were that well-informed.  South Gloucestershire’s Leader went on about the 1,000-year-old county boundaries, unaware that Bristol’s boundary with its rural neighbours dates from 1951.  A long time ago now, but not before the Norman Conquest.

What this clearly wasn’t was a debate on devolution.  Not until the very end, when the Wessex Wyvern was raised and a show of hands sought on whether or not we need the same powers as Scotland.  The ‘No’ vote won, but a surprisingly large number of hands went up for ‘Yes’, considering that this was a proposition the programme-makers had largely sought to bury beneath a mantle of municipal minutiae.

It could have been worse.  Viewers might have been, yet again, denied the knowledge that a regionalist alternative exists.  Viewers elsewhere in Wessex were indeed denied that knowledge.

There is no regional television channel that serves the whole of Wessex.  Its creation has been one of our aims since 1979.  Meanwhile, the BBC divides Wessex into the four sub-regions into which it naturally divides geographically.  The north-west is served from Bristol, the south-west from Plymouth, and the south-east from Southampton.  The north-east is served from Southampton too, via bases in Reading and Oxford.  The way these various stations treated the devolution issue varied enormously, illustrating one of the challenges for a regionalist party whose aspirations the centre struggles to recognise and accommodate.

BBC West, from the Bristol Cathedral Choir School, did as well as could be expected.  A range of views was aired, but the Wyvern was the only splash of colour in an otherwise drab offering.  On Twitter, the programme was variously described as dreadful, dire and dreary, with the limited capabilities of the superficial Points West format coming in for criticism.  One tweet sums up the reaction: “I wish I had gone to bed instead of watching.”

BBC South West, from Cornwall’s Eden Project, could have had a Wessex presence too.  Their researcher was in discussions with our President, Colin Bex, in late October but by early November he’d been dropped from the shortlist.  Mebyon Kernow’s Leader, Cllr Dick Cole, put in a sustained effort on the night but it would have been good to allow viewers east of the Tamar to know that they too have an alternative to the London-centric status quo.  Subsequent tweets suggested that the English south-west had been badly let down by the programme-makers – but if they will exclude the one political party that has something specific to say about the English south-west then you have to expect that.

BBC South, serving the heart of Alfred’s kingdom, was the one station where you might think a Wessex Regionalist presence would be imperative.  Apparently not.  The South didn’t even get a programme to itself, but a joint one with the South East.  One of the presenters agonised over whether the area had any coherent sense of regional identity.  Define it like that and it’s not hard to find the answer.

Now, we know that BBC stations do talk to each other.  They share contact details and get each other to film extra footage or record audio that they can pass around (and they co-produce the occasional programme, like Late Kick Off).  We hope they go on doing so.  What they seemingly do not do is share editorial perspective.  When The Case for Wessex was launched at Wantage in 2003, BBC South turned up to film the event.  Other BBC stations in Wessex declined to cover the story at all.  Not in their area.  True, Wantage is not, but Wessex is.

Politicians and media alike share a local perspective that is set within a national context.  Regions perplex them.  Too big to be local.  Too small to be national.  That’s right.  They’re something in between, the missing piece of the jigsaw, the piece whose absence explains why the governance of Britain is so dysfunctional.  Imagining the difference that having them will make is not easy, though Scotland and Wales are there to be visited should you need a model.  The benefits will be clear enough once regions are in place in England.  Those benefits will be forever denied us though, without the ability to see over the hedge.

We Are Not London

We know where London is, but is the rest of England also London?  It seems that the London regime would like to make it so.

Manchester has a proud history and a distinctive identity.  Or used to.  Yet Greater Manchester Transport has become ‘Transport for Greater Manchester’, because that’s the word-order they now use in London.  And yesterday, George Osborne announced a Boris for Greater Manchester, just two years after the city voted down the idea of a directly elected mayor.  The new man or woman will take control of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, whose members have surrendered their democratic rights in return for a promise that a few more crumbs will be devolved to the area.

Apart from Bristol, all the big cities ordered to vote on having an elected mayor rejected the idea, but Osborne is determined to roll it out regardless, with Leeds next in his sights.  Osborne’s job, of course, is to run the Treasury so the fact that he’s now become the expert on local government structures shows how deep purely financial interests now reach into the dark heart of policy-making.  Or maybe the minister actually responsible, Yorkshireman Eric Pickles, knows better than to court controversy on the wrong side of the Pennines.

