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Graphic: The last two general election results in London via the BBC
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Thanks, Alastair. I'm afraid from my perspective this is a QTWTAIN.
But the Mayor should represent the interests of London (there may be an argument for them attending Cabinet) - you don't need to create someone who s/he will be in personal conflict with
However, Mr M slightly dodges the questioon of WHY a Secretary of State. When I was yourg the Minister for Health wa a powerful figure, and I don’t think the present SoS for Health is any more significant or powerful than Aneurin Bevan was in the late 40’s.
What really is the difference in range of activity, power or influence? Or is it just that it sounds better?
I foresee similar problems when TfL gets its mucky fingers on services further out from London.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5266987/PM-slaps-bungling-Boris.html
After all, the regional inequality in pay is highest here. East Midlanders aee the worst paid in England:
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/regional-pay-gap-gender-equality-south-east-london-north-midlands-wales-women-gender-a8043911.html
There are 4.5 million people, so about the same as NI and Scotland together.
Perhaps each English region should have an SoS to speak for it, it could quite reasonably be combined with another role.
Looks like Boris is being lined up for a move sideways to a job that sounds good, but where he can't make a lot of a mess.
Equally I think I am right in saying almost half of the population of the entire UK lives in England outside those areas, and issues of grinding poverty are just as acute in Coleford, Hednesford or Whitehaven as they are in Brixton or Sunderland - arguably more so as their isolation makes work more difficult to find and the cost of transport to work once found is often higher due to the distances involved. Coleford doesn't even have a railway station, while there is only one major employer left in Whitehaven - Sellafield.
The argument could be made with far more force for England as a whole combining the three areas - yet it never is as far as I can see.
I do worry that London seems to be developing almost a siege mentality with regard to the rest of the country, claiming we take their money and give nothing back. Leaving aside the obvious fact that this isn't true (if London lived for three days without the water supply from the Thames valley they might suddenly realise the rest of the country is not irrelevant) very often they come across as pretty patronising, endlessly demanding extra because they are London and everyone else is less important and less wonderful.
Pure anecdote - I was once told quite seriously by a Londoner that every graduate lives in London for a time. When I pointed out that I do not live in London, never have and almost certainly never will, he refused to believe me. He then told me I was a fool because I'd be on three times the money in London. When I pointed out that on my salary I have a three-bedroom house with garage and garden and in London I wouldn't even be able to afford a flat, he then started telling me that it was because of his subsidies that I could afford it and ranting about house prices in London. It never occurred to him to wonder if perhaps his choice to stay in London was the problem, rather than my salary.
I think if Brexit has shown anything useful, it has shown how little we are talking to each other as a country, and it is a real tragedy that in May, who is incapable of leading, and Corbyn, who epitomises all the worst faults of this tendency I have outlined, we have leaders incapable of getting us to communicate better.
Ulster-Jocks: ~ 1.8 million.
Would you really trust Dr FauxSuks to undertake a medical procedure upon your body? Please avoid Leicester NHS.
Guess which had seniority.
Just because we are leaving the EU we don’t have to replace all the redundant layers of bureaucrats.
I recall after the Brexit referendum, you promised you would set up your own London City Independence Party to stop the "carrot munchers" (your term).
How is LCIP coming on?
(That was a joke, BTW. I do know that the titles were after his time.)
It is also worth noting that London is where a lot of people in the regions work but do not live. Much of London's GDP is generated by commuters, and by national companies with HQs there. Additionally many Londoners retire away from the Great Wen.
@ydoethur's acquaintance is right that many Britons spend part of their lives there, but why is that more important than the other places that they spend their life in?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028
Indeed the neglect of the regions is one factor in the anti-metropolitan feeling that drove Brexit, similar to the cultural divide between red and blue counties in the USA. Brexit may well be the beginning of our cultural civil war rather than its end.
"If there is one thing to get the rest of the Country annoyed it is the constant whinging of Londoners."
We should look upon London as a useful dustbin. It deposits the real moaners and pretentious prats all in one place.
Its about the cultural divide between those comfortable with a diverse cultural environment and those who are not.
And around the Colchester area a significant paert of the economy is derived from exporting people to London in the morning, and importing them back in the evening.
Public spending (£) per head by country and region (Index in brackets, UK = 100), 2016-17
North East 9,680 (106)
North West 9,429 (103)
Yorkshire and the Humber 8,810 (96)
East Midlands 8,282 (90)
West Midlands 8,846 (97)
East 8,155 (89)
London 10,192 (111)
South East 8,111 (89)
South West 8,549 (93)
England 8,898 (97)
Scotland 10,651 (116)
Wales 10,076 (110)
Northern Ireland 11,042 (121)
UK identifiable expenditure 9,159 (100)
Source: https://tinyurl.com/y7k5fj8t
Sure, London isn't doing as well as NI or Scotland, but it's doing a lot better than the East, the East Midlands and the South East. Of course, a lot of those who pay "the tax revenues [to]... keep the rest of the country in the style to which it has become accustomed" live in the South East.
I'm not entirely convinced that we're not talking to each other at all; it's just that the conversation is dominated by insult, recrimination and snark.
*My cat is refusing to budge from my lap, so coffee remains out of reach...
This would support strong links with the EU or EU membership, and economic growth generally. It would have a different Brexit policy to the Conservative Party. It would also lack the trade union historical connections that the Labour Party has. It could attract voters dissatisfied with the existing parties.
Recrimination and snark (which I mistyped as snarl, and I think I prefer) are talking at people rather than to them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-saad-hariri-mohammed-bin-salman-lebanon.html
To do it repeatedly is rather more disturbing.
Good place to live otherwise. Good housing is cheap, good countryside too, and my season ticket at LCFC is £500 cheaper than a London Prem Club, and only 20 min away.
