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The Disraeli Room is a hub for new ideas, commentary and analysis. ResPublica's blog is named after the great reforming Prime Minister of the nineteenth century, Benjamin Disraeli, and welcomes contributions from across the political, academic and professional spectrum.
Devolution to Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland throws up related questions about the government of England. These fall into two broad kinds: giving England a stronger political voice; and devolving power within England.
It’s coming sometime, maybe. A devolution revolution is taking place across the kingdom. It’s not just Scotland. Manchester is mad for it too. And just about everywhere else. “We have heard the voice of Scotland and now the millions of voices of England must be heard” the Prime Minister declared as he hailed the outcome of the Scottish referendum.
Respublica recently published its report calling for Greater Manchester to have control over the £22 billion it spends each year on public services, with accompanying financial flexibilities. The report reasons that if you give Manchester the ability to target spend and redesign services as best fit its residents’ needs, then it will be able to reduce the £5 billion gap between public spend and tax revenue to make Manchester a net contributor to the national purse.
The fantastic democratic adventure in Scotland has given us a real opportunity to reform our system of government and to shape the future of the United Kingdom so that it is founded on the principles of union and devolution, rather than on massive over-centralisation.
Sometimes I get very frustrated by the BBC. Like when it puts rugby league highlights on at 1pm on a Tuesday. Or 3am on a Wednesday. But it’s hard to ignore, hard to get away from.
For British Conservatives, this November marks an important milestone in the history of the Conservative Party; the 90th anniversary of the election of the second Conservative administration of Stanley Baldwin. Although the Labour Party is widely acclaimed for landmarks in social policy such as the creation of the postwar Welfare State, Conservative administrations have also played a pivotal role in encouraging the social and economic development of the United Kingdom.
A recurring phrase of this week’s labour party conference was that we need to make sure that all NHS staff ‘have time to care’. It is promising to see the importance of a caring environment in the NHS getting such a high profile in plans for the general election.
On 3rd September at Westminster Abbey’s memorial to the Innocent Victims of War, representatives of the three faiths of the Book, Christians, Jews and Muslims (Sunni and Shiah) gathered beneath a banner stating “We are all Human”.
I have been very excited by the way in which the Scottish referendum campaign engaged people in a discussion about feelings of powerlessness and how to regain democratic control over decisions about their lives made by a centralised and seemingly unaccountable London-centric elite.
Over the past few decades, our friends north of the border have often experimented with various innovative policy approaches – though never before on quite such significant issues as devolution, self-determination and democracy itself – providing a testing ground for ideas which sometimes then spread more widely across the UK.
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