The Mayor will take over some or all of the role of Police & Crime Commissioner for Greater Manchester.  Perhaps the thinking is that with more to do, he or she might even motivate voters to turn out, something they won’t do for the PCCs.  In last week’s PCC by-election in South Yorkshire, turnout was 15%.  In the first round of PCC elections in 2012, one ballot box in Newport famously contained not a single paper.  Why can’t we just dissolve the people and elect a new one?  Where’s the point in offering them anything when they’re clearly not interested?  Oh, but they are if they’re Scottish.  Scotland’s independence referendum, with an 84.5% turnout, shows that the fault doesn’t lie with the voters.  It lies with those who keep asking the wrong questions, creating new posts that no-one outside the London-based think-tanks ever asked for, disrupting local arrangements that were well understood.  Come along now children, we’re going to the polls today.  Shan’t.  But you know it’s your civic duty to sign away your power with the mark of an illiterate.  Not going to.

Well, good for them.  We’ve always had a sense of solidarity with those up north who have their whole world regularly turned upside down by the social vivisectionists in London.  Their governance, their economy, their identity, all are things to be experimented with until the region conforms to London expectations.  (Serve them right, you may well say, for voting for London parties instead of for their own and you’d be correct that they have less and less excuse now.)  So they’ll be getting a Mayor of Greater Manchester and a Mayor of West Yorkshire.  But if all of the recently established Combined Authorities for the conurbations are now to be turned into mayoralties, what of Tyneside / Wearside?  That’s one area where things are different.

There’s still plenty of talk of creating an Integrated Transport Authority for Greater Bristol – a new Avon County Council in all but name – and the idea is unlikely to go away any time soon.  The same thinking resurfaces at times like this in South Hampshire.  The fact is that it’s yesterday’s solution.  Tyne & Wear had an Integrated Transport Authority until this year, when it was abolished in favour of the North East Combined Authority, a wider body taking in the surrounding counties.  If you want better transport, it has to be better for everyone, not just the cities.  It has to be about developing a transport network, and for that you need a regional perspective.  The North East Combined Authority is a step in that direction, being not much smaller in area than the regional assembly that voters rejected in 2004, though it lacks direct elections or significant new powers.

So when Osborne completes his roll-out, will there be a Mayor of the North East?  Where does the nonsense end?  Ed Miliband, not wishing to be outflanked, is promising powers to arbitrary groupings of shires, to be known as ‘county regions’.  Will they be getting mayors too?  The Mayor of Cornwall & Isles of Scilly?  The Mayor of Heart of the South West?  With Manchester Londonised, and Leeds next, is English local government all doomed to find transparent, deliberative democracy phased out in favour of an elective dictatorship of personality politicians forming a scrum round the Treasury’s big ball of money?  Rugby is perhaps the wrong analogy.  This isn’t Rugby.  This is Eton.  (Or maybe St Paul’s.)

David Cameron has bought-in to the current fad for empowering England’s big cities because it enables any more radical action to be kicked into the long grass.  Shame on Ed Miliband for not seeing this.  It’s a fad however that deserves to be comprehensively deconstructed:

1.                  Cameron is not to be trusted on decentralisation.  He promised ‘localism’: an end to Whitehall interference in local decision-making.  Instead he has allowed Whitehall to obtain new powers to interfere, while making none of the really big changes that are needed.  Whole Whitehall departments such as Communities and Education have no other significant function but to interfere in local decision-making.  They wouldn’t be missed.  So why the delay in scrapping them?

2.                  The ‘cities first’ agenda isn't about fairness.  It degrades the importance of the lives lived by those of us who are not in the big cities.  If cities are trusted to make their own decisions, why hold back the countryside and small towns?  Have they nothing to contribute?  Why do they need to be micro-managed from London if others don’t?

3.                  It will be nice for some to get more powers, but aren’t these the same powers – or some of them – that have been taken away from local government over the past 70 years, by Labour efficiency men and Tory ideologues?  Don’t the strings attached make any concessions meaningless?

4.                  The idea of cities as drivers of economic growth is flavour of the month.  But other economic geographies are available – like the South Coast Metropole or the M4 Corridor.  These are geographies that transcend local government boundaries but fit naturally within the boundaries of a Wessex region.  Should radicals even be welcoming the idea of economic growth anyway?  Can we be sure that it’s not just a euphemism for environmental, cultural and social devastation, here or abroad?  Who benefits, besides the bankers?

5.                  City-regions, whatever their boundaries or powers, are just a different kind of local government.  They're a distraction from the business of real regionalists, which is to devolve power to the nations and regions of Britain.  Cities won’t have assemblies with law-making powers and exclusive control of the NHS, education policy, regional railways or the environment.  Cities deserve more power, but so do we all.  Regional devolution is the bold, substantial way to deliver that.

