The country has spoken. And one thing’s for sure, there will be lots of attempts to understand why so many people voted to leave the EU last Thursday.
A combination of sometimes contradictory opinions and explanations have been cited to explain the different levels of support between young and old, urban and rural, middle class and working class, London and England, England/Wales and Scotland/Northern Ireland. Yet this is too complex an issue to simply be explained by failures in immigration and macro-economic policy and compounded by an out-of-touch political elite. Explaining local popular opinion in such simplistic terms is to fail to understand, or take into account, the local context. And this is important if we are to move things forwards constructively.
This is in part about people’s relationships to place. Place has been steadily eroded from both policy and the political structure. People voted in part against the perceived irrelevance of Brussels because it’s seen as distant, unconnected and unaccountable yet with a pervasive influence. Even in places that have been net beneficiaries of EU funding such as Cornwall, Wales and Sunderland. The next most distant element of the political hierarchy is Westminster. National government has been subjected to criticisms of being too big, too unconnected from real people, too much of a closed shop of political classes living and making policy in the London ‘bubble'. Across England, from Cornwall to Cumbria, Norfolk to Northumberland, London is as distant and seemingly irrelevant to day-to-day life as Brussels.
This is compounded by a lack of local power to change things for the better. Subsidiarity as a principle states that wherever possible decisions should be taken at the level that is closest to people. National government, particularly since 2010, has gradually yet systematically stripped away the powers of local government, undermined local democratic accountability and obfuscated responsibilities between different parts of the public sector. Powers have been transferred to new tiers of sub-regional government without any public dialogue and the relationships between combined and local authorities have been subject to both central bullying tactics and local territorial, party and parochial political forces.
While the public sector wonders how it is to navigate all of this for the benefit of local people, accountability slips upwards to central Government or into the ether altogether. This has been driven by ideology, implemented under the cloak of austerity and window-dressed with policies such as Police and Crime Commissioners, free schools, health and well-being boards, devolution deals and localisation of business rates. But not that many people really care enough to vote in PCC elections. Devolution deals have been set up within a straight-jacket of enhanced accountability to Whitehall and transfer of risk to local areas. How will localisation of business rates help those areas most in need in support because they are low growth areas? And how relevant are health and well-being boards in reality?
A common factor in all these is that they are policies implemented at geographies too large and remote to be meaningful for people as they go about their everyday lives. They’re urban unitary policy solutions being implemented at pace in urban unitary settings. But in the large, mainly rural swathes of England, where countryside, villages and towns coexist in three-tier local government, these policies are 'bent to fit’ being at best inadequate to the local context. This remoteness ignores the very local concerns that play out in local places with clear local identities. No wonder rural England and Wales voted leave. There is no sense of local agency. No feeling of being able to act in your own interests and take control of the issues that really matter to your life, to your family, your neighbours, in your village or town.
There is danger in a post-Brexit UK that power is consolidated in Westminster not devolved from it, adding to this sense of disenfranchisement. The feeling of a lack of control and no power to change things for the better is perhaps the most damning indictment that something has be done differently. We are at a point in time where we need new thinking, a new paradigm to change things for the better. In chaos and change lies opportunity, and whatever the fall-out from this vote, we need now to focus on the possibilities. Can we understand what is likely to make people feel more in control on their lives and their communities? How can we support people to take back power and how do those in power find ways to truly devolve it? Or will there be the usual political inquest followed by lots of nice words but no action that amount to all sizzle and no sausage?
Even without the referendum it wouldn't have been enough to just renegotiate our settlement with Europe. We also need to renegotiate our settlement with Whitehall. People and places needs to be put back in this debate and take centre-stage if we are to find the range of solutions required to take this country forward positively and constructively.
Places need to be at the heart of public policy, public services and local politics in order to make them more relevant and more accountable. Only then might we see a renewal in local civic pride and local democracy, giving people back more control over their lives, based on this new settlement with Whitehall. One which cuts the ties between national and local administration. One which truly devolves power and decision-making to the lowest possible level. One which sets local people and places free to respond creatively to their own circumstances, their own needs, their local vision for the future. Only then will people feel empowered. This is what the RSA call the Power to Create. It’s a simple yet important idea, but it’s one that is perhaps more relevant and more needed than ever.
