漫长而曲折的道路

Q4 Social Sciences
John Tomaney, Andy Pike
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Paradoxically, given Labour's long association with devolution, these mayoralties had been created by a Conservative government and in 2024 neither incumbent represents Labour. The unfolding of devolution in North East since 2016 has been embroiled with broader claims about “political realignment”, the “collapse of the Red Wall”, “levelling up” and the pros and cons of the mayoral model of government.8 Much of the impetus for devolution after 2016 came from a Conservative desire to make political inroads into Labour heartlands.</p><p>A Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) was established in 2016 under the provisions of the 2009 Act to cover 700,000 people in five unitary authorities: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees. The creation of a separate combined authority for Teesside spoke to tensions in the 2004 devolution proposals, which some saw as leading to a region dominated by Newcastle, and the need to avoid reinstating the North East regional institutional structures from the New Labour era, which the coalition government abolished at the outset of austerity from 2010. The Conservative government pushed strongly for the arrangement as a means to local power in a Labour heartland. The first mayoral election took place in 2017. A turnout of 21.3 per cent saw the Conservative candidate, Ben Houchen, win 51 per cent of the vote. Houchen was re-elected in 2021, on an increased turnout of 34 per cent, and with 73 per cent of the vote. Houchen's victory was widely interpreted as signalling the broader ‘collapse of the Red Wall’ and the realignment of the electorate.</p><p>Houchen pursued an avowedly Johnsonian ‘levelling up’ agenda based on an interventionist state and manifesting national agendas locally by channelling post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ ambitions and creating a ‘freeport’ on the banks of the Tees. While this was sold as a radical departure in regional policy, in fact it mimics a longstanding approach to physical regeneration and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Houchen eschewed any pretence of building a broad coalition of support for his plans, reducing the likelihood of them surviving his loss of office. Moreover, the Teesside story has become mired in controversy about the accountability and openness of the mayor and the secrecy involved in the complex array of organisations and private sector relationships established to deliver his policies.9 Following local political scrutiny and press exposure, this situation culminated in an independent governance review, which, after several delays, the government published in early 2024. This catalogued an insufficiency of transparency and oversight and an inability to evidence value for money.10 Houchen remained the Conservative candidate in the May 2024 mayoral election. Despite the controversies surrounding his term in office and the national swing against the Conservatives, the advantages of incumbency and a low-wattage Labour campaign mean his chances of re-election cannot not be ruled out.</p><p>In the 2017 Budget, the Conservative government announced that it was “minded” to support a devolution deal for the ‘North of Tyne’ (NoT), covering the 816,000 people in the local authorities of Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland. The deal offered £20 million per year ‘investment funding’ but required an elected metro-mayor to chair a combined authority of the three councils. The NoT deal replaced a deal offered in 2015, covering the wider North East region – Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear. The original devolution deal failed because local authorities could not agree among themselves a funding deal with central government and to the stipulation that it should include a directly elected metro-mayor.</p><p>The NoT made little sense in economic or geographical terms, cutting off important elements of the functional economic region, and was even a misnomer as one of the principal settlements in Northumberland – Hexham – is located south of the Tyne. Defenders of the arrangement in the ruling Labour parties in Newcastle and North Tyneside argued that, replicating the playbook of devolution in England, anything was better than nothing and should be accepted and built upon. Critics pointed to the risks of overselling the potential of a small and underpowered authority.11 The Conservatives saw the deal as opening promising additional political terrain in a Labour heartland. Two rural Northumberland constituencies – Hexham and Berwick – were Conservative controlled at the time. Northumberland County Council was also Conservative controlled. Parts of North Tyneside had a strong Tory vote, and the council had a directly elected Conservative mayor previously, prefiguring the ‘collapse of the Red Wall’.</p><p>The NoT mayoral election was held in May 2019 and garnered a turnout of 32 per cent. The winning Labour candidate, Jamie Driscoll, won only 33.9 per cent of the votes in the first round under the supplementary voting system. This relatively poor performance prefigured the broader weakness of the Labour vote in the region in the general election later that year. Driscoll's candidacy attracted some national attention because as a member of Momentum, he symbolised the rising influence of the Corbyn Left in the party and was described as “the most powerful Corbynista in Britain”.12 In practical terms, once he was elected, it was hard to see evidence of a Corbynista agenda, with policies following fairly conventional lines and hardly capturing the public imagination.</p><p>By December 2022, agreement had been reached on a North East Devolution Deal to come into effect in May 2024, bringing together local authorities in Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland), covering around 2 million people.13 The new combined authority was allocated a proposed budget of approximately £50 million per year, reflecting the larger population. Some local authority leaders were open in their scepticism about the deal,14 but a new directly elected mayor is to govern the region following an election in May 2024. The extent to which local voters have grasped this fact and its implications is hard to gauge.</p><p>During the selection process for the Labour candidate, Jamie Driscoll, the incumbent mayor of the NoT, was excluded from the shortlist by Labour nationally, for reasons that have never been made public, but reflected Keir Starmer's effort to marginalise the Corbynite Left. The Labour nomination went to Kim McGuinness, the incumbent police and crime commissioner for Northumbria. Driscoll announced his resignation from the Labour party and his decision to stand as an independent, giving the election campaign a pinch of spice that it otherwise might have lacked. Aditya Chakraborty suggested that: “The ending of his political career has done more for his national profile than four years in office”.15 The introduction of a first-past-the-post voting system, splits within parties, a confusing governance reform and a seemingly disinterested electorate makes it tricky to predict the outcome of the election. Driscoll has sought to present himself as the “incumbent outsider”,16 but faces a Labour surge in the national polls and a struggle to reach beyond the already converted.