Sick of London-centric government? Where would you like to shove 'em?

[BungoWomble]

Be polite

I thought this might make a bit of a light sideshow for those getting a bit sick of the current embarassment that is UK politics. In my extraordinarily rich fantasy world, where we have top politicians who care about the state of the whole country (sorry to the hardworking ordinary MP), perhaps it's a good time to get the government out of London. Everything is focused down there and the weakness of one central point has been shown time and time again. I'd like a separation of money and power.

York is the obvious and traditional location, especially if we have any chance of keeping Scotland. Alternatively I'd like somewhere central but relatively small, perhaps not too successfully commercial. Somewhere obviously suffering from the focus on London would be ideal. Derby or Stoke perhaps? Any takers?

I don't think you can separate the two: money and power. They accompany eachother. The seat of government is always located in the capital, or at least I don't know of any country where the two are apart. If you relocate government (power) to York it will just become the new London.

If Lexit happens, I would assume the obvious choice geographically, population and transport wise would be birmingham

Birmingham is another big city though. It definitely would just be the new London.

Netherlands comes to mind as somewhere with multiple centres. Amsterdam and The Hague.

Parliament used to follow the monarch around. A Parliament was held here (town with current population of about 8000) about 700 years ago. Laws passed during that session are still in force today!

Having said, one of the biggest gripes about the EU amongst many ordinary voters is its utter ridiculous habit of moving once a month, so this might not be a very good idea...

As a Lexiter, I'd like to see government moved to somewhere more central too. Derbyshire?

Iamthegreatest doesn't The Netherlands have a different administrative capital, Den Haag?

In Derbyshire, it's Derby or Chesterfield I think, in terms of transport links. Chesterfield really is a bit small.

Please put it in Stoke, just to see the looks on their faces.

And possibly, if they were forced to be here, we might get trains that go somewhere after 8pm occasionally, and they might actually do something about the state of the M6.

When in reality, they'd probably actually quit, or all go and live in Tatton and get chauffered in.

Improvements to the rest of the country's infrastructure was what I had in mind!

Ooh, what about Bradford?
Huddersfield is in that same area too.

Manchester or Leeds? Birmingham is still south of a lot of the UK.

They are far too 'big city' A4. It does really need to be somewhere like Stoke or Bradford, or Hartlepool.

Hartlepool would be fun!

Barnsley.

It and them would benefit hugely.

Sell the house of Parliament to American billionaires as flats and use the money to build a really naff place in whichever Northern town is the most deprived.

I'd send them to Bolton personally, the town centre there is I think the only place in the UK where house prices have dropped in the last decade.

Be worth it purely for the Peter Kay sketch.

Given most politicos live in LaLa land, I would pack them off to Alton Towers ... then build a fence about it to keep them in...

Iam, plenty of countries do. New York and Washington. Frankfurt and Berlin. Sydney and Canberra.

I agree with OP. The House of Commons isn't really fit for purpose either, there isn't room for everyone and the two benches facing each other don't reflect the multi party reality. We could do with a purpose built chamber.

How about Nottingham?

Sorry, iam, those are countries that separate finance and government, parliament is still in the capital.

We can change the capital too of course!

I've read somewhere that the Houses of Parliament are falling down anyway, Detestable. And no those two sets of benches don't really suit anything constructive. Nottingham's a bit big too, though I suppose we could fence them off in a small area... Derby woukd be better for that area I think.

The only thing I know of Barnsley is Kate Rusby (wondering if her traditional songs would be of use in debates anywhere!). Is it suitably gritty?