Gordon Brown's devolution plans would turn UK into mini-EU - with no benefits for Yorkshire: Bill Carmichael

For example, the report advocates for the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement with an elected senate of “nations and regions”, and what was described as “the biggest transfer of power from Westminster to the British people”.

What this means in practice is a transfer of power - and of course massive amounts of money provided by English taxpayers - to the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Under the proposals the Scottish government would be entitled to enter into international treaties entirely independently of the UK government.

In effect the UK would cease to be a sovereign state and would become a sort of “union of nations” on the EU model.

But curiously, although taxpayers in Yorkshire will be expected to pay for this largesse to the other nations of the UK, we are not allowed to share the benefits.

The Yorkshire Post reported on a press conference in Leeds earlier this week when the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, expressly ruled out the “One Yorkshire” devolution deal, which would unite the entire county into one entity, instead of the current Balkanisation into smaller, weaker fiefdoms of North, West, South and East Yorkshire.

This despite the fact that many Labour MPs in Yorkshire have been enthusiastic backers of the One Yorkshire idea, and that this county is more populous than any of the other countries of the union.

Barnsley MP and former Mayor of South Yorkshire, Dan Jarvis, highlighted the incoherence of this policy saying: “We have a larger population than Scotland, nearly twice the size of Wales and three times that of Northern Ireland. We need to continue to explore ways to harness our collective strength.”

I’ve often wondered if the virulent hostility to the One Yorkshire idea by the leadership of the Conservatives, and now Labour, is precisely because it would be so powerful, and therefore a threat to the entrenched interests of Westminster and the South East?

They don’t fear it will fail. They fear it will succeed. Gordon Brown seems intent on repeating Labour mistakes of the 1990s when they dreamed up the devolution plans.

The 1997 manifesto, for example, promised that devolution would strengthen the union and remove the threat of separatism. It would, according to one Labour minister at the time, “kill nationalism stone dead”.

Ha! How did that one turn out, Gordon? A quarter of a century later the nationalists dominate north of the border and the calls for independence are louder than ever.

Indeed, so tiresome has become the endless complaints of the Scots that there is a growing mood amongst the English that we would be glad to see them go - so long as they stop pushing their begging bowl under our noses and stand on their own two feet, like a proper independent nation.

Devolution has been a disaster and has benefited no one. For evidence just look at the spectacular decline of the once-excellent Scottish education system, or the data on health outcomes for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

And I am afraid I see little evidence of benefits of regional devolution in England, such as in West, South and North Yorkshire. We certainly have even more politicians and more bureaucrats than before, but can anyone seriously claim that ordinary people have more power over their lives? I don’t think so.

But despite this abysmal failure, Mr Brown’s solution is just more of the same failed policies.

He is on firmer ground with his criticisms of the House of Lords, which Sir Keir labelled as “indefensible”. The unelected second chamber has become a bloated monster and an affront to democracy as successive governments have packed it with rich party donors and failed politicians, infamous for cronyism, corruption and expenses fiddling.

The size of it - 830 peers and counting - is utterly preposterous. In contrast the USA, with five times the population of the UK, makes do with just 100 elected senators in its upper chamber.

Many peers have never spoken in a debate, held a government post or participated in a committee, and some have never even recorded a vote! They just turn up every day to claim the daily £323 tax-free allowance and eat at the heavily subsidised restaurants.

Reform is long overdue and it should be reduced to something like a tenth of its current size, but given Mr Brown’s past record on constitutional reform, I am not convinced he has the answers.