Blog

8 december 2011, and then there were eight

I spent the day in leeds today speaking not once but twice at a conference, in the illustrious company of the deputy prime minister nick clegg (14 september 2011; 5 february 2011), greg clarke, the almost-cabinet minister for decentralisation and planning (22 january 2011) and chuka umunna, a major league up & coming mp who is trying to fight off the "english obama" tag, though he's rather good. The conference, on northern cities, was another launch pad for another stage of another government drive for devolution, or "localism", or control shift perhaps, this time for the core cities, which of course includes manchester. Unfortunately, only the yorkshire post seems to have noticed. Many more noticed the night's football results, which rather doomed my opening line about no other city in the whole of europe having two teams in the european cup. I was quite challenging, as my few years here have taught me talk is cheap, and its not for nothing the uk is the most centralised state in the western world: 19% of public spend is determined by central government in germany, 32% in france, and no less that 72% in the uk, and change really does mean a major shift of control, and this all still feels rather too much like stakeholder management than policy implementation, but we live in hope.

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