Let's be honest - devolution in the uk has been an unqualified disaster | thearticle

When Theresa May set out her ‘plan B’ for leaving the European Union earlier this week in the House of Commons, she spoke about giving the UK’s devolved administrations an “enhanced role” in

the next phase of negotiations. Devolution makes Brexit, and just about every other aspect of governing Britain, more complicated. If we eventually manage to get out of the EU, many powers

will in theory be returned from Brussels, but it’s not clear yet whether some of these competencies will be wielded by the devolved institutions or central government. The cross party

Constitution Reform Group has drafted Act Of Union legislation, which is currently due for its second reading in the House of Lords, trying to put order to this chaotic situation. The

private member’s bill, lodged by Lord Lisvane, envisages sweeping changes, with parliament retaining powers over only a core of “central policy areas”, including foreign affairs, human

rights and defence. The Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly and Welsh Assembly would take control of everything else. The bill is an intriguing document and an honest attempt to

stabilise the balance of powers between the various levels of government. Yet, these types of discussions are only necessary because, if we’re really honest with ourselves, devolution has

been an unqualified disaster for the United Kingdom. The extra layer of government in our system is a legacy of Tony Blair, who included it in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, before, by his own

admission, “steam-rollering” through referendums on the issue. Devolution was supposed to kill off separatist sentiment in the nations of the UK, but this haphazard experiment had the

opposite effect, creating a platform for the SNP to dominate Scottish politics and come within a whisker of breaking up the Union in 2014. Rather than improving relationships between London

and the rest of the UK, new centres of power made them incomparably worse. Nationalists used Scotland’s executive, which quickly styled itself a “government”, to nurture resentment against

Westminster. Each of the devolved administrations liked to pose as plucky defenders of their regions, fighting against an overbearing government for their fair share of powers and resources,

while blaming all of their failures on the centre. In Scotland, for over ten years a nationalist executive has focussed on constitutional issues and populist gimmicks, while standards in

the country’s once highly respected education system have plummeted.Two thirds of Wales’ national income is now made up of government spending. And productivity in the region, which was

already the worst in the UK, has fallen yet further in the two decades since devolution. In Northern Ireland, a legislative assembly was not such a novelty, because there was a regional

parliament in Belfast as recently as 1972. That institution had allowed the province to diverge socially and economically from the rest of the UK, with the result that the Catholic minority

became more and more estranged from the British state. Ulster’s parliament was not the cause of the Troubles – but it certainly didn’t help prevent them. The Stormont Assembly created by the

Belfast Agreement has been almost as disastrous. Even when the power-sharing executive operated, it rarely legislated and refused to tackle the most pressing problems affecting Northern

Ireland. Devolved government in Belfast was interrupted by an endless series of crises, suspensions and hot-house talks. At the time of writing, the Assembly has not sat for two years, after

Sinn Fein collapsed power-sharing because of its latest wrangles with the DUP. The Conservative government has stubbornly refused to restore direct rule to Northern Ireland, with the result

that important policy decisions have been delayed and power has been placed in the hands of unaccountable civil servants. The impact on hospitals, schools and infrastructure has been

devastating. Devolution may have failed to deliver good government to the regions where it was implemented, but its effects have perhaps been even more dismal in poorer areas of England. In

struggling towns and cities, there is an understandable perception that the devolved nations get a great deal out of the Treasury, at the expense of English taxpayers. Recent surveys by the

Universities of Edinburgh and Cardiff proved that this feeling of unfairness has contributed to a rising sense of Englishness, at the expense of the British identity. Wouldn’t it be ironic

if the ‘English nationalist’ sentiment that arch-remainers blame for Brexit, was actually nurtured by the reckless devolution experiments of their political godfather, Tony Blair? In truth,

Britain is still struggling to come to terms with the former Labour prime minister’s constitutional tinkering. His time in office left a less united kingdom, struggling to accommodate

resurgent national movements and divided by grievances and resentments encouraged by the devolved institutions. Perhaps the solution is to tackle the inconsistencies and asymmetries of

devolution, by codifying its position in our constitution, as the Act of Union Bill suggests. So far, though, every time the regional governments and executives have been awarded more

powers, it has only buoyed nationalists and encouraged them to ask for more. The Constitution Reform Group is at least thinking seriously about mending our constitution two decades after it

was duffed up by Labour and Blair, but it seems rather unlikely that the problem of devolution can be solved with more devolution.