</p><p>This paper has attempted to provide a narrative of recent moves toward devolution in North East England, situating them in a longer history. In its various conceptions over nearly a century, devolution has promised solutions to endemic and longstanding social and economic problems. But, as IPPR North's <i>State of the north 2024</i> report showed, there is a widening gap between the region and London and the South East.17 Slow progress to limited governance reform occurred alongside worsening deprivation. The most recent detailed estimates for child poverty levels after housing costs in the North East, published in June 2023, showed that in 2021/22, almost 190,000 babies, children and young people across the North East (35 per cent) were living below the poverty line – an increase of around 51,000 since 2014/15, the steepest rise in the UK. Out of the North East's 29 Westminster constituencies, 21 have more than one in three children living below the poverty line. High levels of poverty exist alongside accumulating health problems.18 There are many ways to demonstrate these problems, but one telling statistic is that the North East has the highest suicide rate in the UK – twice the rate of London, a barely spoken-about public health crisis that leaves untold devastation.19 The North East also contains more than its fair share of places ‘left behind’ by decades of deindustrialisation and globalisation. 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The unfolding of devolution in North East since 2016 has been embroiled with broader claims about “political realignment”, the “collapse of the Red Wall”, “levelling up” and the pros and cons of the mayoral model of government.8 Much of the impetus for devolution after 2016 came from a Conservative desire to make political inroads into Labour heartlands.</p><p>A Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) was established in 2016 under the provisions of the 2009 Act to cover 700,000 people in five unitary authorities: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees. The creation of a separate combined authority for Teesside spoke to tensions in the 2004 devolution proposals, which some saw as leading to a region dominated by Newcastle, and the need to avoid reinstating the North East regional institutional structures from the New Labour era, which the coalition government abolished at the outset of austerity from 2010. The Conservative government pushed strongly for the arrangement as a means to local power in a Labour heartland. The first mayoral election took place in 2017. A turnout of 21.3 per cent saw the Conservative candidate, Ben Houchen, win 51 per cent of the vote. Houchen was re-elected in 2021, on an increased turnout of 34 per cent, and with 73 per cent of the vote. Houchen's victory was widely interpreted as signalling the broader ‘collapse of the Red Wall’ and the realignment of the electorate.</p><p>Houchen pursued an avowedly Johnsonian ‘levelling up’ agenda based on an interventionist state and manifesting national agendas locally by channelling post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ ambitions and creating a ‘freeport’ on the banks of the Tees. While this was sold as a radical departure in regional policy, in fact it mimics a longstanding approach to physical regeneration and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Houchen eschewed any pretence of building a broad coalition of support for his plans, reducing the likelihood of them surviving his loss of office. Moreover, the Teesside story has become mired in controversy about the accountability and openness of the mayor and the secrecy involved in the complex array of organisations and private sector relationships established to deliver his policies.9 Following local political scrutiny and press exposure, this situation culminated in an independent governance review, which, after several delays, the government published in early 2024. This catalogued an insufficiency of transparency and oversight and an inability to evidence value for money.10 Houchen remained the Conservative candidate in the May 2024 mayoral election. 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The original devolution deal failed because local authorities could not agree among themselves a funding deal with central government and to the stipulation that it should include a directly elected metro-mayor.</p><p>The NoT made little sense in economic or geographical terms, cutting off important elements of the functional economic region, and was even a misnomer as one of the principal settlements in Northumberland – Hexham – is located south of the Tyne. Defenders of the arrangement in the ruling Labour parties in Newcastle and North Tyneside argued that, replicating the playbook of devolution in England, anything was better than nothing and should be accepted and built upon. Critics pointed to the risks of overselling the potential of a small and underpowered authority.11 The Conservatives saw the deal as opening promising additional political terrain in a Labour heartland. Two rural Northumberland constituencies – Hexham and Berwick – were Conservative controlled at the time. Northumberland County Council was also Conservative controlled. Parts of North Tyneside had a strong Tory vote, and the council had a directly elected Conservative mayor previously, prefiguring the ‘collapse of the Red Wall’.</p><p>The NoT mayoral election was held in May 2019 and garnered a turnout of 32 per cent. The winning Labour candidate, Jamie Driscoll, won only 33.9 per cent of the votes in the first round under the supplementary voting system. This relatively poor performance prefigured the broader weakness of the Labour vote in the region in the general election later that year. Driscoll's candidacy attracted some national attention because as a member of Momentum, he symbolised the rising influence of the Corbyn Left in the party and was described as “the most powerful Corbynista in Britain”.12 In practical terms, once he was elected, it was hard to see evidence of a Corbynista agenda, with policies following fairly conventional lines and hardly capturing the public imagination.</p><p>By December 2022, agreement had been reached on a North East Devolution Deal to come into effect in May 2024, bringing together local authorities in Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland), covering around 2 million people.13 The new combined authority was allocated a proposed budget of approximately £50 million per year, reflecting the larger population. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

