The English Question
Regional Perspectives on a Fractured Nation
KEVIN MORGAN
Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3XQ.
Email MorganKJ:@cardiff.ac.uk
MORGAN, K. (2002), The English Question. Regional Perspectives on a Fractured Nation,
Regional Studies, 36, Number 7, October 2002
ABSTRACT
England remains the `gaping hole in the devolution settlement'. Debate about how England as
a whole should engage with devolution overlooks how regionally fractured England is in
terms of culture, society and economic fortunes. The discourse of `North-South divide'
underscores this unevenness. But it is also used to support an often unreflected assumption ­
by government and regional campaigners - that devolution to the (northern) regions will bring
an `economic dividend'. Equally, assumptions about the capacity of regional devolution to
overcome the `democratic deficit' and introduce more effective need a more nuanced
evaluation, not least with regard to the (paradoxical) reluctance of a devolving central
government to release the levers of power. The English devolution project does though

promise to undermine the Anglocentric narrative of Britishness and open the way to a
radically different notion of Britishness as a culturally diverse and politically devolved polity.
INTRODUCTION
Should we attach any significance to the fact that many UK citizens seem to be confused as to
the name of their country? In one of the most controversial revisionist histories of the UK,
Norman Davies argues that it is significant when people are not familiar with the basic
parameters of the state in which they live, when they do not know what it is called, when they
fail to distinguish between the parts and the whole, and when they have never grasped the
most elementary facts of its development. Confusion reigns on every hand, claims Davies,
and it is not confined to the old Anglocentric habit of using `England' as a shorthand for the
British Isles or United Kingdom as a whole. The scale of the problem only begins to emerge,
he says, `when one observes the inability of prominent authorities to present the history of our
Isles in accurate and unambiguous terms' (DAVIES, 2000a). Here Davies is referring to
mainstream histories of the UK which begin with the astonishing claim that `Britain is an
island'.
Described as `a dangerous book' by one conservative reviewer The Isles firmly aligns
itself with a revisionist school of historians ­ like Linda Colley, Hugh Kearney, Rees Davies
and Keith Robbins ­ which aims to correct what it sees as the Anglocentric bias by putting
Britain back into British history. This project has clearly been aided and abetted by the advent
of democratic devolution, the process through which the Celtic nations are seeking to
recalibrate their national identities within the UK, leaving many people in England a little
confused and unnerved about this `identity thing'. When a people accounts for 85% of a
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country's population, and when its nationality has never been compromised by a larger
neighbour, then national identity is like health, something that is taken for granted until it is
threatened. Democratic devolution may have been instigated by the Celtic minority, but the
implications are just as profound for England and the idea of `Britishness'. If the renaissance
of national identity in Celtic Britain is incompatible with the traditional, London-centric
notion of Britishness, it is not necessarily inimical to a devolved and pluralistic British polity.
The great conundrum of asymmetric devolution of course is England, which is rightly
characterized as `the gaping hole in the devolution settlement' (HAZELL, 2000). It is clearly
no coincidence that we are now witnessing a burgeoning new literature on Englishness and
Britishness, much of it tinged with a sense foreboding. In one of the more popular texts a
prominent Englishman notes, with evident pride, that the English have not hitherto sought to
define themselves because there was no need to do so. But was it necessary to do so now?
His answer is unequivocal: this is something `that the English can no longer avoid'
(PAXMAN, 1998). Much of this literature assumes that the `English Question' refers to the
way in which `England' decides to engage with constitutional change, and particularly with
devolution. Framing the question in national terms, however, may not be the best way to
understand the manifold landscapes of culture and society, still less the divergent economic
fortunes, which constitute the fractured character of England today. Indeed, this article
suggests that a regional perspective may be a better way to understand, and explain, the
diverse reactions to devolution within England.
To this end the article begins with a discussion of the North-South Divide, arguably
the main fissure running through the country, and one of the keys to understanding the uneven
political interest in devolution in England today. Far more than a purely economic
phenomenon, the North-South Divide insinuates itself into practically every indicator of well-
being, including the greatest inequalities of all ­ namely the morbidity and mortality data.
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Having looked at the structures of uneven development, the next section addresses one of the
most controversial questions in the whole devolution literature: is there an `economic
dividend' to devolution? Although this is tacitly assumed in much of the literature, especially
the advocacy literature, the interplay between devolution and development is rarely examined
as explicitly as it should be. The discussion therefore shifts the focus from the economic to
the political realm by examining the dialectic between devolution and democracy. The
political rationale for devolution tends to be cast in terms of redressing the `democratic
deficit' at the regional level, but this tends to ignore the potential threats to local democracy
as some powers, like planning for example, are transferred from the local to the regional
realm. The final section addresses the implications of English devolution for received notions
of Britishness. If Britain is to have a viable and progressive future I argue that Anglocentric
notions of Britishness have to be jettisoned in favour of a notion of Britishness which is
synonymous with a devolved and multicultural polity. More speculatively, I also argue that
the richer political diversity of the Isles makes a devolved Britain a more congenial context
for the English regions which opt for devolution than a resurgent England.
THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE: ENGLAND, WHICH ENGLAND?
The stereotyped North-South divide ­ consisting of a prosperous and burgeoning south
juxtaposed to a deprived and declining north ­ has its economic origins in the collapse of the
imperial spatial division of labour in inter-war Britain. Up until then the external success of
British capitalism was internally correlated with a spatial division of labour in which the
booming heavy industries were largely concentrated in the north of England, Scotland and
Wales, or `outer Britain' as these areas were significantly dubbed between the wars. Inter-war
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Britain was distinctive for many reasons, not least because it was the last time we witnessed
large scale migration in this country, from the north and west to the south, and because of the
stark contrast between over-development in Greater London and under-development in the
north.
What makes the patterns and processes of inter-war Britain worth noting today is that
they shaped the official mindset of politicians, planners and policy-makers for generations,
particularly with respect to the diagnosis of the `regional problem' and its post-war solution.
Nothing symbolised the new thinking better than the BARLOW REPORT (1940), which had
been commissioned to examine the problems associated with the prevailing distribution of the
industrial population, a report which created the intellectual framework for post-war regional
policy for some thirty years after the war. At the heart of this pioneering report was the
argument that over- and under-development were two sides of the same coin and the solution
should be sought in containing growth in Greater London and inducing it to migrate to the
depressed areas of `outer Britain'.
The Barlow diagnosis spawned the `donor-recipient' model of post-war regional
policy, in which prosperous regions like the South East and West Midlands would effectively
donate surplus growth, in the form of branch-plants, to recipient regions in the north and west,
a model which began to unravel when the donor regions began to suffer their own
unemployment problems. These new structural constraints persuaded the Callaghan
government to dilute regional policy as discreetly as possible, a move which was endorsed
with alacrity by Thatcherism (MORGAN, 1986).
Ever since the high point of regional policy spending in the mid-1970s successive
governments, Conservative and New Labour, have been at pains to belittle the North-South
Divide. Mrs Thatcher dismissed it as a media invention, as well she might because the Tories
had little to lose in the north. More recently, and more surprising perhaps, Tony Blair has also
4

