Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

This is right: but the reason why Westminster ratchets power to itself is that local government has no constitutional protection. (And - as the IM Bill shows - even the constitutional protection for devolution is a paper tiger when Westminster decides to ignore it.)

https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1320637366307086336

If you are going to decentralise in a real and lasting way, you need to remove the possibility - which politicians at the centre will always use - of using legislation to centralise power.

You could do that by a constitutional protection immune to Westminster override. Or you create a sort of Bundesrat - a body largely representing local government - to replace the House of Lords.

But the current model has centralisation as the default, and the debate on how to decentralise needs to start by tackling that problem.