Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

It’s always worth reading @HelenHet20 but I’m not clear from this piece what she thinks the English Question actually is. I think that that may be because she is confusing two questions.

https://twitter.com/NewStatesman/status/1401965948077281292

One “question” is about English identity: where it is a commonplace since Orwell that the left can struggle to sound as if it likes England very much. I have various thoughts about what to do about that but it isn’t really my area.

But the other question is about accountability and say in decision-making. That is a question about local government/devolution/bringing decisions closer to home: and to the extent that Helen seems to be denying that there’s a demand for that in England, I think she’s wrong.

What is certainly dangerous is to think about decentralising power in England - the most centralised large state in Europe - simply as a way of dealing with constitutional problems thrown up by 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 devolution.

(Which may be partly why the New Labour proposals fell apart: and also because they were imposed from on high.)

But it does seem to me to be right to say that at least part of the solution to widespread dissatisfaction with government in England is decentralisation (of power and money, not just of civil servants and Whitehall outstations).

And that constitutional issue is important for its own sake - for England’s sake - and not just as a part-solution to the structural problems of the U.K. (though it might ameliorate some of them).

That seems to me to be the challenge for Labour constitutional thinking in this space: to find mechanisms to respond to and deliver on the demand for decentralising power and money in England, and to entrench it against Westminster’s endless centralising tendencies.