tried to dismiss it - on the grounds that it is a simplistic notion which ignores disparities
within regions (although there is no logical reason to dismiss inter-regional inequalities
simply because intra-regional disparities also exist). Other Labour politicians, like John
Prescott, Stephen Byers, and Peter Mandelson for example, are less disposed to dismiss the
Divide ­ partly because they represent northern seats and partly because they feel that the
north is becoming structurally de-coupled from the `knowledge-based economy' in the south
(MANDELSON, 2001).
One of the reasons why the North-South Divide is often dismissed today is because
regional unemployment rates, the traditional index of the `regional problem' since the inter-
war period, have seemingly converged in recent years. But, as a vast corpus of robust research
has shown, official unemployment is no longer as important a guide to the health of the labour
market as it once was, and certainly not as important as the `economically inactive', an index
which covers conditions like premature retirement and long-term limiting illness (GREEN
and OWEN, 1998; GLYN and ERDEM, 1999; FOTHERGILL, 2001; ROWTHORN, 1999).
In 1997, for example, the number of men in the 25-64 age group who were classified as
inactive was more than double the number classified as unemployed. The contrasts between
north and south as regards inactivity are enormous in this age range, with some 30% without a
formal job in the northern regions compared to less than 12% in the south (GLYN and
ERDEM, 1999).
Surveying the evidence in his Kalecki Memorial Lecture, Bob Rowthorn shows that
the North-South Divide is still very much with us as regards patterns of employment,
unemployment and non-employment, and he attributes it to deep structural shifts in the British
economy, principally to weak employment growth, a falling share of manufacturing in total
employment and a shift in the locus of economic activity away from the larger urban
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conurbations. But the central issue, according to Rowthorn, is not how we got where we are,
but where do we go from here? To this key question he offers the following answer:
There is a serious job scarcity in the North and there are only two genuine ways to
eliminate it. One is to move potential workers to jobs elsewhere. The other is to create
new jobs in the North. Education is an important component of either policy. If the
sole aim is to move northern workers into southern jobs, better education must be
combined with a relaxation of housing and other restrictions in the South. If the sole
aim is to encourage development of the North, education must still be provided, but
restrictions in the South should be retained or even tightened. If people can migrate
easily into the South, better education in the North may simply encourage emigration
and do little to revive the local economy. In the event, some mixture of the two
policies may be required, combining revival of the depressed areas with emigration to
remove some of their surplus population. This is probably the most realistic option. To
rely entirely on emigration as the solution would involve a scale of population
movement which is technically feasible but politically unacceptable. To rely entirely
on a revival in the North would require an implausible turnaround in its economic
fortunes. The danger in the present situation is that emigration from the North will be
inadequate to remove the area's surplus population, whilst the local economy will
remain too weak to absorb those who are left behind. The North would then become
Britain's Mezzogiorno, absorbing mounting funds from the central government and
generating growing resentment in more prosperous areas (Rowthorn, 1999).
Rowthorn's prescription is worth quoting at length because it neatly captures (one version of)
the contemporary conundrum of economic development in England: should the government
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relax housing restrictions to encourage labour to move south or should it tighten development
controls to induce capital to move north?
The southern development lobby takes issue with this analysis ostensibly because it is
based on the antiquated logic of the Barlow era, which assumed a nationally contained
economy in which investment could be controlled in the south and channelled to the north. In
an era of globalisation, it argues, this intra-national trade-off is less likely because, if they are
denied a location in the south, today's investment projects are likely to shift to a core region
in mainland Europe rather than a peripheral region in the north of England ­ in which case
such investments are lost to the UK as a whole.
This was the reasoning of the Crow Report (CROW, 1999) on housing in the south-
east, a report which quite consciously sought to bury the mindset of the Barlow Report. The
Crow Report was the result of a public examination of the demand for new housing in the
south east. Government estimates had suggested that 1.1 million new homes would be
required by 2016, a figure disputed by the South East Regional Planning Authority
(SERPLAN), which argued that no more than 800,000 new homes should be built, otherwise
the programme would be unsustainable (MURDOCH, 1999; 2000). Published in October
1999 the Crow Report rejected the more modest figure of SERPLAN and backed the
Government's 1.1 million estimate (CROW, 1999).
What makes the Crow Report so significant from an English perspective is that it
introduces a radically different spatial framework in which to assess the desirability of
regulatory controls: if the Barlow Report was predicated on a national economic framework,
the Crow Report was decidedly European. Steered towards a pro-growth perspective by the
Government Office for the South East, the Crow Report boldly announced that housing
provision should serve the economy rather than the environment, and therefore it should be
sufficient to maintain the momentum of economic growth in the south east, the key
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assumption on which everything else was predicated. To justify its pro-growth stance the
Report reminds the reader that the south east might appear to be a high growth domestic
region, but it was a mere thirtieth in the EU regional growth league.
Like the fifth Heathrow terminal, the Crow Report is a symbolic testament to the fact
that economic growth in the south east will be fuelled rather than frustrated by New Labour:
in other words, there is no cause, neither sustainability in the south nor deprivation in the
north, which can compete with the allure of economic growth in the upper echelons of New
Labour, certainly so far as the most powerful Downing Street duo are concerned.
Although New Labour has launched an impressive array of regional initiatives in
England, as discussed below, this new regional policy package should not conceal the most
important fact of all ­ namely that in economic terms the North-South Divide is actually
growing. A recently published `competitiveness index' for the UK shows that the three best
performing regions ­ London, South East and Eastern ­ have widened their lead over the
three worst by over 30% since 1997, and the gap between London and the North East has
grown by more than 35% (BROWN, 2001; HUGGINS, 2001).
None of this will come as a surprise to the economic development fraternity within
regional studies. For many years the sterling efforts of Doreen Massey and her colleagues at
the Open University, and John Goddard and his colleagues at CURDS, have been highlighting
the deep structures of economic inequality between north and south. The spatially
differentiated structures of income and employment are symptomatic of even deeper and more
intractable inequalities which flow from the fact that the UK's core developmental assets ­
senior corporate functions, public and private R&D resources, higher level skills, new firm
formation, venture capital funds, innovation networks and power circuits to name a few ­ are
heavily biased towards southern England (MASSEY, 1984; MASSEY and ALLEN, 1988;
ALLEN et al, 1998; AMIN and GODDARD, 1986).
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But the southern-centric bias of development has a more systemic, if less direct effect
on the UK's spatial economy. As the UK's most over-developed region, the south east is the
chief source of inflationary pressures, hence UK monetary policy tends to be calibrated to the
over-heated conditions in this core region rather than the `under-heated' conditions in the less
developed regions of the north and the west. In a celebrated public relations gaffe the
Governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, actually conceded this point when, asked if
job loss in the north was an acceptable price to pay for the control of inflation in the south, he
was reported to have said `yes, I suppose in a sense I am'.
Given the profound southern-centric bias to economic development in the UK it is
comical in the extreme to think that New Labour's modest regional policy package can in any
way reverse the North-South Divide. On the contrary, the new regional policy could well
exacerbate rather than alleviate spatial imbalances because it is primarily designed to raise the
economic potential of all regions rather than improve the north relative to the south. But
these fears will not deter poor regions like the North from prosecuting their campaign for a
directly elected regional assembly, a campaign predicated on the belief that there is an
economic dividend to political devolution. Because this assumption plays such a pivotal role
in the case for democratic devolution in the English regions it needs to be examined in more
detail.
DEVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT: IS THERE AN ECONOMIC DIVIDEND?
The notion that political devolution carries an `economic dividend' resonates deeply with
regional devolutionists in England, even though it is rarely articulated explicitly. This
perception has been shaped by a number of narratives, two in particular.
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Firstly, there is a long established and deeply held belief in the poorer English regions
that the Celtic nations have secured tangible economic benefits from administrative
devolution, particularly from their territorial ministers and their regional development
agencies. In this narrative, what we might call the `Celtic narrative' for shorthand purposes,
the poorer English regions looked with envy as the Celtic nations were able to use their
devolved governance systems to mobilise more substantial incentive packages, based on
regional selective assistance, which gave them an edge in attracting foreign direct investment.
Nor was it simply a matter of finance. The creation of regional development agencies in 1976,
that is 23 years before such agencies were established in England, enabled Scotland and
Wales to offer investors lower transaction costs because Scottish Enterprise and the Welsh
Development Agencies acted as `one stop shops' for all corporate inquiries, a potentially
important asset in locational tournaments.While these benefits were real enough, it is perhaps
understandable if they were exaggerated by the less well-endowed English regions. During
the career of the WDA, for example, Wales became poorer not richer, so much so that its
GDP per capita is currently just 80% of the UK average, a chastening reminder of the limits to
what a development agency can accomplish on its own account. On the other hand, the
economic situation in Wales would almost certainly have been a good deal worse in the
absence of the WDA (MORGAN, 1997).
Secondly, as English authorities have become more conscious of institutional diversity
in Europe, through their dealings with EU Structural Funds and through their political
involvement in the EU Committee of the Regions, they have been struck by their own
shortcomings, in particular by the fact that the most innovative regions in Europe enjoy
(among many other things) a measure of political devolution. Although this varies from
country to country, being most pronounced in federal countries like Germany, this facility
was perceived to have given these regions the potential to pursue more robust developmental
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strategies than was possible in unitary states, where there was little or no institutional capacity
for collective action at the regional level (CROUCH and MARQUAND, 1989; WIEHLER
and STUMM, 1995; RODRIGUEZ-POSE, 1996). In a variant of this narrative, the
`innovative region' narrative, particular attention is drawn to a region's institutional networks
for learning, innovation and development, networks which facilitate trust, reciprocity and
knowledge transfer (AMIN, 1999; STORPER, 1997; MORGAN, 1997; COOKE and
MORGAN, 1998; MASKELL et al, 1998; MORGAN and HENDERSON, 2002). Although
this narrative neither isolates nor extols the role of regional government per se in the cocktail
of factors associated with innovative regions, this is precisely what some advocates of
regional government in England have done when they speak of the `economic imperative' for
political devolution (EUROPEAN DIALOGUE, 1993; MURPHY and CABORN, 1996).
If these ideas were somehow `in the air' in the early 1990s they were given a more
tangible political expression by the new regional policy coalition which assembled around
John Prescott, the main champion of English devolution in the Labour Party. The vehicle for
drafting Labour's new regional policy, and above all for making an economic case for
regional devolution in England, was the Regional Policy Commission ­ and it was stroke of
genius to persuade Bruce Millan to chair it because, as the former EU Commissioner for
Regional Policy, Millan had enormous cachet, especially at the sub-national level in England.
The Millan Commission, as it was astutely called, sought to address a number of
anxieties in England's sub-national economic development community. For example there
was the deeply held view that regional policy was far too centralised, too top-down in design
and delivery, and that this needed to be complemented by a bottom-up perspective. There was
a need to placate the English regions, many of which felt aggrieved and disadvantaged as we
have seen by the development agencies in the Celtic nations. Finally there was a vague, but
nevertheless widely shared view that the English regions would get a better deal from the EU
11

