If the union is still here when Covid is over, devolution needs another look

On Wednesday evening I was taking what was once called our permitted daily exercise in the direction of Parliament Square and noticed an unfamiliar crowd of demonstrators gathering. It turned out that the flags they were waving were Nigeria’s and their cause was police brutality in Lagos. But it crossed my mind – indeed, let me admit, I almost hoped – that it was exiled Mancunians standing up for their rights against Westminster.

The previous day, the spectacle of Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, being clapped for defying an edict from Westminster had elements of the inspiring and the disturbing. On the one hand, was this not what new-style mayoral posts had been created for – to represent a city and a region and bring government closer to the people? This is surely what Burnham intended when he stood for election in 2017, and what he believed he was doing during this brief revolt.

At the same time, that act of defiance held out a prospect of chaos. What if every big city mayor rejected an order from central government in a public health emergency – or indeed any emergency? The country would, quite simply, become ungovernable. We don’t yet know how far, or indeed whether, Burnham’s defiance will be translated into non-compliance with the new anti-Covid regulations, but some elements of resistance will surely endure.

It may be instructive that after the rebellion by Burnham, whose metro area was essentially forced into submission by Westminster, both central government and other northern mayors seem to have taken a step back. Dan Jarvis, of the Sheffield city region, rolled over fairly quickly after negotiating terms, and a “pause” has been granted to the northeast, where infections appear to be falling. 

The standoff with Greater Manchester, though, has left its mark, and there is clearly something of a northern revolt afoot that sits uncomfortably with Boris Johnson’s post-election pledge of “levelling up” and with the slew of Conservative MPs elected in hitherto entrenched Labour seats last December. The contradictions this throws up within the Conservative Party – inside and outside parliament – is one thing. The confusion of rights and responsibilities conferred by the forms of devolution that currently apply across the UK, however, is quite another. A policy initiated by Tony Blair in 1997 in an attempt to tame the rise of Scottish nationalism has acquired a life of its own.  

Whether it is the delegation of disparate powers to the national legislatures of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, or the creation of mayors in London and other so-called “metro” regions, the UK now has a mutant form of devolution that could easily end up with the disintegration of the UK and the ungovernability of the England (and Wales?) that would be left behind. If social disparities are at the top of the list of national ills that the pandemic has exposed, the defects of the UK’s constitutional arrangements for devolution cannot be far behind.

In most developed countries with a devolved, or federal, system, the delegated powers are clearly set out and consistent as between the different regions or layers of the state. If a conflict arises, it can be referred to a higher, constitutional, authority. This presents difficulties in the UK, because we have no written constitution as a template, but it can be done – as was seen with the legal challenge that was brought by Gina Miller to give parliament a role in Brexit and which was decided by the Supreme Court (another New Labour innovation, which is still evolving).

The bigger problem is that, in the UK “model” of devolution, each nation enjoys different delegated powers. And while it is all very well arguing that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are so distinct that different rules should apply  – a very British, make-do-and-mend solution – the no less distinct US states, German Laender and Italian regions seem to cope with the identical powers they exercise under their country’s central constitution.

The pandemic, as it has affected the UK, has only exacerbated existing divisions. Health is a devolved responsibility. In the early stages of the pandemic, it appeared that Johnson favoured a joint approach to a common threat, and there were signs of a showdown in the offing with Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. That this did not happen may have been partly because he realised it could have been counterproductive, but maybe also because his illness left Sturgeon with the initiative – which she exploited to the full.

It is probably fair to say that Sturgeon has had a relatively easy ride: Scotland was less affected in the early weeks, and she often took the same measures as Johnson, just a little later. But her clarity and presentation have been rightly praised, and her counterparts in Wales and Northern Ireland seemed increasingly to take their cue from Scotland, while still ploughing their own furrows.

Now, very different measures are in force in each of the devolved nations, and the authority of the first ministers and their governments has risen to a point where it is hard to see any of them relinquishing the powers they now wield – powers which, because of the scale of the pandemic, go beyond basic health matters.

This greater assertiveness of the UK’s devolved nations has exposed another contradiction. Johnson is prime minister of the UK, but where the pandemic is concerned – the biggest shock to the UK, as for so many countries, perhaps since the Second World War – his authority extends only as far as Hadrian’s Wall, Offa’s Dyke and the Irish Sea. On other matters, including the overall budget, his government runs the whole of the UK.

This gives Johnson the option of using incentives (or, less flatteringly, “blackmail”) to impose central authority. But if, to get his way on tighter lockdown rules, Westminster had to make concessions to the mayor of Greater Manchester, how much less are the first ministers likely to give ground?

The pandemic is already seen as potentially paving the way for a decisive SNP victory in next May’s Scottish parliamentary elections, which would, in turn, strengthen calls for a new vote on independence. Westminster could, in principle, say yea or nay, but a refusal would risk a Catalonia situation, with similarly destructive consequences. Northern Ireland, for its part, may already be on a course that leads to unification with the Republic. It cannot be excluded that the effects of the pandemic, added to the fallout from the Brexit vote, precipitate – in one form or another – the breakup of the UK.

Burnham’s demarche, however, also demonstrates that it is not just the first stage of devolution – to the nations – that has left conflicts in its wake, but the powers spun off to metropolitan areas in recent years. It is Johnson’s good fortune that Sadiq Khan, as mayor of London, has for whatever reason not exploited his mandate during the pandemic for political advantage, as his predecessor (Johnson) might have done, and as the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, so successfully did. Then, the confrontation with Westminster could have become really lethal.  

In the past couple of months, I have been in Italy and Germany – very different countries, but countries with similarly clear lines marking out where the authority of different instances starts and stops. The pandemic has exposed how far that clarity is lacking, not just in England, but in much of the UK. We may not need a written constitution to address this, but better codification could surely help.

Until this happens, England – the biggest constituent nation – is entitled to feel disenfranchised, and its big cities and their relation to Westminster will be in flux. The last time I witnessed such uncertainty between the power of a central government, its dominant constituent part and its restive regional centres was 30 years ago in Moscow as the Soviet Union fell apart. The UK needs to bring order to its governing system while there is still a country left to govern.