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Sorry, Ian: a discussion of place and control that contains not a single reference to the power of companies to determine the fate of local labour markets (and effects on income, identification etc) is seriously deficient. People last week were railing about control, meaning the impact on their lives and livelihoods of decisions made by boards and non-local corporate owners ...and the demonstrated incapacity of local political entities to do anything about them. Regulation let alone 'industrial policy' is necessarily going to be effected at national and supranational level.
There's one certainty - if we leave the decision to Whitehall and Westminster, there will be no loss of power from the centre whatsoever. To quote the few stats I've been repeating endlessly; from memberships in the millions, political parties now have a combined membership that just 1% of the UK electorate. The Conservative party alone lost over a million members between 1979 and 1997, when in power, as their grass-roots members deserted following the most ruthless grab of local government autonomy known. In Switzerland, roughly a third of tax is levied by the central state and the other two-thirds by the cantons and municipalities; in the UK 95% of tax is determined centrally. We are running a huge democratic deficit and things are actually getting worse as parliamentary seats are reduced. France has one elected member per 1,400 citizens; for the UK it is one per 18,000 citizens.
But what has the reaction of the centre been? Retrenchment. Two ex civil servants heading formal enquiries, first Hayden Phillips and then Christopher Kelly, both proposed the Lenin-like embalming of the two big parties in a quasi-constitutional role by stuffing their mouths with tax-gold in place of member subscriptions. As for demands for devolution of power, and Scotland apart, all Whitehall was willing to devolve was devolution of the unpopular rationing decisions to financial subventions fixed by central government. Devolution must mean devolution of tax as well as devolution of spend or it means nothing. Recently - in respect of measures needed to kick-start the Northern Powerhouse - a little more has been forthcoming.
And this is the trap of which we must be wary. The central - local struggle has a very long history. The centre made opportunistic power grabs during each of the world wars, when war economies demanded central planning and control. But so much in love with power did Whitehal become that with the peace not one measure was relinquished, not one power returned. We now subsist under essentially the framework of emergency war powers and DORA, though re-legislated into a raft of consolidating laws over the past century.
Localism, subsidiarity and the devolution of powers is inextricably tied up in Westminister party politics. We don't need further studies, we have them all. What we lack is political will.
It's nothing to do with apathy, either. As we've just witnessed, people are passionate about political issues. And it's not that we're no longer willing to pull out our purses; the National Trust has over 4.5m paying members, ten times the total of all the paying political party members together.
One final anecdote. I heard with hope and pleasure David Cameron speaking at the launch of Baroness Helena Kennedy's 'Power' report some time before he won the 2010 election. He spoke glowingly of his support for localism. In his first term a sort of localism-lite tried to get its head above water, only to be planked by a dominant Treasury. By his second term, all reference to localism had vanished. I suspect this same thing has been happening since 1946.
I suspect the unforseen consequences of this latest political earthquake may well offer us opportunities to advance this agenda - but we must be quick to spot them and move to implement change with alacrity.
Ian - congratulations on one of the most considered essays I've read following the referendum. My belief has been that for years we've seen a general malaise summed up as 'it doesn't matter who you vote for nothing changes'. I found the move to devolution and local decision-making energizing, although I'd not thought it through in the detail you have. It's balancing the needs of the individual to feel included in decision-making and effect change, with the need to collaborate globally on big themes that seems to be the balance that will always be being sought. That said, apparently small changes made locally that then inspire others is the type of bottom up initiative that brings results. Arrogant, top down approaches that seek to suppress uncomfortable truths would not seem to be sustainable as any reading of history shows.
There is inevitably a lot of hot air to be spoken post the referendum debate. No doubt we will all be far to sensitive to mention that demographics played an important role. The old are seen as having let down the young, the disenfranchised have for once been able to protest against the systems, the racists have even had their hour.
Perhaps the issue is not localisum v a "Westminster" focused approach (what ever that might be) but the growing expectation of instant entitlement and instant results.
If we live in a society where few would aspire to become a local councilor when fame sits just one TV show away is the "Power to Create" a self delusion.which ignores a far deeper problem?
There is inevitably a lot of hot air to be spoken post the referendum debate. No doubt we will all be far to sensitive to mention that demographics played an important role. The old are seen as having let down the young, the disenfranchised have for once been able to protest against the systems, the racists have even had their hour.
Perhaps the issue is not localisum v a "Westminster" focused approach (what ever that might be) but the growing expectation of instant entitlement and instant results.
If we live in a society where few would aspire to become a local councilor when fame sits just one TV show away is the "Power to Create" a self delusion.which ignores a far deeper problem?