The government often gives the impression that devolution, like many other policies that existed before June 2016, is a distraction from the task of completing Brexit. But our research suggests that devolution rethought and speeded up is an important way to respond to the turmoil unleashed by the vote.
Our new research (pdf) with the University of Southampton shows that England is deeply divided according to where people live and that this division is far from purely economic. There are now three distinct Englands: the big cosmopolitan cities; coastal and provincial areas; and post-industrial towns and smaller cities.
There is remarkable unanimity on some issues, such as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual and queer people, and women’s rights, which are overwhelmingly seen as positive in all areas. Splits emerge over the impact of austerity, with post-industrial towns far more concerned than other regions about its negative consequences.
But significant divisions exist elsewhere. People who live in a coastal/provincial or post-industrial area are far more likely to think the past was better than the present than those who live in a large conurbation. The former are also far more negative about immigration and value English identity more highly than those in cosmopolitan areas like London, Manchester or Birmingham. Brexit itself is a major dividing line, with the big cities being bastions of the Remain vote.
These are deep faultlines that show how important place is in determining people’s outlook and identity.
They also pose an important challenge to the devolution agenda, which cannot continue to be solely about driving growth in the big cities and their surrounding areas. It has to set itself a wider goal: to start healing the deep divisions around identity and attitudes by offering greater resources and powers to post-industrial, coastal and provincial areas to reclaim their central role in English life by their own efforts.
That has to begin with the implementation of the government’s industrial strategy. How it will be rolled out and how resources will be allocated are yet to be revealed. But if the result is more money and powers for the south-east, Manchester and Birmingham, with no attempt to include other parts of the country – particularly areas that expressed their deep alienation through the Brexit vote – it will be self-defeating and could deepen division.
It also means creating a devolution process that is as much about emotion, identity and pride in place as it is about economics. The government has previously forced areas to unite, imposing significant changes such as directly elected mayors. It has then made these cobbled-together places jump through endless hoops to secure funding and powers.
Devolution needs to be refocused so that it creates momentum for change in an area that people already identify with and to which they have deep emotional attachment without feeling they have to beg Westminster or accept bureaucratic structures imposed by Whitehall to gain control of their destiny.
Letting people take control of an area they genuinely care about could start to address the sense of alienation and division revealed in our research and in the referendum, as people start to transform places for too long marginalised and ignored by central government.
There are some good signs, including a recent softening on the idea of elected mayors and the government’s tacit support for a deal that covers the whole of the county of Yorkshire. However, the decision to place local industrial strategies under the control of Local Economic Partnerships – low-profile bodies with no popular allegiance – suggests the old way of thinking is still alive and well.
A more flexible approach to devolution, built around places people love rather than “economic geographies” would enable devolution to become a key way to start healing the deep divisions exposed on 23 June 2016.
Adam Lent is director of the New Local Government Network thinktank.
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