11 保守党认为,这项交易有望在工党的中心地带开辟新的政治版图。诺森伯兰的两个农村选区--赫克瑟姆和贝里克--当时由保守党控制。诺森伯兰郡议会也由保守党控制。北泰恩赛德的部分地区保守党选票很高,此前该议会曾有一位保守党直选市长,预示着 "红墙的倒塌"。诺森伯兰郡长选举于 2019 年 5 月举行,投票率为 32%。获胜的工党候选人杰米-德里斯科尔(Jamie Driscoll)在补充投票系统下的第一轮投票中仅赢得 33.9% 的选票。这一相对较差的表现预示着在当年晚些时候的大选中,工党在该地区的选票更加疲软。德里斯科尔的参选引起了一些国家的关注,因为作为动力党的成员,他象征着科尔宾左派在党内影响力的上升,并被称为 "英国最有权势的科尔宾主义者"。到 2022 年 12 月,已就 2024 年 5 月生效的《东北地区权力下放协议》达成协议,将达勒姆、诺森伯兰和泰恩与威尔的地方当局(盖茨黑德、泰恩河畔纽卡斯尔、北泰恩赛德、南泰恩赛德和桑德兰)合并在一起,覆盖人口约 200 万。13 新的合并当局每年获得约 5000 万英镑的拟议预算,以反映较多的人口。一些地方当局领导人公开表示对该协议持怀疑态度,14 但在 2024 年 5 月的选举之后,新的直选市长将管理该地区。在工党候选人的遴选过程中,NoT 现任市长杰米-德里斯科尔(Jamie Driscoll)被工党排除在候选名单之外,原因从未公开,但反映出基尔-斯塔默(Keir Starmer)试图边缘化科尔宾左派的努力。工党提名给了诺桑比亚现任警务和犯罪事务专员金-麦吉尼斯(Kim McGuinness)。德里斯科尔宣布退出工党并决定以独立候选人身份参选,这为竞选活动增添了一抹原本可能缺乏的色彩。阿迪提亚-查克拉博蒂(Aditya Chakraborty)认为:"15 得票最多者当选制的引入、党内分裂、混乱的治理改革以及看似不感兴趣的选民,使得预测选举结果变得十分棘手。德里斯科尔试图以 "现任局外人 "的形象示人,16 但他面临的是工党在全国民调中的高歌猛进,以及如何在已经皈依工党的选民之外争取更多选民的问题。在近一个世纪的时间里,权力下放以其不同的概念承诺解决长期存在的地方性社会和经济问题。但是,正如 IPPR North 的《2024 年北部状况》报告所显示的,该地区与伦敦和东南部的差距在不断扩大。2023 年 6 月公布的对扣除住房成本后的东北部儿童贫困水平的最新详细估计显示,在 2021/22 年,东北部近 19 万名婴儿、儿童和青少年(35%)生活在贫困线以下--自 2014/15 年以来增加了约 5.1 万人,是英国增幅最大的地区。在威斯敏斯特东北部的 29 个选区中,有 21 个选区的每三名儿童中就有一名以上生活在贫困线以下。18 有很多方法可以说明这些问题,但有一项统计数据很能说明问题,那就是东北部的自杀率是英国最高的,是伦敦的两倍,这是一场几乎无人问津的公共卫生危机,造成了难以言表的破坏。随着新治理体系的发展,这些都是它们必须面对的挑战。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
A long and winding road

