THERE IS a strange magic at the heart of modern British government. Westminster announces that it is “giving power away”, local politicians celebrate their shiny new offices, and the public is invited to believe that democracy has somehow moved closer to home. Yet magic depends upon distraction, and nowhere has that distraction been more successful than in Scotland.
For more than a quarter of a century, devolution has encouraged us to confuse proximity with power. Institutions have multiplied, politicians have acquired new titles, and bureaucracies have expanded, yet the fundamental constitutional relationship remains unchanged. Sovereignty has not been dispersed; responsibility has. The centre still determines the broad settlement while the devolved institutions inherit the political consequences.
Scratch beneath the slogans and another picture emerges. This is not the devolution of sovereign power. It is the devolution of responsibility. The centre keeps the authority while the provinces inherit the bill.
Call it devolution if you like.
I call it Sovietism from the arse down.
And so we arrive at the next grand experiment in managerial Britain: the East Anglia Soviet, otherwise known as the Combined Metro Area of Norfolk and Suffolk.
If Scotland was the pilot scheme, East Anglia is simply the next rollout. The branding has changed. The consultants have updated the PowerPoint. The jargon has evolved. The constitutional sleight of hand remains exactly the same.
None of this would matter quite so much were it merely comic. Behind the satire lies a serious constitutional objection. Every new institution promises to bring government closer to the people. Too often it merely inserts another bureaucracy between the people and those who ultimately make the decisions.
In Scotland we have already lived in this future. We were promised democratic renewal. We were promised that proximity would produce accountability and that another parliament would create better government. Instead, too often we have witnessed the growth of another political class, another managerial elite and another bureaucracy whose instinct is to produce strategies before solutions.
Politics has become increasingly organised around brands rather than ideas, identities rather than competence, constitutional theatre rather than administrative excellence. The arguments grow louder while the roads deteriorate, the ferries fail to sail, public services struggle and ministers explain that the answer is yet another review, another commissioner or another consultation.
East Anglia should pause before embracing the same model. If local government is to be strengthened, then let it be genuinely strengthened. Let it raise meaningful revenues, exercise meaningful powers and answer directly to its own electorate. Unite authority with responsibility and democracy has a chance to flourish.
But if all that is being offered is another mayor, another strategic partnership, another layer of managerial officialdom and another opportunity for Westminster to shift blame while retaining control, then this is not devolution.
It is administration masquerading as democracy.
It is constitutional theatre dressed as localism.
It is Sovietism from the arse down.
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Image supplied by the author.