Structural Funds if they had a more coherent voice. To try to resolve these problems the
Millan Commission came up with a number of key recommendations, the most significant of
which were: first, to make the case for regional development agencies to be part of regional
policy in England; second, to make the case for having a development agency in each region
rather than in assisted area regions; third, to make the case for indirectly elected regional
chambers to steer the development agencies and to render them accountable to the regions
(REGIONAL POLICY COMMISSION, 1996; MAWSON, 1998; HARDING et al, 1999).
If the Regional Policy Commission was primarily responsible for designing Labour's
new regional policy in opposition, the Prescott-Caborn team at the DETR was largely
responsible for delivering it in government. Although other parts of Whitehall, like DTI and
DfEE for example, were also responsible for certain aspects of the new regional policy
agenda, they were not as committed to the devolution of power as the DETR team, a situation
which triggered some bitter turf wars within central government, where there is no settled
consensus about devolution.
In office the Prescott-Caborn team perpetuated the notion of an `economic dividend'
in the political vocabulary which they used to market England's new regional development
agencies (RDAs). The official rationale for creating RDAs was that they were necessary to
address `the economic deficit in the English regions', a reference to the fact that GDP per
capita had fallen in every English region between 1992-1995 and that in all but two regions it
was below the EU average (DETR, 1997; CABORN, 1999). Prescott and Caborn were
painfully aware of the spectre at the feast ­ in the short term the RDAs would add to a
burgeoning `democratic deficit' in the English regions, leaving the new agencies open to the
charge of being centrally-controlled quangos which were in, but not of, the regions where
they operated. In the Prescott-Caborn scenario, however, the `democratic deficit' was a
transitionary problem, to be tackled in the short-term through the formation of voluntary
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Regional Chambers and, in the longer term, through the statutory powers of directly-elected
Regional Assemblies if there was sufficient popular demand (HARDING et al, 1999).
Of the twin deficits the `economic deficit' was always going to be the most difficult
for the RDAs to redress. From the outset their main problem has been the chronic disjunction
between their powers (which are modest) and their tasks (which are awesome). Raising the
level of regional economic prosperity, as measured by GDP per capita, is no easy task,
especially when the RDAs control less than 1% of public expenditure in their respective
regions (GROOM, 1999). Miniscule budgets, modest powers and a raft of responsibilities,
straddling economic development, social regeneration, rural renewal, environmental
enhancement and possibly planning if the government gets its way, suggest that that the
RDAs may be over-extending themselves.
Not surprisingly, this alarming gap between powers and tasks, between rhetoric and
reality in other words, triggered a backlash from the business-led RDA boards, many of
whom complained that what was on offer to them was unworkable and therefore
unacceptable. Their initial opposition was focused on two particular issues. First and
foremost, it was felt that the RDAs did not have the tools to do the job: the 11 different
`stovepipe' funding streams, with a number of detailed strings attached, were at variance with
the key issues identified in the regional economic strategies. Second, the RDAs were
perceived as creatures of the DETR, rather than of a government which claimed to be `joined-
up' at the centre, and therefore they could not influence the other agencies that were vital to
the delivery of their strategies. Barely four months after they were operational, the RDA
chairmen ­ all of whom are men ­ decided to mobilise their collective influence to press
ministers for a number of key reforms, the most pressing of which were the following:
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· Prioritisation across government and, more particularly, for RDA strategies to be
assessed as a package
· Flexibility within and between financial years, maximum delegations and no more
than three separate funding streams
· A single block grant within two years
· An early discussion with ministers on reform of the Barnett formula
· Flexibility to devise new, innovative financial instruments to lever in new private
sector investment
· Learning and Skills Councils funding to be routed through RDAs and a significant
leading role on Europe, and
· A review of outputs and assessment methods in key departmental streams (HALL,
2000).
With the notable exception of the Barnett formula, the government conceded ground on many
of these points in a move which heralded a new alliance between John Prescott, the traditional
standard bearer of English devolution, and Gordon Brown, who began to think that the RDAs
might have a useful role to play in his campaign to raise the woefully low levels of
productivity in the UK economy (HM TREASURY, 2001).
Not since the `regional planning' experiment of the 1960s has a British government
sought to establish such a positive correlation between devolution and development. The
ambassadors of Labour's new regional policy make great claims on behalf of the
constitutional attributes of this policy. Let us to take two recent examples to illustrate the
thinking at the heart of the new regional policy:
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History has taught us that prescriptive, top-down strategies, with Whitehall `picking
winners', does little to combat regional imbalances. What we need therefore are
policies which empower communities so they can determine their own future...A new
regional policy which offers flexibility and local ownership, and which actively
promotes partnership working and `joined-up' policies, must be a priority for Labour.
But to succeed it demands a culture change, with the regions looking more to what
they can achieve for themselves rather than a dependence on the largesse of central
government (CABORN, 2000).
Our new regional policy is based on two principles ­ it aims to strengthen the essential
building blocks of growth ­ innovation, skills, the development of enterprise ­ by
exploiting the indigenous strengths in each region and city. And it is bottom-up not
top-down, with national government enabling powerful regional and local initiatives
to work by providing the necessary flexibility and resources. National government
does not have all the answers ­ it never could. We need strategic decision-making and
accountability at the regional and local level' (BALLS, 2000).
As someone who has advocated some of these things, in particular the need for a more
devolved approach which would respect local knowledge and local needs on the one hand and
afford parity of esteem to welfare and innovation on the other (MORGAN, 1997a), I have
some sympathy for these underlying principles. In practice, however, there are two major
shortcomings with the new regional policy. First, by treating all regions in a broadly uniform
manner, it does little to address the problems of the assisted area regions in England,
particularly the shortage of jobs (RSA, 2001). Second, the new regional policy narrative
elides the disturbing fact that, contrary to the claims about devolution, there is a huge
15

