22 january 2011, not in for a pickles, but in for a pound

In london last week to meet everyone's favour minister, eric pickles, the man fronting the local government cuts, as well as greg clarke, minister for "decentralisation". The uk is chronically centralised and so this is a timely job, but not an easy one. Whilst this ministerial brace have backed the setting up of vague local enterprise partnerships (I was there as part of a representative sample), actually transferring any sort of powers away from whitehall (mainly meaning other departments, like business, skills, employment) to local areas, even where, like manchester, the strongest foundations are already in place, is a difficult mission, but one, with all the localism rhetoric, that cities have a right to push hard on. What does success look like ? How will we know if devolution is real or just facade ? Simple really, follow the money. According to mckinsey (p63), no less than 72% of public expenditure in the uk is central, compared to 15% in switzerland, 19% in germany and even supposedly paris-centric france is just 35%. The test is whether, like amsterdam, munich and barcelona, cities like manchester are allowed in the coming years to actually decide on how to spend more of their own money, regardless of central prescription.