Recognising a mandate

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The central flaw at the heart of the whole concept of ‘devolution’ under the English constitution is that power devolved is power retained. All the powers devolved to the Senedd or the Scottish parliament can be withdrawn at any time should the English parliament so decide. Legislating to give the Sewel convention (the idea that the English parliament will not legislate on devolved matters) the force of law proved to be a complete farce. And in a parliamentary system which starts from the assumption that all power resides in the Crown to whom it was given by God, it could never be otherwise, despite the attempts of politicians to claim otherwise using whatever form of weasel words comes to mind at the time.

For all his talk of empowering mayors, Labour under Burnham remains as wedded to that centralism as it always has been. He has talked about devolving a share of income tax to mayors, leaving them free to take spending decisions in accordance with what they see as the priorities for their areas. It sounds reasonable, but it seems that much of the debate between announcement and implementation is going to be about how those mayors can be constrained from doing anything with which Westminster might disagree.

The justification for this approach sounds superficially reasonable: “It would be reckless to hand out new powers without ensuring there are transparent mechanisms to hold mayors to account for their decisions”. What’s noticeable, though, is that all the mechanisms being touted to improve scrutiny and accountability involve Ministers in the English Government, and parliamentary committees. Increasing their answerability to central government isn’t really devolving powers to local politicians at all.

It is, perhaps, easier to understand in the context of national parliaments, like those in Wales and Scotland, than it is when discussing regions in England, but the underlying issue is the same. In a centralised unitary state like the UK, there is not, and never has been, any real recognition of the fact that elected officers and bodies outside the Westminster parliament have their own democratic mandate. Such recognition not only includes the right to do different things, or to do things differently, but also the right to be judged, first and foremost, by those who gave them that mandate: the people who elected them.