asymmetry between power and responsibility, with the latter being devolved way ahead of the
former.
In other words it is not credible to claim, as Caborn and Balls try to claim, that
Labour's new regional policy is creating `empowered communities' which have the capacity
to `determine their own future'. The ambassadors of the new regional policy are as anxious to
play up the responsibility of the region as they are to play down the responsibility of central
government, a regressive message which tends to be obscured by the progressive-sounding
mantra of `bottom-up not top-down'. In contrast to this crude and tendentious argument, in
which `top-down' and `bottom-up' initiatives are juxtaposed as mutually exclusive options,
we need to insist that effective regional policy needs to draw on both: that is to say it needs
`top-down' initiatives (which mobilise resources from central government and create enabling
conditions) to be allied to and complemented with `bottom-up' initiatives (which seek to
empower local knowledge).
If the English regions hope to redress the economic deficit with the more innovative
EU regions they would do well to remember that the latter not only enjoy a wider array of
constitutional powers at the regional level but, more importantly if less perceptively, they are
also embedded in a national environment which offers stronger enabling conditions for
economic development and social well-being (COOKE and MORGAN, 1998). The parlous
condition of the public services in the UK, where health and transport are literally mired in
crisis, highlights the absence of the systemic enabling conditions which are taken for granted
in the more developed regions. In the case of the transport infrastructure, for example, the
government's own independent advisers have established that the UK has spent 30 billion
less than the EU average over the last twenty years, yielding `a transport network starved of
investment for half a century' (COMMISSION FOR INTEGRATED TRANSPORT, 2001).
This is part of a much wider problem, the demise of the public realm, a problem caused
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largely by successive governments reducing public investment to the point where a new post-
war low was reached in 1999, when gross public investment fell to just 1.6% of GDP
(INSTITUTE FOR FISCAL STUDIES, 2001). The demise of the public realm denudes all
regions, especially the poorer ones which are more dependent on the public sector for income
and employment, and the new regional policy is powerless to redress this systemic problem.
No amount of regional devolution, be it RDAs or Regional Assemblies, will solve this
problem either (although in the following section I want to suggest that Regional Assemblies
might help to foster a more progressive political debate about the public realm).
Although the public realm is a significant part of the fabric of all regional economies,
it is not clear whether economic success can be attributed to regional government because the
relationship between devolution and development is highly ambiguous. Given the political
significance of this question one might expect to find an enormous evidence base here, but
there is not one. So far as the key theme of this section is concerned ­ the supposed
`economic dividend' of devolution ­ one of the best treatments of the subject recommends a
healthy dose of scepticism because:
many arguments simply ascribe the contributions of a wide range of other agencies to
the presence of regional governments. What regional governments deliver in support
of economic innovation can be, and often are, provided as effectively by government
at other levels, by non-elected public agencies, by the market, by hybrid public-private
organisations and by informal inter-organisational networking arrangements.
Advocates of the economic case for regional government also risk falling into the trap
of ascribing strong economic performance at sub-national level to democratic
institutions when the real explanation may lie in a unique regional combination of
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supply side, technological, behavioural, cultural and scale factors (EVANS and
HARDING, 1997; HARDING et al, 1996).
In contrast to the advocacy literature (EUROPEAN DIALOGUE, 1993; MURPHY and
CABORN, 1996), here we have a sober analysis of the supposed economic dividend which
concludes by saying that while regional institutional capacity is indeed important to economic
performance, the specific link between regional government and regional economic success is
`highly contingent'. A strikingly similar point emerged from a study of devolution and
development in Wales, which concluded by saying:
The advent of democratic devolution in Wales may have rendered the policy-making
process more transparent and more inclusive, formally at least, and these attributes
may raise the quality of political debate about development. But this is not to say that
a political innovation like the Assembly will, of itself, do anything positive for the
economic prospects of Wales in the twenty-first century. Democracy may be an
intrinsically good thing, but its implications for economic development are more
ambiguous than we may care to admit (MORGAN and REES, 2001).
These conclusions will do nothing to deter the campaign for devolution in England, a
campaign predicated on the belief that Regional Assemblies will redress the economic and
democratic deficits in the English regions. If the Assemblies help to galvanise their regional
economies, mobilising resources which were hitherto untapped and ill-organised for example,
then they could well have a positive role to play in regional economic renewal, but there is
nothing pre-ordained about such a benign outcome. There is certainly no justification for
18

