of British politicians who have had a “good pandemic” is as short as the list of those who have had a bad one is long. But it must surely include the mayor of Greater Manchester. The pandemic has been good for Andy Burnham’s national political profile. He has had a bigger impact on the government’s covid policy than any other Labour politician, including Sir Keir Starmer. More important, it has been good for the great cause he has championed for the past decade—devolving power to the provinces.
Whitehall, argues Mr Burnham, operates in departmental silos: a regional mayor can integrate them and forge policies that suit the city-region’s particular needs. Manchester’s work in co-ordinating health and social care is a prime example of this approach. Mayors can also be innovators, designing local policies that can later go national.
Covid-19 has reinforced the case for changing this model by exploding the most powerful argument against devolution: that central government is much more competent than the local sort. It has repeatedly demonstrated that even a weak mayor can come up with good ideas and tie together disparate policies. Germany has been much more successful at controlling the pandemic, in part because of its highly devolved public-health system.
Yet the centre rarely chooses to give up power. Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, who cut his teeth in politics campaigning against a north-east assembly, is as hostile to local politicians as he is to national ones. His solution to regional inequality is to move bits of government to the provinces without shifting the locus of power. That would put lipstick on the pig of centralisation while doing nothing to capture the benefits of local knowledge.
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Lol. Good luck with that neo-feudalism. It worked so well during actual feudalism . . .
It’s funny how people are trying to make covid19 to be anything but what it really is: indiscriminate viral killer. As we’ve all learned in school, it’s only funny until someone dies. And play politics with it? That’s a killer.
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