6.                  Applying extreme surgery to local government in order to replicate the ‘London effect’ is missing the point.  London is more successful and other cities less so not because it has an elected mayor but because London houses the UK Government and benefits from its largesse.  A Boris for every big city is no more than constitutional facadism if that regional concentration of power and resources is not addressed.  A Boris first, then we might think about devolution, is the kind of insulting, controlling behaviour that proves London is not serious about sharing.

The cities agenda is intimately linked to the roll-out of elected mayors.  And that's very much about taking decisions out of the public glare of the council chamber and into closed rooms where Big Business and Big Government can do deals with the lone, bullyable individual in whom all power is vested.  This isn't about opening up democracy; it's all about shutting it down.

And it doesn’t matter which party is in power.  A ruling-class consensus emerged sometime in the 1990s that English local government was to be changed over to an American / continental model, something that had been discussed on the fringes of power since at least the 1970s.  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on the other hand, have no elected mayors, but devolution there provides an alternative focus for strategic decision-making that arguably makes them unnecessary.

The collegiate style that has served England well for centuries is an anomaly.  But how to get rid of it?  Blair tried the fanfare approach.  Choose how to be governed, by demanding a referendum!  Few found the offer appealing.  Cameron / Clegg applied more pressure.  Compulsory referenda, with the previous right to undo the decision withdrawn.  Bristol apart, it still didn’t work.  So Osborne is sent in to twist the arms of civic leaders until they say that yes, in the name of our unconsulted electorates, we volunteer to give you everything if you’ll give us just a little.

There may or may not be a good case for elected mayors but there probably isn’t.  The fact that only calling in the heavies produces results suggests that the case is not one normally found compelling.  The fact that other countries do things their way isn’t a convincing argument in itself for following suit.  If it were, then any comparison with American or continental practice would reveal the existence of state or regional governments.  And where are they in the Coalition’s harmonisation scheme?  The case for following foreign practice in that respect is much, much stronger than the case for elected mayors.  Not least because it would be a fundamental shift in the location of power, rather than a reshuffling of an existing pack to reduce transparency and increase the scope for keeping local government on a tight leash.

Analysis of what’s going on is, sadly, far too easy.  Our politics is built upon the idea that power and money reside in London and that our best chance of seeing those things used for our benefit is to bow deeply and tug our forelocks hard. 

The London regime has no power but that which our votes give it.  The London regime has no money but that which our taxes give it.  (Even its stupendous debts would be impossible to run up without a reasonable expectation of them being honoured at some point.)  While we have no quarrel with the ordinary folk of London, a new politics, a politics of regional renaissance, must work ceaselessly to deny it both these things.  Because we too, in all of the regions, have a voice to be heard and a vision of a better life to be lived.

Just Watch It

Media interest continues, BBC Bristol and BBC Wiltshire both seeking interviews this week.  David Garmston from BBC Points West went to Longleat to record an interview with our veteran founder, Lord Bath for Sunday Politics West.  It took up 3 minutes, 42 seconds of a 1 hour, 10 minute programme filled mainly with much less interesting stuff.  (Catch it on iPlayer, at 50:32 in.)

Yesterday saw filming for another BBC programme, More Power to the West?, again fronted by David Garmston, for broadcast on Guy Fawkes Night.  Oddly, according to the BBC website, this programme and its equivalent for BBC South West (Cornwall and Devon) are both 40 minutes long.  The BBC South equivalent is 10 minutes long.  Is the attention span of eastern Wessex really that much shorter than western Wessex?

The format yesterday was a four-person panel – Parliamentarians from the three main London parties plus George Ferguson, Independent Mayor of Bristol – with an audience mostly made up of local politicians, businessfolk and experts of one kind or another.  The audience proved to be a lot more lively than the panel.  The three main parties all agree that decentralisation is good, which begs the question why none of them do a thing about it when in power (other than to do the opposite while pretending they’re not).  No wonder they’re now so widely despised.

From the start it was clear that Wessex at last had a chance of a receptive airing, David Robins being invited to contribute to the debate and to unfurl the Wyvern for the cameras.  Leanne Wood, Leader of Plaid Cymru, said it looked like a Welsh dragon.  Cue to point out the number of legs (two legs Wessex, four legs Wales) and that ours is just as ancient.  There’s no doubt that the Wyvern, with its warm, bold colours and sweeping lines, makes excellent television and a lasting impression.

A now recurrent theme is the realisation that Wessex provides a ready-made answer to the question of how to devolve power in our part of England.  An optimist might even say that this is an idea whose time has come.  We don’t need a Labour-style constitutional convention to hold back implementation any longer. 

