ENGLISH LOCAL LEADERS IN POWERFUL CALL FOR REFORM TO SAVE THE UK

Published 9 December 2020 at 10:54am

Leaders from English devolved governments, including Metro Mayors and council leaders, made a powerful appeal today for action to save the UK from breaking up – and to address the wider loss of faith undermining British democracy amid the divisions of Brexit and COVID.

The cross-party letter to the Prime Minister was supported by senior national political figures and elders, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and current and former leaders of the Liberal Democrats, and called for a non-partisan national dialogue to agree political reforms – including greater devolution to unlock the potential of England’s regions and help people take back control.

The initiative was led by Dan Jarvis MP, the Mayor of Sheffield City Region, who said:

“Our Union is deeply precious. But the pressure on it has been growing, and Brexit and COVID have only added to that. We are an incredible family of nations, with long and deep ties of history, culture, and solidarity. Rather than stand by as division grows and our country falls apart, we need to come together as a family should, in mutual respect and affection – to find a solution that can be worthy of support from all of us.”

“But this is about England and the rest of the UK just as much as it is about Scotland. The discontent with our politics cuts across the whole country – three quarters of people in the UK believe our current system is not fit for purpose. Every one of the signatories of this letter has seen that disillusionment and division first hand.

“As regional Mayors and local government leaders, we know the huge promise of devolution in England, but also its deep limitations. People want to take back control, and they want to unleash the potential of their regions and communities. It is not just north of the border that there is demand for something better.”

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “This intervention shows that the appetite for change and reform cuts across the UK. There is momentum and interest to build an alternative to the status quo.

“This letter is intended as a wake-up call for us all. It’s a call for a national conversation. It’s a call, rather than break our country apart, for us to try to solve our differences. It’s a call to address our rising disillusionment and division rather than accepting them as inevitable. It’s a call for us to come together and build a country worthy of our trust.”

Cllr Keith Aspden, the Liberal Democrat Leader of City of York Council, said: “In England especially our government is over-centralised and under-representative. It’s part of wider weaknesses in our democracy, which continues to undermine progress in the North. We need to address them before it risks taking the voices of our local communities away.

“There are different ways to do that, but it is not hard to imagine alternatives that improve on what we have now. So we are asking the Prime Minister, who ultimately is responsible, to start the conversation we need now.”