On the other hand, even Derby is better than Coventry
https://tinyurl.com/ya89ntm2
"Why Jewish families are moving to Canvey Island" - find out why ultra-Orthodox Jewish families are so impressed with the Essex seaside.
Amazing the easy ride Khan gets - guess it’s easier when the local paper is still crywanking about the referendum.
@ydoethur my point is that London is radically different from the rest of the country, very big and very important. Its sheer scale is underappreciated. This map illustrates that scale well:
https://media.timeout.com/images/103140639/image.jpg
Your point about water is odd: many independent countries round the world sit downstream of another country. No one is suggesting London is geographically detached from the rest of England. (As it happens, London husbands its water well.)
London is lavishly subsidising the rest of the country. Judging by most posters on this thread, the spongers are pretty content with this arrangement. At a time when London seems more disliked by those it funds than ever before and when the regions are following policies that London has a strong consensus against, the continuing viability of that arrangement looks shakier than ever before. The deal has to work both ways.
Ditto with voting Labour at the last election. I would consider myself socially liberal and multicultural and am not fussed by EU immigration. No way on God’s earth would I vote for Labour in its current form because I fear what it would mean for my ability to earn a living, provide for my family and and the savings I have accumulated for my old age. Plus I think its values are not very liberal and there is a very nasty streak in its leadership.
Many of my childrens friends voted Labour for precisely the opposite reason ie they thought Labour would help them with tuition fees and housing and rents. Pensions and old age don’t figure. They have barely heard of, let alone remember, the 1970’s. Our values are pretty similar. Some of the more thoughtful ones are a bit bothered by some of the misogyny and anti-semitism but see these as aberrations rather than as anything more significant or worrying.
In short, what is or is not in your purse still matters.
Thanks for the piece Mr M. Interesting idea: I don’t see what you propose happening though no real reason why it shouldn’t.
I agree that having SoS for Scotland and Wales seens unnecessary given devolution. But imagine the shrieks if those posts were abolished.
The first point can be overstated too. London's economy is comparable in size to that of Switzerland.
Its important enough to the larger nation so I don't have a problem with a secretary of state being named for London, but the comparison with Wales and Scotland is just silly since they are countries and London is not. Far better is just pointing out how important it is, and how unimportant by comparison some secretaries of state are, there's a case there as was made. But that allows less self victimising so we know why the argument was presented the way it was, to hope people would dis miss the first, very silly reason, and allow some acting superior and mistreated for emotional comfort while emphasising how 'different' London is. As transparent as glass.
Implicit in your final para - but please correct me - seems to be an assumption that money should give you a greater say ie that if you are a net contributor you should be listened to more. Hence your argument for London to have its own voice.
But the rich having the same vote as the poor despite their greater contribution is implicit in a one man/one vote democracy. Despite being a net contributor to the Treasury I get the same - one - vote as my poor net beneficiary neighbour. We do not base votes on wealth. Why then should the collective votes of Londoners weigh more heavily than the collective votes of any other region? There may be arguments for this of course. But I will leave these to you.
If the rest of the UK continues to choose systematically to ignore London, then London will undoubtedly look to its options. Being much richer than the rest of the country, those options are potentially extensive.
Let Londoners believe their fantasies that the rest of the UK is baled out by them and that everyone else looks on Londoners with envy.
I have lived in London. I enjoyed the experience but there were plenty of downsides too. I prefer the north. Not everyone has the chance to live and work where they want.
I don't expect Yorkshire to have a Secretary of State. Perhaps one day a President, but not a Secretary of State.
If we were to move the government out of London to, say, Birmingham then a great number of sums would suddenly tip the other way.
Margaret Thatcher triggered the regeneration of London through massive infrastructure investment. I think our economy has been to London centric for the last 30 years - with WM only recently wakening up to the need to spread around the investment into the regions. If Thatcher and successive Governments had invested more in the regions our economy would be much better balanced and better able to deal with the likes of Brexit.
Twas ever thus of course. London declared Edward IV King in 1461, ignoring the wishes of the north, Wales and Midlands to keep Henry VI. London gave us the city and massive deregulation in the 80s, while the rest of the country stagnated. Of course, very often this power has been used for good. We would have struggled mightily without London's defence of the democratic systems we now have in the 1640s, and indeed London was crucial in setting them up in the 1260s. London also led the charge for many vital progressive causes, including secular university education.
But the 'provincial' versus 'metropolitan' attitude which has always existed - I am still stunned that David Cannadine felt able to say in the ODNB that one of the problems with Thatcher was that she came from Grantham and never quite adapted to London - seems to me to be getting wider rather than narrower. Important though London is to our society and economy, it is not actually quite as vital as you claim especially given the recent financial losses it has inflicted on the rest of us, and the fact remains that it is in aggregate still only a small minority of England. Giving it special treatment would aggravate, rather than heal, the divisions we're seeing now.
That is however arguably also a good reason for more devolution and recognition of other parts of England (*looks round uneasily in case Morris Dancer is reading*) as much as against your views on London.
We've had this discussion many times before over the last ten years, and I don't think either of us has shifted position. I do hope however that you find food for thought in this.
I have to go. Have a good day everyone.
228/2 after 35 overs chasing 305
Roy 145 no
I am much less persuaded about the idea of a SoS for London. London has its Mayor and its Assembly. I think there is an argument that more powers and control of public spending should be devolved to London and that Assembly but to have a SoS as well simply replicates the devolution duplication we have in respect of the countries.
London should, however, be careful what it wishes for. A genuinely powerful London Assembly is very likely to be almost permanently dominated by Labour. Ask Wales how that goes. Londoners may well find themselves facing the consequence of much higher taxes and higher, if not particularly efficient public spending in support of groups that don't add the value to London. The golden goose may well end up cooked.