A realist – aware of the history of the Celtic countries – is more likely to take the view that a trans-generational struggle is just beginning.  The London regime has many centuries of experience in how to prevent necessary change.  Yesterday’s debate was a useful step on the road to change but was memorable mainly for the low aspirations evident among our region’s elected politicians.  Too bruised by the oppressive system they try to work within, they haven’t the room to raise their sights.  In contrast, we don’t want negotiation with our London masters over city deals or combined authorities.  We want their rule out of the region at the point of a pitchfork, never to be allowed back.

The programme airs on BBC1 on 5th November at 10:35 pm.

Reasons to be Regional

Two common objections to regionalism are that another tier of government means more politicians and more cost.  It needn’t in fact mean either.

First though, let’s be a bit more broad-minded.  We need government to be more effective and efficient – but to achieve that you need to invest, politically in the right people and financially in the right resources.

More politicians aren’t necessarily a bad thing.  Fewer politicians mean fewer ways to scrutinise government and hold it to account.  Over the past 50 years we have seen repeated cuts in the number of local councillors, in the range of services they oversee and in the power that ordinary, backbench councillors have to make decisions.  So, to sum up, we have less democracy.  We have less ability as voters to influence what public money is spent on.

More cost isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Cost is not the same thing as waste.  If we want better services, or even services no worse than those we have now, then they have to be paid for.  But a system of government that pretends it can reduce costs by centralising decisions is missing something.  It is missing the fact that centralised solutions tend to be standardised solutions that might not be what we need or want.  They will be shaped by what the centre thinks we should have, and the centre’s thought in turn will be shaped by lobbies whose outlook we may not share.

Back to the devolution debate.  Politicians are looking for easy answers, by empowering existing local councils, or at worst setting up joint authorities, or maybe sweeping up all the powers into the hands of a metro-mayoral Caesar that bankers can trust to do the right thing.  But localism, as we have learnt, is a lie.  Localities are only being empowered to make the decisions that the centre would have made anyway if it had had direct control.  And even in theory, there are practical limits to localism because big, strategic decisions are beyond the capacity of a fragmented local government system.  Councils aren’t going to get powers to re-shape the NHS or the railways.  They aren’t going to be able to make laws or set income tax rates.  Is the devolution debate in England a sham, just like localism?

Of course it is, if a new tier of government is ruled out on ideological grounds.  Had that been the starting point, the Scottish Parliament and the London, Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies could never have been created.  The number that matters isn’t the number of tiers.  It’s the overall cost of government – and the extent to which government is seen to deliver what it promises.

Will regionalism mean more politicians?  That, ultimately, is a political choice.  One way forward is to argue that if two-thirds of decisions are moved out of Westminster into regional hands, you then cut the number of MPs by two-thirds to match.  Since most Assembly Members would live within commuting distance of the assembly venue, there’d be none of the nonsense of flipped second homes in London necessitated by having a constituency hundreds of miles away.  (In a smaller House of Commons, everyone would get a place to sit down if they turned up for a popular debate, which isn’t possible today.)

So on to cost.  Having a regional assembly will cost us more, won’t it?  Here are five reasons why not.  It comes down to political will.  A Wessex assembly is likely to be run by politicians with enough sense not to impose unnecessary burdens on the electorate and so the savings below are savings they are likely to make.  They are savings that an assembly government led by the Wessex Regionalist Party would certainly prioritise.

1.         Moving government out of London cuts costs

That's why much of the back office work is already done in places like Wales or Northumbria.  Labour and property costs are lower there and there is very limited need to travel back and forth to London.  But devolution means the top jobs have to move out too.  Some of the mandarins who currently advise Ministers in Whitehall will instead be advising a Wessex government.  These are jobs that command big salaries.  That spending power is then put into the Wessex economy, not the London economy.  It’s also worth noting that savings aren’t confined to the political sphere – the media would also have to become less London-obsessed and there would be a bigger role for the regional newsrooms and production centres busy following debates in the regional assemblies.  Lobbyists too would need to decentralise.

2.         Integrating the region manages costs better

Regional administration already exists.  What is missing is regional government.  Most government employees do not work in London.  The work of government is carried on in the regions through a tangle of quangos and local offices, all of which could be rationalised as part of an integrated regional government.  Something similar happened in local government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the various Improvement Commissioners, School Boards, Boards of Guardians and the like were replaced by unified councils levying a unified rate.  Integration saves money.  The Welsh Government has merged three of its environmental quangos into one and delegated some of its own powers to it in order to save £158 million over the first ten years.  That’s money that can then be spent on services or used to reduce taxation.

