Parts of UK will never again see a Tory government, says PETER DAVIES
THE idiocy and mayhem of the various UK devolution settlements were never more apparent than during the Covid 19 crisis.
Yet in spite of the glaring evidence that the nation is in pieces and almost ungovernable from Westminster, Boris Johnson ploughs ahead with more of the same in England. Having won a massive election victory in 2019, he has now parcelled up large swathes of England and handed them over with a neatly-tied red bow to the Labour Party. It is scarcely believable.
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Parts of the UK will never again see a Conservative Government with Scotland, Wales, London, Manchester, Liverpool and South and West Yorkshire already under Socialist control.
The usual suspects in these areas have no interest in promoting Tory policies and will continue to be profligate with public money and then claim, as usual, they were not given enough in the first place.
The brains, and I use the word loosely, behind this English devolution nonsense is the Socialist wolf in Conservative sheep’s clothing, Michael Heseltine. When Margaret Thatcher axed the seven metropolitan counties he had helped to create under Ted Heath and local government minister Peter Walker, Heseltine was furious.
He has apparently been smarting ever since and has now invented another stunt to reinstate them in the shape of elected metro-mayors.
The role of this latest bunch of superfluous politicians involves running large city regions, often without detailed knowledge of the area in question or any awareness of old rivalries and animosities that still prevail.
Sharper minds than the aforementioned Ted Heath trio determined that there was no need to create a South Riding in Yorkshire. How wise they were!
Heseltine has written what must surely qualify as the most tedious tome ever published, entitled No Stone Unturned, to support his nonsensical plan. There is no price on the cover and I suspect none have been sold – it is totally unreadable.
I have lived under both Conservative and Labour governments and learned to have no great expectations of either – an Attlee or Thatcher does not come along very often.
Most Prime Ministers should not have been entrusted with the keys to Denis Healey’s celebrated whelk stall, let alone to 10 Downing Street. Yet there remains an element of fairness in the system.
Those who live in safe Red or Blue areas eventually get their choice of government through other people’s votes. This is a fair approach to democratic representation.
One-party government, even if elected, is likely to lead to corruption and complacency. It is not accidental in this country, the nursery of parliamentary democracy, that the two main parties down the years have enjoyed an almost equal share in the government of the nation.
If devolution is allowed to continue it will surely end the concept of democracy for all and already the Union is in danger.
We already have plenty of second-rate politicians in Westminster so to dredge the swamp to find even more inferior forms of political life is not conducive to progress. We need fewer politicians, not more.
There are 650 MPs, more than 800 members of the House of Lords and thousands of councillors nationwide (271 in South Yorkshire alone) as well as Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish parliaments.
There is also another horde of town and parish councillors, thankfully unpaid, who have developed a thirst for local taxation.
Here in Heseltine’s recreated Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, Doncaster, for instance, has nothing in common with Sheffield, Where attempts at co-operation have gone ahead, the result has always been enormous financial loss all round, with some towns losing more heavily than others.
These doomed enterprises include Sheffield and Rotherham’s Supertram scheme which was always going to dodge Barnsley and Doncaster, the needless, bureaucratic passenger transport authority; the failed Digital Region project, costing each local authority millions of pounds and the Weights and Measures Consortium where one Sheffield Council employee managed to wander off with around £14m, inconveniently dying before the money could be recovered or the culprit brought to justice.
Local authorities should be free to make their own ad hoc alliances based on community of interest and shared objectives.
Devolution was stupidly introduced to further the interests of a failing Labour Party.
It hasn’t worked out as planned but, if real democracy is to survive, there has to be radical change. We need to go back to the previous state of affairs – the Lords, the Commons and genuinely local government – along with massive cuts to the number of generally useless elected politicians.
Only then might we see an end to the continuing chaos and unfairness which are devolution’s biggest achievements.
- Peter Davies is elected mayor of Doncaster 2009-2013
