‘Brexit was a vote against London as much as it was against Brussels’
In his latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, our chief reporter talks to Professor John Tomaney of University College, London, one of the foremost campaigners for devolution in England...
THE social and economic problems that exist in England will not be solved without devolution, according to an academic who once headed a campaign for a north east Assembly.
In 2004 Professor John Tomaney chaired a referendum campaign that failed to persuade voters in the region that an Assembly was in their interests. The “No” vote killed the Labour government’s plan to roll out regional Assemblies across England to match devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Prof Tomaney said: “I still strongly support the principle of devolution. I think that without it, addressing social and economic problems is going to be difficult. Devolution has to occur. How does it occur is the question.
“Under the Tories – under Osborne in particular, there was this push for Metro Mayors. What you have is this idea that you need a figurehead in these cities to drive economic development. That’s the model.
“But many big cities have turned their back on the Manchester model. It was all about glass and steel in the city centre, hotels, leisure, the building of flats – I’ve done some research on this myself with colleagues at Manchester University to show that an enormous amount of flats have been built, but it’s done very little for the outlying areas. What’s in this model for Rochdale or Bolton?”
In Yorkshire, now, there is, said Prof Tomaney, a move towards a “One Yorkshire” model. He said: “The idea is that creating a model of devolution based on these so-called fast-growing cities isn’t enough to deal with the problems of the South Yorkshire coalfield, the Yorkshire seaside towns, which are struggling. How does it help them to have a Metro Mayor? So this idea of One Yorkshire is emerging around those old regional boundaries. And I think there’s a bit of a struggle taking place as to which of these ideas will dominate. It will be ironic if Yorkshire becomes a devolved region, because we’ll have gone back to the model which was proposed by John Prescott back in 2004.”
Prof Tomaney said there was evidence of a rise in English nationalism, and quite often it was most visible in “left behind” communities in the north of England.
“In many ways they’re the English heartland,” he said. “In London you don’t get that so much. I have a strange life where I work in London but I still live in the north of England. I’m shuffling between these two places and increasingly thinking ‘are they part of the same country?’ The attitudes and dispositions of people in London seem so radically different to the ones you’d find in a place like Newcastle.
“London is a cosmopolitan city – it’s at ease with its multi-ethnic nature. It’s dynamic in lots of ways, economically and culturally. It has many problems, the most important of which is housing affordability – and that’s driving people out in complicated ways to different parts of the country.
“The north east of England, by comparison, with the possible exception of Newcastle itself at the centre, doesn’t have those attributes. Demographically it’s ageing, by all kinds of social indicators it’s struggling. If you go outside of Newcastle you have multiple forms of deprivation. So we have this English identity, but it’s contained within a social and economically polarised country. How you work all that out is actually very difficult. Some people say you should give English identity expression. However, whatever devolution settlement you have, you’ve got to accommodate these enormous differences that exist within England that are partly socio-economic, but also about attitudes and outlook.
“I suppose my political formation occurred during the Thatcher era – that’s where I came to maturity in terms of how I understood the world. Rather as happened in Scotland and Wales, Thatcherism had a distinctive, regressive impact in a place like the north east of England.
“A key formative event for me during that time [was] the miners’ strike, which seemed to me an incredibly punitive and brutal conflict.
“In the aftermath of that it was clear there were going to be many communities in the north east that would be left behind as the economy changed as old industries died and new ones replaced them. The new ones were not emerging in a strong way in the north of England, so looking at the economics of it all I became interested in these ideas that stressed that to deal with the kind of economic problems that existed in the north east, you had to have strong institutions to promote development.
“I was also increasingly aware that devolution looked like a prospect in Scotland, the north east’s nearest neighbour: Edinburgh is the north east’s closest capital city, not London. I was also aware of what was happening in Wales, and in London, which was getting a Mayor and Assembly.
“It seemed somewhere like the north east had a claim – it’s not a nation, despite what some people in the north east would say, but it’s a place that had a claim to have its own institutions so it could help itself.
“The third element was a strong sense of attachment to the place – the sense that it’s a different place, it has its own identity, community and culture – and that deserves expression as well. So it’s not just about narrow economics, it’s about a sense of belonging and attachment. All these things when you add them up make a case for saying this place deserves representation, deserves some autonomy, deserves the right to run itself – particularly in an economy like England, which is highly centralised.”
Prof Tomaney said the north east had lost out in terms of the allocation of resources, and there was a strong anti-London sentiment: “It doesn’t really get politicised through the regional frame, but I would say, based on my anecdotal, unscientific research from taxi drivers and shopkeepers and friends and family – but also I think it’s borne out by more scientific studies – that part of the Brexit backlash was based on a sense of neglect: people tell us the economy is growing, so why am I getting poorer? All the power and all the money’s in London.
“An interpretation of the Brexit vote in the north east, which went from being a Labour heartland to a Brexit heartland overnight, is that it was a vote against London as much as it was a vote against Brussels.
“That sentiment is there. It’s negative in some cases, but particularly among younger professional people I detect this sense of regional pride and a conscious desire in career terms not to go to London – whereas when I was 18 I got on the train at the first opportunity to get to London and study.
“There is some kind of regional identity out there which is probably difficult to politicise and turn into a movement, but is nevertheless there. I think that culturally places like the north east need to do something with that, because it’s very positive in lots of ways, it’s full of energy.
“It’s quite hopeful about the future of the place – and that needs to be bottled in some way, but by a younger generation, not by people like me.”