By the beginning of 2024, devolution had taken the form of two mayoral combined authorities, albeit created under legislation passed by Labour in 2009 (the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009), and these have reshaped the governance of the North East. The most recent North East Mayoral Combined Authority restored the arrangements between the seven local authorities in the region, following the interim North of Tyne Combined Authority comprising only of Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside. The route to this outcome was long and winding, however, and their powers and resources highly constrained following negotiated settlements with national government. Paradoxically, given Labour's long association with devolution, these mayoralties had been created by a Conservative government and in 2024 neither incumbent represents Labour. The unfolding of devolution in North East since 2016 has been embroiled with broader claims about “political realignment”, the “collapse of the Red Wall”, “levelling up” and the pros and cons of the mayoral model of government.8 Much of the impetus for devolution after 2016 came from a Conservative desire to make political inroads into Labour heartlands.

A Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) was established in 2016 under the provisions of the 2009 Act to cover 700,000 people in five unitary authorities: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees. The creation of a separate combined authority for Teesside spoke to tensions in the 2004 devolution proposals, which some saw as leading to a region dominated by Newcastle, and the need to avoid reinstating the North East regional institutional structures from the New Labour era, which the coalition government abolished at the outset of austerity from 2010. The Conservative government pushed strongly for the arrangement as a means to local power in a Labour heartland. The first mayoral election took place in 2017. A turnout of 21.3 per cent saw the Conservative candidate, Ben Houchen, win 51 per cent of the vote. Houchen was re-elected in 2021, on an increased turnout of 34 per cent, and with 73 per cent of the vote. Houchen's victory was widely interpreted as signalling the broader ‘collapse of the Red Wall’ and the realignment of the electorate.

Houchen pursued an avowedly Johnsonian ‘levelling up’ agenda based on an interventionist state and manifesting national agendas locally by channelling post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ ambitions and creating a ‘freeport’ on the banks of the Tees. While this was sold as a radical departure in regional policy, in fact it mimics a longstanding approach to physical regeneration and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Houchen eschewed any pretence of building a broad coalition of support for his plans, reducing the likelihood of them surviving his loss of office. Moreover, the Teesside story has become mired in controversy about the accountability and openness of the mayor and the secrecy involved in the complex array of organisations and private sector relationships established to deliver his policies.9 Following local political scrutiny and press exposure, this situation culminated in an independent governance review, which, after several delays, the government published in early 2024. This catalogued an insufficiency of transparency and oversight and an inability to evidence value for money.10 Houchen remained the Conservative candidate in the May 2024 mayoral election. Despite the controversies surrounding his term in office and the national swing against the Conservatives, the advantages of incumbency and a low-wattage Labour campaign mean his chances of re-election cannot not be ruled out.

In the 2017 Budget, the Conservative government announced that it was “minded” to support a devolution deal for the ‘North of Tyne’ (NoT), covering the 816,000 people in the local authorities of Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland. The deal offered £20 million per year ‘investment funding’ but required an elected metro-mayor to chair a combined authority of the three councils. The NoT deal replaced a deal offered in 2015, covering the wider North East region – Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear. The original devolution deal failed because local authorities could not agree among themselves a funding deal with central government and to the stipulation that it should include a directly elected metro-mayor.