saying that regional devolution in England is `compelling on both economic and democratic
grounds' (QUIN, 2002).
This brings us to the following paradox: even if we assume that devolution produces
an economic dividend in the English regions, this will do nothing to ease, still less resolve, the
North-South Divide in England. To claim, as the government claims, that it is addressing the
divide through the creation of RDAs is nonsense because RDAs have been established in
every region rather than just in the northern regions ­ and treating unequals equally is hardly a
recipe for promoting equality. If we assume that devolution has a benign effect across the
board, then the south-east region, with its vastly superior economic advantages, might acquire
the regional institutional capacity which it has manifestly lacked in the past to sustain higher
rates of growth (MURRAY, 1988; ALLEN et al, 1998), with the result that it becomes even
more decoupled from the North. This scenario is perfectly compatible with regions like the
north-east improving their own economic position through devolution, but this would be
progress measured in absolute terms not progress relative to the regions of the South.
Ultimately, of course, this question of regional inequalities is not a regional question
at all: rather it is a question for the UK as an evolving community of nations and regions, and
above all a question for central government, the UK's highest political authority. Because the
UK has been governed for so long by an over-centralised, London-centric system, the public
debate about inequality, social and spatial, has been almost entirely shaped by the balance of
forces at Westminster and Whitehall. This could change dramatically if the English regions
hosted their own directly elected Assemblies, and if these bodies were able to instigate a new
debate - about regenerating their regions, their immediate interest, but also about the public
realm in the UK, which affects their longer term interest. In this way we can begin to imagine
new possibilities emerging from the interplay of devolution and development, but they are
just that ­ possibilities.
19

DEVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY: BEYOND THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT?
If the economic case for devolution is at best ambiguous, the democratic case would seem to
be more compelling, but this too is contested. Although the campaign for democratic
devolution in Scotland and Wales was largely fuelled by the nationalist demands of stateless
nations, it was also driven by a popular urge to redress a burgeoning democratic deficit within
`quangoland', that bewildering array of unelected public bodies which had little local
accountability. This problem was especially acute in Wales, where a series of scandals had
fostered the impression that quangos were a law unto themselves and in need of robust
democratic scrutiny (MORGAN and MUNGHAM, 2000).
Of all the reasons which have been adduced to justify regional government in England
the democratic scrutiny argument tends to be the most prominent. For example, in its `white
paper' on elected regional government the Campaign for the English Regions (CFER)
claimed there was `a pressing need to inject a degree of democracy into regional and sub-
regional quangos as concern continues to grow about the democratic deficit evident at
regional level' (CFER, 2002). The scale of this problem, according to CFER, showed no sign
of diminishing because:
· Its own analysis had shown that in an `average' region the major regional bodies spend
1.3 billion, employ 2,893 people and incur over 62 million on running costs alone
· In Yorkshire and the Humber it is estimated that there are 40 regional and sub-regional
quangos, a figure which rises to nearer 70 in the North East
20

· There is no universal body of law or statute providing for public access to information
about quangos
· There is an urgent need to simplify the regional map in England, not least because the
relationship between the three key regional bodies (Government Office, RDA and
Regional Chamber) is `a mystery to most people' (CFER, 2002).
Running alongside this argument for more democratic governance in the English regions, and
all too often confused with it, is the separate demand for more effective governance. One of
the most forceful advocates of this argument is the CBI, which is anything but an advocate of
regional government. Surveying the performance of the English RDAs it said:
The regional map of players is highly confusing and a number of new players have
been created. On the whole the various organisations have had poor records on
working together. There is no greater deterrent to business participation than public
sector turf wars and `silo' mentalities that get in the way of sensible, strategic
decision-making (CBI, 2001).
In much of the literature on English devolution, especially the advocacy literature, it is tacitly
assumed that `sensible, strategic decision-making' is synonymous with democratic decision-
making structures, a problematical assumption which does not deter the political campaign.
Regional government, it is argued, would deliver democracy, accountability and efficiency to
a chaotic and unelected regional tier ­ a tier which already exists and which has evolved in an
ad hoc manner (DAVIS and STEWART, 1993; STRAW, 1995; DETR, 2000). Although this
is a widely held perception within regionalist circles, it is certainly not shared by all pro-
devolution strands of opinion. Indeed, in some perspectives regional government is deemed to
21

be a threat to democracy given the potential for the upward transfer of functions from local
government (COMMISSION FOR LOCAL DEMOCRACY, 1995; TINDALE, 1996). In this
perspective regional government signals a creeping form of `centralism' in the sense that
`genuine decentralisation should be to local government, not to regional government'
(JONES, 1988). However, not all pro-local perspectives are anti-regional in principle, and one
of these strands poses some extremely pertinent questions:
There is a danger of a new regional elite being developed, with minimum involvement
in strategy development by the wider community, particularly those who are
disadvantaged and excluded. There is also the issue of the hierarchy of the strategies.
Are regional strategies going to draw power up away from local authorities or devolve
power downwards from central government? Are large, powerful interests going to
dominate the strategy-making process? So, for example, there is growing evidence that
regional economic strategies and business interests dominate over sustainability
strategies and environmental interests. What happens when one lot of policy-makers
ignores the recommendation of another?...And finally, if our aim is regional
institutional capacity building, how do we ensure that the partnership bodies that
develop these strategies are democratic and effective institutions?' (DUNGEY and
NEWMAN, 2000).
There is no better illustration of the conflicts identified here than the highly controversial
Planning Green Paper which the government released in late 2001, just a week before
Christmas! (DTLR, 2001). The most incendiary points in the Green Paper were: the decision
to abolish county structure plans and transfer these local government powers to the regional
level; the regional level also to determine housing provision; and central government to
22

decide on large infrastructure projects, a move designed to end planning sagas like the fifth
terminal at Heathrow, the longest and most expensive inquiry in history.
The new planning proposals, which only apply to England, provoked radically
different responses. A Local Government Association spokesperson said the decision to
transfer county planning powers to `an unelected, remote and increasingly bureaucratic
regional government (sic) will not strike much of a chord with the public'. A Friends of the
Earth officer attacked the decision to limit and accelerate planning inquiries, saying `the
government has caved in to the demands of developers and the CBI' and the Green Paper is
`one of the biggest blows to environmental protection and democracy in the last 50 years'. In
stark contrast, the CBI was delighted with the new proposals because, in its view, the `current
planning system undermines UK competitiveness and discourages firms from expanding here'
(BROWN, 2001c). These early skirmishes around the Green Paper suggest there may be some
real substance to the fears in the English planning community to the effect that `central
government priorities for regeneration and growth will be channelled into the regions in ways
that will bypass or override regional and local planning authorities' (MURDOCH and
TEWDWR-JONES, 1999). And in this respect planning experts are alarmed that Stephen
Byers, the Secretary of State at the DTLR, reserved judgement on the third runway at
Heathrow, even though this had been ruled out of the question by the public inquiry. In other
words a third runway could eventually be approved by a backdoor procedure: apart from
being an environmental disaster for London this would signal the end of `an orderly or
representative system of planning in this country' (HALL, 2001).
Regional government would not of itself resolve these conflicts between economic
development and environmental integrity in England, but it would render the decision-making
process at the regional level more transparent, more democratic and more credible than it is
currently. What exercises Tony Blair and his inner sanctum, however, is not the democratic
23

