Division and disenfranchisement fuelled by failure to devolve power to English regions - former mandarin

Philip Rycroft told The Yorkshire Post that the underlying feeling of being separated and disenfranchised from the decision-making process, and the view that a distant elite was the actual seat of power, had contributed to high levels of discontent in England.

He said that the support seen in the other home nations for their own devolved administrations showed that people wanted decision making to be taken on a more regional level.

Mr Rycroft said: “If you see some of the political discontent that has emerged over recent years, it has been driven by a sense of disenfranchisement.

“How do you deal with that?

“We have got rid of the Brussels dimension of that, exaggerated in my view as it was, but we have replaced it with a situation now where all the decisions are made in Westminster.

“You still have people who are disenfranchised and have no ability to influence those decisions, they are all made at a difference.

“So much of the discontents of recent years were driven by feeling disenfranchised and left behind.

“Whereas in London and the South East has prospered many other parts of the country less so and paradoxically the effects of the financial crash seem to have been felt more in places that never actually benefited from financial services.”

Using the example of how virtually all western polities have far less centralised forms of Government, Mr Rycroft called upon taxation, healthcare, education and legislative matters to be increasingly controlled locally, saying that national Government should be more concerned with foreign, defense and fiscal policies.

For the former mandarin, the prize would be a stronger country in which power and opportunity is more evenly distributed.

“I think it would potentially be very empowering. An agenda that says we are aiming to rebalance the life of this country, be that political, cultural, economic, educational is needed. It is not about doing London down, it is about supporting and building up the other parts of the UL, particularly in England. You cannot do that without a serious devolution of political power as well.

“If you look at most countries that have a more equal sense across the territory, less division and alienation from the centre you will find that there are extensive powers held at regional and local level.”

Mr Rycroft’s words were echoed this week by the former head of the civil service and Sheffield City Council chief executive Sir Bob Kerslake who said an ambitious plan needed to be laid out by Government.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post’s Pods Own Country podcast, Sir Bob, who now chairs the UK2070 Commission, an independent commission looking at regional inequality in the UK said Government needed to “go big or go home”.

“The government's intervention to promote levelling up is welcome, and we've welcomed it in the Commission. What we have said, though, is if you're serious about this, then you need to as we described it, go big or go home, you need a comprehensive, long-term, large scale plan to address levelling up.

“Anything less than that won't cut the mustard, it won't do the job that we need to do. And in many ways, it's worse than not doing anything at all, because you raise expectations, and then you don't follow through.

“And then there's another sense of Government promises, something they haven't delivered.

"So our big message to Government has been, if you're going to do this, do it properly, address all the issues that you need to address and do it over a period of time, put some serious welly into it - bluntly - because if you don't, you won't change it, it is too deep rooted, and all the history has been of short term, what I would call peashooter, initiatives that haven't done the job properly.”