In his interview with The Herald yesterday, Andy Burnham hit so many nails on the head that resistance to common sense must be in danger of giving way. At least we are entitled to hope so, even if experience points in the other direction.
Burnham is a remarkable politician – probably the most effective in Britain and anyone who dismisses his advice and ambitions because they are coming from outside Scotland is a fool. Indeed, casual dismissal of Burnham’s analysis only serves to confirm its validity.
The awkward truth is that much of England, and certainly Greater Manchester, now has more effective devolution than any part of Scotland would recognise. They are doing it without the pomp and preening of a Parliament which has become an impediment to original thinking, rather than its source.
Instead, Burnham and his counterparts have worked to bring people together in shared interest. What can they do to advance the cause of their region? To achieve Greater Manchester’s successes, not only are 11 local authorities inside the tent but party differences have been largely set aside, in a common cause.
In response to the Burnham interview, a spokesman for the Scottish Government declared that there is going to be a “Local Government Review with COSLA to ensure communities have greater control and influence over decisions that affect them most”. What’s more, said St Andrew’s House proudly, “Scottish councils have received greater powers over planning, parking charges (and) workplace parking”. After 18 years of systematically draining the lifeblood out of local government and the services on which communities depend, is this the best they can come up with in response to the vision Burnham offers and the English metro-regions are delivering at pace? Are levels of self-awareness and ambition really fixed so low?
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Burnham imagines the directly elected mayors/provosts of the North – including Glasgow – lobbying in common cause for investment and infrastructure. “I think,” he says, “any Prime Minister would find that a pretty difficult coalition to ignore.” He is right of course. But to deliver such a simple proposition would require a dramatic change of mindset in Edinburgh.
Directly elected mayors? Certainly not. Powerful economic regions within Scotland? Not a chance – we are all Jock Swinney’s Bairns. Working hand in glove with Manchester and Liverpool? Don’t you know – they are in England! And in these grooves we seem doomed to remain stuck with no visible signs of progress.
The Burnham thesis, and the career move that followed, sprang from awareness that the balance of Britain, in terms of economic power and demography, is tilted so heavily towards the south that it demanded far stronger counter-forces to the north. You can’t change geography or history but you can alter the future balance.
That is the best case for devolution – as a counter-poise, both democratic and economic, which then has a base from which to drive its own powerful dynamic. At least, that is how Burnham and his fellow metro-Mayors see it.
The same realities affect Scotland but the crucial difference is that here, that imbalance is invariably viewed through a constitutional prism. In the north of England, it is about economic and social empowerment. From this, the difference of mentality has followed. For Burnham and his colleagues, across parties and regions, devolution has been about rolling up their sleeves and getting on with making people’s lives and communities better. It’s about urban regeneration, attracting investment, upgrading skills, building partnerships, transforming transport links.
In Scotland, these may sometimes be claimed as outcomes of devolution, but they are certainly not the motivator for those who run the show. Instead of building bridges for a greater economic good, we have had weary years of driving division and looking for someone else to blame. Burnham does not have that option; nor, I suspect, would he want it.
His vision of five west coast cities working together to create a great economic hub of global significance should be instantly attractive but it would involve a complete change of mindset which has never even been considered in the age of Scottish devolution. Why would we lift our eyes beyond Scotland to work in tandem with counterparts across the border?
Yet, for the reasons he offers, it makes complete sense, if you take away that border of the mind. Maybe the inclusion of Dublin and Belfast in his vision will sweeten the pill sufficiently for it to be taken seriously, rather than as an interference in Scotland’s sovereign right to introspection.
Michael Kelly, the nearest Glasgow came to a Burnham figure, has been arguing the “Greater Glasgow” case for years and pointed out in The Herald this week that it could exist in embryonic form through the “cabinet” of council leaders which discusses region-wide economic initiatives, but with no executive power.
It is surely not beyond the wit of Holyrood, unless out of fear that it will be upstaged, to build on that to permit the same kind of structure that is working for Greater Manchester and others – with a directly elected mayor/provost at its head or, as Burnham put it, as captain of the team, leading the political fight on behalf of them all.
A party loyalist defending the indefensible or a directly elected voice unafraid to challenge whichever government is in power? Regardless of political labels, that would not be a hard choice if we were asked and the same applies in every region of Scotland, urban and rural.
They all need the kind of leadership that devolution should have delivered but which Holyrood has gone out of its way to deny. Thanks for reminding us, Andy!
Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.
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