deficit but the `delivery deficit' in the public services - and this is fast becoming the main
criterion by which they judge the relevance and urgency of regional devolution in England
(BROWN, 2001a). Although a sound criterion in principle, the problem is that one cannot
know the answer to this conundrum without the practical experience of regional government.
With the publication of the White Paper on elected regional government in England
this practical experience could be with us sooner than we think. According to CFER the
White Paper needed to be informed by five key principles:
· A multi-speed approach that allows those regions that wish to progress towards
elected regional government to do so ahead of those regions that are not ready or
willing to do so
· A flexible approach that allows variation in structures and powers, albeit within an
overall template
· A participative approach with a requirement for regional stakeholders to be involved
in shaping the details of the proposals for their particular region
· An evolutionary approach with the ambition for `joined-up government' given
priority
· An inclusive approach that emphasises the need for regional governments to be
exemplars in inclusive and participatory democracy so as to re-engage English citizens
with their own governance (CFER, 2002).
At least in outline, the White Paper meets most of the CFER aspirations. This kind of model
of of regional government thus seems set to win out over the other options which have been
canvassed from time to time, like elected city mayors and city-regions, as a solution to `the
English question' (HARDING, 2000; STOKER, 2000). City-regions would raise more
24

questions than answers, while city mayors, which could easily co-exist with regional
government, are a specific response to a debate about the modernisation of local government
(SANDFORD and MCQUAIL, 2001).
If the most compelling reasons for elected Regional Assemblies are to create more
democratic and more effective governance structures in the English regions, there is also a
wider rationale which tends to get lost in the prosaic debate about boundaries, functions and
powers. This wider rationale is the pressing need for deeper, more deliberative forms of
democracy at all spatial scales to render structures of power more transparent and more
accountable to people as a matter of routine (BARNETT, 1997). If the enabling structures of
democratic devolution are confined to the Celtic nations, then England, which constitutes
85% of the UK population, has no reason to identify with this potentially transformative
political project.
Of course the constitutional changes that are underway in the UK today can be
interpreted in radically different ways, and there is no shortage of narratives seeking to do so.
On the right of the political spectrum, for example, devolution has been conceived as a
dysfunctional force which spells `the death of Britain' (REDWOOD, 1999), while on the left
the `new regionalism' in England has been construed in functionalist terms as `a scalar fix' to
regulate the crisis tendencies of capitalism (JONES, 2001). In less apocalyptic terms a cyber-
debate has also sought to deconstruct the meaning of New Labour's programme of
constitutional reform, and here Tom Nairn has launched a coruscating assault on the timidity
of it all. A self-avowed civic nationalist, Nairn's critique was twofold: first, that Blair, like
Thatcher before him, was perpetuating a `non-revolution from above' since the reforms were
too modest to amount to anything significant; and second, that the silence of Britain's
`dominant nationality', the English, was the biggest impediment to progressive constitutional
change (NAIRN, 2001; see also NAIRN, 2002).
25

As one of the respondents I suggested that Tom Nairn had possibly under-estimated
the potential for change here. As regards the first point he exaggerates the extent to which `the
centre' ­ whether it be Number 10, the Cabinet or Whitehall ­ can successfully manage the
country from above. No matter how modest the constitutional reforms have been to date, and
they are very modest indeed, they have nevertheless created new political spaces in which
new voices are beginning to be heard, at least in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and
London. Far from being an arcane `chattering classes' issue I argued that democratic
devolution is helping to rejuvenate the public realm, citing the fact that the Scottish
Parliament had begun to craft a far more progressive agenda than anything seen at
Westminster with respect to personal care for the elderly, student tuition fees and freedom of
information for example. But what about Blair's lukewarm attitude to devolution? The fact
that the Prime Minister originally had no intention of extending English devolution beyond
RDAs and Regional Chambers speaks volumes for the protean political environment in which
we live today, an environment in which elite motives are rarely a good guide to political
outcomes.
As regards the second point I felt that Nairn had, once again, under-estimated the
potential for changing the status quo because of the terms in which he framed `the English
question'. The problem of the `dominant nationality' need not be an incubus on progressive
constitutional change if we frame the issue in terms of English regionalism rather than
English nationalism because the former, being a more civic-minded political phenomenon, is
far more compatible with the spirit of a devolved and pluralist British polity than an English
parliament sporting the banner of St George (MORGAN, 2001b).
But Tom Nairn was absolutely right to raise questions about New Labour's
commitment to democratic renewal through constitutional change. Time and again the
government has shown itself to be Janus-faced on this issue: committed to devolving power in
26

principle, it has been profoundly circumspect about doing so in practice (BARNETT, 1999;
MORGAN and MUNGHAM, 2000). This might seem a harsh judgement on a government
which has been mid-wife to four devolved administrations; but alongside those very real
achievements one has to set the abortive attempts to control the leadership elections in
London and Wales, the gutting of the freedom of information bill, the effective sacking of
Elizabeth Filkin, the independent parliamentary standards commissioner, and a proposal to
reform the Lords which put patronage before democracy, a proposal which saw the
government being outflanked in the democratic stakes by the Tories.
At the very least this suggests an ambivalent attitude to devolving power; so much so
that one cannot assume that the government will campaign vigorously for regional
government in England no matter what the commitments in the White Paper. The strongest
card of the sceptics in government is the claim that there is simply no demand for devolution
in the English regions beyond the self-referential ranks of the afficionados. While the
government may relax some of the pre-conditions it once attached to directly elected
assemblies in England, it will insist on a regional referendum to ascertain the level of public
support ­ and winning a referendum may be more difficult than pro-devolution campaigners
realise, not least because it involves creating a new tier of politicians when this profession has
plummeted in the public's esteem. Indeed, winning a referendum would seem to be the
biggest barrier to the formation of regional government in England.
The prospects for regional government in England now depend less on state-sponsored
`regionalism from above' (the top-down process which spawned Integrated Regional Offices
under the Tories and RDAs under New Labour for example) and more on civic-minded
`regionalism from below' (the bottom-up struggle to render regional structures more
democratic and more accountable through Regional Chambers and, possibly, through
Regional Assemblies). Although the former had a largely uniform effect on England (with the
27