The NoT made little sense in economic or geographical terms, cutting off important elements of the functional economic region, and was even a misnomer as one of the principal settlements in Northumberland – Hexham – is located south of the Tyne. Defenders of the arrangement in the ruling Labour parties in Newcastle and North Tyneside argued that, replicating the playbook of devolution in England, anything was better than nothing and should be accepted and built upon. Critics pointed to the risks of overselling the potential of a small and underpowered authority.11 The Conservatives saw the deal as opening promising additional political terrain in a Labour heartland. Two rural Northumberland constituencies – Hexham and Berwick – were Conservative controlled at the time. Northumberland County Council was also Conservative controlled. Parts of North Tyneside had a strong Tory vote, and the council had a directly elected Conservative mayor previously, prefiguring the ‘collapse of the Red Wall’.

The NoT mayoral election was held in May 2019 and garnered a turnout of 32 per cent. The winning Labour candidate, Jamie Driscoll, won only 33.9 per cent of the votes in the first round under the supplementary voting system. This relatively poor performance prefigured the broader weakness of the Labour vote in the region in the general election later that year. Driscoll's candidacy attracted some national attention because as a member of Momentum, he symbolised the rising influence of the Corbyn Left in the party and was described as “the most powerful Corbynista in Britain”.12 In practical terms, once he was elected, it was hard to see evidence of a Corbynista agenda, with policies following fairly conventional lines and hardly capturing the public imagination.

By December 2022, agreement had been reached on a North East Devolution Deal to come into effect in May 2024, bringing together local authorities in Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland), covering around 2 million people.13 The new combined authority was allocated a proposed budget of approximately £50 million per year, reflecting the larger population. Some local authority leaders were open in their scepticism about the deal,14 but a new directly elected mayor is to govern the region following an election in May 2024. The extent to which local voters have grasped this fact and its implications is hard to gauge.

During the selection process for the Labour candidate, Jamie Driscoll, the incumbent mayor of the NoT, was excluded from the shortlist by Labour nationally, for reasons that have never been made public, but reflected Keir Starmer's effort to marginalise the Corbynite Left. The Labour nomination went to Kim McGuinness, the incumbent police and crime commissioner for Northumbria. Driscoll announced his resignation from the Labour party and his decision to stand as an independent, giving the election campaign a pinch of spice that it otherwise might have lacked. Aditya Chakraborty suggested that: “The ending of his political career has done more for his national profile than four years in office”.15 The introduction of a first-past-the-post voting system, splits within parties, a confusing governance reform and a seemingly disinterested electorate makes it tricky to predict the outcome of the election. Driscoll has sought to present himself as the “incumbent outsider”,16 but faces a Labour surge in the national polls and a struggle to reach beyond the already converted.

This paper has attempted to provide a narrative of recent moves toward devolution in North East England, situating them in a longer history. In its various conceptions over nearly a century, devolution has promised solutions to endemic and longstanding social and economic problems. But, as IPPR North's State of the north 2024 report showed, there is a widening gap between the region and London and the South East.17 Slow progress to limited governance reform occurred alongside worsening deprivation. The most recent detailed estimates for child poverty levels after housing costs in the North East, published in June 2023, showed that in 2021/22, almost 190,000 babies, children and young people across the North East (35 per cent) were living below the poverty line – an increase of around 51,000 since 2014/15, the steepest rise in the UK. Out of the North East's 29 Westminster constituencies, 21 have more than one in three children living below the poverty line. High levels of poverty exist alongside accumulating health problems.18 There are many ways to demonstrate these problems, but one telling statistic is that the North East has the highest suicide rate in the UK – twice the rate of London, a barely spoken-about public health crisis that leaves untold devastation.19 The North East also contains more than its fair share of places ‘left behind’ by decades of deindustrialisation and globalisation. As new governance systems evolve, these are the challenges they must face.

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来源期刊
IPPR Progressive Review
IPPR Progressive Review Social Sciences-Political Science and International Relations
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
0.00%
发文量
43
期刊介绍: The permafrost of no alternatives has cracked; the horizon of political possibilities is expanding. IPPR Progressive Review is a pluralistic space to debate where next for progressives, examine the opportunities and challenges confronting us and ask the big questions facing our politics: transforming a failed economic model, renewing a frayed social contract, building a new relationship with Europe. Publishing the best writing in economics, politics and culture, IPPR Progressive Review explores how we can best build a more equal, humane and prosperous society.
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