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Barry Cooper
Barry Cooper was a bureaucrat, a transport planner, an academic, self-employed and retired in 2002. He lives in the long lost Kingdom of Ergyng and thinks a lot about all sorts of things, from the bottom up.He is the author of How to find our way into the future.
The debate about devolution assumes that transferring power from Whitehall to larger regional authorities will create stronger economic growth. It is certainly an improvement if decisions are taken closer to the people affected by them. Local knowledge is almost always better than decisions made hundreds of miles away.
However, devolution should not be confused with localism. They are not the same thing.
Devolution merely moves power from one level of government to another. Whitehall gives powers to combined authorities, regional mayors or county authorities. The structure remains essentially the same. Decisions are still made from above. Taxation, regulation and administration remain the principal tools of government.
Localism is fundamentally different.
The localist model begins with the locality itself. Instead of asking how government can manage economic growth, it asks how people can meet more of their own needs where they live. The emphasis shifts from administration to production, from bureaucracy to practical activity.
The Daily Telegraph rightly warns that devolution could simply become another layer of taxation, regulation and administration. That danger is real. New political institutions have a tendency to justify their existence by creating more officials, more plans and more spending. Unless there is genuine economic change beneath the political structure, little will have been achieved.
The deeper question is whether the industrial economy that made large-scale central government possible is now beginning to contract.
For two centuries Britain became steadily more centralised because abundant, cheap fossil-fuel energy allowed production, transport, communication and government to operate on an ever larger scale. Economic growth supported increasingly complex institutions. Centralisation was not simply a political choice. It was made possible by abundant surplus energy.
As surplus energy declines, that process begins to reverse.
Economic activity naturally becomes more local because long supply chains, distant administration and highly specialised systems become increasingly expensive to maintain. This is not an ideological programme. It is the natural evolution of a post-growth economy.
In that world, local government itself will have to change. Success will depend less on attracting outside investment and more on increasing local resilience.
A successful locality will produce more of its own food. It will conserve water. It will generate part of its own energy. It will maintain local skills, workshops and small businesses. It will make greater use of local materials and local labour. Money will circulate within the locality instead of constantly leaking away to national and international corporations.
The role of government also changes. Instead of attempting to stimulate endless economic growth, it becomes an enabler of local production. It removes unnecessary barriers, supports local enterprise and helps communities organise the essential services upon which daily life depends.
Competition between regions, as suggested in the debate on devolution, has some value. But cooperation within localities is even more important. The future is unlikely to be won by competing to attract the next multinational employer. It is more likely to depend on rebuilding the local economy from the ground up.
This is why localism goes beyond devolution.
Devolution changes who exercises power.
Localism changes where economic life takes place.
One is primarily constitutional.
The other is structural.
As Britain moves beyond the age of continuous economic growth, transferring powers from Westminster to regional authorities may prove useful. But unless that process also encourages the rebuilding of genuinely local economies, it risks becoming little more than a different way of administering decline.
The real challenge is not to create bigger local government.
It is to create stronger local economies.
This blog was originally posted by Chatting About Localism.