It’s often said that an assembly will need an expensive new headquarters.  That’s not how public sector property works.  The stock of public buildings turns over constantly as older buildings are replaced by new ones with lower running costs.  Eventually, the same money will be spent on new buildings by the UK as by a Wessex assembly.

Meanwhile, Wessex civil servants will go on working in the same places that they worked as UK civil servants.  Assembly meetings can be rotated around our leading cities if that’s seen as a way to prevent any one of them fancying itself as a new London.  Winchester is our historic capital, Bristol is our largest city, Bath already has its Assembly Rooms.  But if we’re serious about a new, decentralised approach to government then we need to re-think the whole idea of a capital city.  Along the lines of a network that allows all areas to have a share in the work of governing Wessex.  That means departments locating where their main customers are, or the geographical focus of their work.  It means politicians being willing to travel and able to see things not just from their own constituents’ point of view. 

This isn’t revolutionary.  Germany and the Netherlands are two examples of countries where the work of government is shared out.  Germany’s Constitutional Court is in Karlsruhe, not Berlin – deliberately distanced from the other institutions of government.  The Dutch capital is Amsterdam but the seat of government is The Hague; the broadcasting centre is Hilversum.

3.         A democratic region delivers better value for money

The point of devolution is the power to do things differently.  Not only does regional administration already exist, so too does a regional budget, even if it’s currently split between numerous government departments.  A Wessex assembly can see to it that the money is used wisely, setting its own priorities, which may well differ from those handed down from Whitehall.  With law-making powers too, an assembly can really tailor services to what its area needs.

4.         A strong region can defend its budget

When Michael Gove was Education Secretary, he dreamt up a plan to fund every school in England directly from Whitehall, cutting out local education authorities.  The bargaining power of a single LEA against the might of Whitehall is limited.  The bargaining power of a single headteacher is non-existent.  Regions big enough to stand up to Whitehall bullying will get that money out of London.  They will have the resources to commission their own research to challenge official figures and to brief the media with it.  It will no longer be a one-sided dialogue.  Regions with taxation powers will be guaranteed a degree of financial freedom from Treasury interference.

Local government services have borne the brunt of austerity, while the UK State protects its own.  The Welsh Assembly too has seen its finances cut but within its budget it has found the money to increase local government spending by 3%, at a time when English local government is looking to cut spending by 7%.  Applying the Welsh model to Wessex and other English regions could create a coalition of opposition to the City-driven priorities of the London regime.

5.         A region understands its businesses better

Far from being a burden on the region’s businesses, a Wessex assembly would be in a strong position to help them succeed.  Its powers would include education and training, transport, housing, planning, economic development, tourism and the arts, agriculture, forestry and fisheries.  It would be well placed to take on new responsibilities that may emerge at the regional scale, such as oversight of infrastructure and public utilities.  The more powers that are devolved, the more incentive the region has to make a success of them because the more that success will be reflected in the assembly’s own rising revenues.

Businesses that have a hard time convincing BIS or the banks in London can expect a different reception in Wessex, especially if they can show how their plans fit with specifically regional aspirations.  A Wessex assembly will be one part of a wider expression of the Wessex ‘brand’, with tourism in particular benefiting from a more coherent narrative but with related industries like food & drink and music also potential beneficiaries.

There are many reasons to be regional, but doom and gloom are not among them.  The small scale, territorial integration and flexibility of action that come with being a region are precisely what’s needed to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.

Silenced in Court

The Torygraph yesterday reminded us that the Conservatives may be in coalition with the Liberal Democrats but they are far from being liberal.  (Democracy isn’t often their strong point either.)

Theresa May’s proposal for ‘Extremism Disruption Orders’ could see courts banning speech that’s judged to be a bit too free.  George Osborne has described this new tool as a means to deal with those who don’t break any laws.  Yes, he did.  We can’t have folk running around doing stuff that’s legal.

You could of course join Labour.  Where you’ll find Jack Straw arguing that Scotland’s ‘No’ vote justifies a declaration that separatism is now unconstitutional.  He hasn’t explicitly said he’d like to ban the SNP but that’s the direction of thought.  Fortunately, it’s not the direction of Scottish politics.

Won’t the European Convention on Human Rights come to our defence?  No.  Article 10 (freedom of expression) is “subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”  There’s not a lot left once you’ve deducted all that.  Note that ‘the interests of territorial integrity’ are more important than freedom of expression.  Jack Straw couldn’t have put it better.

As Joseph Stalin did put it, ideas are more powerful than guns; we would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?  In Wessex, we’re used to seeing things being banned and we’ll be ready.