notable exception of London), the latter could produce a profoundly asymmetric form of
governance if some regions decide to embrace the Assembly option while others reject it,
further fracturing Britain's largest nation and creating a new type of democratic deficit.
RE-IMAGINING BRITISHNESS: MULTIPLE IDENTITIES AND THE ENGLISH
QUESTION
While strong regional identity can help to mobilise support for regional government, it does
not seem to be essential. The Economist poll of March 1999 showed clear support for regional
government in London and the North East, with lower levels of support elsewhere; though
large majorities in every English region agreed with the proposition that Regional Assemblies
`would look after regional interests better than central government'. Another interesting
feature of this poll was the finding that 49 per cent of English respondents `most identify
with' their standard region, while only 41 per cent `most identify with' England. A BBC poll
in late 2000 found that regions farthest from London were most likely to support Regional
Assemblies (SANDFORD and MCQUAIL, 2001).
Regions are constituted in complex and multiple ways, principally through a loose
amalgam of historical legacy, political action, cultural specificity, ethnicity and spatialized
social relations: the key point here being that territorial borders and cultural identities are
socially constructed rather than pre-given, primordial phenomena (ROKKAN and URWIN,
1982; KEATING, 1998; ALLEN et al, 1998; TOMANEY and WARD, 2000). This suggests
that the perennial criticism of English regionalism, that `regions' in England are `artificial'
creations with no historical pedigree, is less damning than it appears, not least because the
vast majority of regional governments in the EU today consist of `artificial' regions which
28

subsequently developed varying degrees of regional identity, often in response to rapidly
changing contextual conditions.
Certainly there is no lack of contextual change in post-devolution Britain. But as
Britain strains to reinvent itself internally, with respect to its nations and regions, and strives
to reposition itself externally, by seeking to become a core member of the EU, an exclusive
focus on regional or national identity runs the risk of missing a larger point. And the larger
point is this: if the British Isles wants to re-imagine a progressive future for itself, then the
meaning of `Britishness' should be understood first and foremost as an expression of multiple
identities, in which citizens share a common sense of citizenship, rather than the desiccated,
mono-cultural conceptions of identity which populate Anglocentric narratives of
`Britishness'.
Significantly, the concept of multiple identities is the central concept of The Isles,
where Norman Davies tries to give the concept a human face by dedicating the book to his
grandfather, who was `English by birth, Welsh by conviction, Lancastrian by choice, British
by chance' (DAVIES, 2000). Unfortunately, this socially inclusive conception of cultural
diversity does not meet with universal approval, especially when it involves non-white
sections of society. For example, the hysterical reaction to the Runnymede report (on the
future of ethnic Britain) shows that the self-selecting multiple identities of Britain's ethnic
minorities are anathema to those right wing circles which remain wedded to the Anglocentric
narrative (RUNNYMEDE, 2000).
Just as some ethnic communities choose to identify themselves as British rather than
English, some English regions seem to be more closely attuned to the idea of a regionally
devolved Britain than a nationally resurgent England. This would appear to be the case in the
North East, which is variously described as `a semi-detached part of England' and `a British
rather than English region' (TOMANEY and WARD, 2000), `England's foreign country
29

within' (TAYLOR, 1993) and `Britain's Mezzogiorno' (ROWTHORN, 1999). Here is the
poorest region in England. Among other things it nurses a deep sense of economic injustice; it
feels politically marginalised by, and alienated from London; it prides itself on a strong
regional identity; but recently it is said to be suffering `post-devolution blues' as a result of
unfavourable comparisons with Scotland (PIKE, 2001). If the North East becomes the first
region (outside London) to embrace regional government then this bold move will owe less to
mono-causal factors like regional identity and more to the fact that a complex cocktail of
factors had persuaded a voting majority that a Regional Assembly could be an investment and
not just a cost, an investment in a more effective and more accountable system of governance,
certainly something more hopeful than the status quo. Even if it does trigger a more robust
bottom-up dynamic in the region, this would not devalue the need for more supportive top-
down initiatives from national and supra-national levels (ie London and Brussels). This brings
us to the biggest challenge in post-devolution Britain: how to strike a judicious balance
between subsidiarity and solidarity or more specifically how to secure the holy grail of a
devolved polity, namely equality-in-diversity (MORGAN, 2001a).
What the plight of the North East also illustrates is the inter-dependence between a
specific regional identity, which is unique and particular, and the larger identities which
derive from being English, British and European at the same time, a multiple identity which
allows it to make legitimate claims on the wider community, especially the national
community, because `solidarity in the Union begins at home' (EUROPEAN COMMISSION,
1996).
The demise of the Anglocentric narrative of Britishness has been hastened by the fact
that it naturally alienated the communities which it marginalised ­ the national communities
of Celtic Britain, the regional communities of northern England and the ethnic minority
communities in general. In short, the mono-cultural stereotype peddled by Anglocentrism is
30

`the principal enemy for anyone seeking a place for all the peoples and all the cultures which
have thrived in these Isles over the centuries' (DAVIES, 2000b). To embrace the concept of
multiple identity, whatever its colour, creed or accent, is perhaps the most important pre-
condition for re-imagining another way of being British. Among other things this would
require us to jettison the traditional notion of Britishness, with its mono-cultural and southern-
centric English axes, and craft a radically different notion of Britishness as a culturally
diverse and politically devolved polity. The greater diversity of the Isles might provide a more
propitious environment in which to pursue this project than a purely English context, where
there is less of a precedent to encourage and nurture devolved bodies. If a regionally devolved
polity does eventually emerge in England, this will be due, in part at least, to the external
stimuli of its British hinterland, a fitting epitaph for Anglocentric narratives of Britishness.
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