Tom Harwood on DT:
Those unlucky enough to be living under Mark Drakeford’s authoritarian Welsh Labour Government are in for an eerie early-Halloween supermarket sight. Goods deemed "non-essential" have been taped off and covered up for the First Minister’s coronavirus "fire break" – which slammed down on the people of Wales at 6pm on Friday. Shop aisles have been cordoned off as Drakeford decreed the offline sale of items such as clothing and bedding is now forbidden. All the while internet giants like Amazon rub their hands with glee.
The petty meddling of Drakeford is just the latest example of devolved administration muscle flexing. Often for the sake of it. For the first time these lower rung politicians have their hands on an enormous amount of power with next to no scrutiny. And they’re taking total advantage.
From sabre-rattling inter-UK travel restrictions to abrupt nationalisations and ever more complicated sets of marginally differing social restrictions, this is the grotesque chaos of a country finally facing the music of its unfinished, imbalanced, and unsettled settlement of asymmetric devolution.
The pandemic has exposed the yawning gaps and lack of cohesion of a UK that cannot decide who governs, or more acutely, who governs where.
The fast-tracked and largely unscrutinised Coronavirus Act of March 2020 became an enabling device for power hungry leaders of devolved nations to aggrandise their own positions. Now Brits face a situation where the media elevates Mark Drakeford, Arlene Foster, and Nicola Sturgeon to be on par with Boris Johnson as if a higher UK Government did not exist.
The leaders of devolved nations are play-acting as rivals to the national executive, all fortuitous beneficiaries of unprecedented power accidentally falling their way in a hurried muddle. They all too often strive for difference for the sake of it.
And worst of all, every level of government that does not reside in Downing Street has successfully evaded even rudimentary responsibility for what they advocate or do. Sadiq Khan has got off scot free with first proposing a London wide curfew, and now calling for it to be scrapped. The U-turns of lower rung politicians are barely noticed, as the people of the UK direct their ire at central Government alone.
This experience is shaking the constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom in a way that other countries with more even, rational, and established hierarchies of government have avoided. Almost uniquely this country has seen devolved leaders hijack the crisis to boost their personal status and grab power.
Continually the people of devolved nations have been subjected to more and more "different for the sake of it" measures. It is hard to escape the conclusion that much devolved policy has been driven not by epidemiology but by pettiness.
This confounding muddle calls for a bold solution. Before devolution the UK was one of the most centralised countries in the world, an unhealthy state of affairs for a large liberal democracy. It is clear that power is better exercised closer to the people it affects. Yet the cack-handed way in which the process of devolving powers has been handled since New Labour has left the vast bulk of the British people, namely the 85 per cent who live in England, with utterly inadequate and patchy provision of powers.
In Germany and the US, people understand the different levels of government. Yet in the UK, while England sits in its incomplete state of semi-devolution to regional mayors, the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales act like almost-independent nations gearing up to skip town.
Clarity is needed. And that will only be achieved by more comprehensive devolution within the UK, not the restriction of it. This country needs to reach a stage of devolved entities covering every person in England elected concurrently with all polities across the UK, mid-way through a Westminster Parliament. Synchronised ‘Mid Term’ elections and evenly devolved entities would finally help establish a clear difference between the overarching Government of the United Kingdom, and pretentious pretenders like Mark Drakeford.