The challenge of devolved English governance and the rise of political spatial inequality

Abstract

The UK is characterised by spatial inequality between and within regions, alongside an over-centralised asymmetric model of governance. In England especially, these features are stark, and throughout the last decade, politicians have responded by forging a distinctive programme of English devolution focused on city-regions. In this article, we analyse the core drivers of the English devolution agenda to understand its impact on the future trajectory of British politics. We identify the predominance of a narrow economic vision of devolution that systematically negates other agendas. The result is a failure to address the trade-offs inherent in the devolution process, alongside an inadequate engagement with the growing demand for democratic revitalisation. In the long-term, we argue that the empowerment of the largest cities in England and the relative neglect of non-urban areas will exacerbate power asymmetries within the UK political system in both centre-periphery and centre-local relations, a phenomenon we term ‘political spatial inequality’. There is a risk of resurgent ‘territorially based populism’ stemming from this uneven political geography which has the potential to exacerbate political instability and significantly reshape UK politics in the wake of Brexit. English devolution is a prescient example of how policy ‘solutions’ can in turn create new problems that pose major challenges for policymakers.

1. Introduction

The unfolding process of English devolution over the last decade has highlighted tensions and contradictions in the existing model. Most significantly, successive generations of Westminster politicians have rhetorically committed themselves to devolving power, yet in office, continue to promote a model of English devolution shaped by the ‘value system’ of the British Political Tradition emphasising centralised control (Marsh et al., 2024). This model has been criticised for its focus on the economic priorities and political expediency of governments in Westminster, rather than offering a coherent vision for democratic renewal, place-based policymaking, and empowered subnational government (Richards and Smith, 2015; Tomaney, 2016; Ayres et al., 2018). With the re-emergence of ‘muscular unionism’ since Brexit (Sandford, 2023), it might be concluded that the devolution process has had little impact on the mind-set of Westminster’s governing elite.

In this article, we investigate the implications of the tensions and competing priorities of English devolution now that successive UK governments have committed to tackling spatial inequality as a political priority. The long-standing elite consensus around growth-led urban agglomeration as a model for regional policy has failed to reverse, or even slow, widening spatial inequality (Turner et al., 2023). Yet, the uneven and incoherent topography of English devolution continues to unfold with little strategic direction (Newman and Kenny, 2023). Subnational actors have not been released from constraints imposed on their ability to act autonomously despite Whitehall’s apparent lack of strategic capacity (Marsh et al., 2024). This ad hoc ‘rollout’ of English devolution has been shown to have exacerbated the imbalances between places in relation to powers, resources, and capacity, threatening to worsen existing spatial disparities (Bates et al., 2023; Hoole et al., 2023).

The latter critique is particularly significant as the ‘devolution agenda’ is framed as an antidote to widening socio-economic inequalities between and within regions and the discontent that has grown in ‘left behind’ places (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). Yet, as long-standing tensions and contradictions within central-local relations have not been resolved, considerable uncertainty remains about the outcome of English devolution as political institutions and governance arrangements evolve. To better understand the cumulative effect of English devolution, we make three distinct but interrelated contributions to the literature:

• We show how the ongoing dominance of a growth-led urban agglomeration model of English devolution does not adequately accommodate the range of social, political, cultural, environmental, and economic interests that shape the diversity of places. Our argument is that a top–down model of devolution cannot make such an accommodation given the UK’s propensity for inadequately deliberated policymaking resulting in unforeseen and unintended consequences (Diamond and Richardson, 2023).

• We contend that the combination of a national as opposed to ‘place-based’ economic strategy (Martin et al., 2021), an incoherent model of English devolution and this governing tendency for producing unanticipated outcomes has the potential to exacerbate spatial disparities. We highlight the dangers associated with enhancing capacity and resources in favoured city-regions while local government is continually hollowed-out and underfunded.

• We see this agenda contributing to what we term political spatial inequality, reflecting the emergence of new regional and sub-regional power asymmetries as Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) embed in UK governance. Given the now entrenched perceptions of an institutional bias against ‘left behind’ places (McKay et al., 2023), we argue that such asymmetry must be managed carefully, or risk further destabilising the political landscape by adding to the sense of disillusionment that has become entrenched in England’s poorest regions (Kenny, 2024).

The article proceeds as follows. Section one critically examines the power asymmetries of UK politics and considers the implications for policymaking in the context of English devolution. Section two considers the ambiguities and ‘hierarchy of priorities’ of the English devolution agenda, elaborating how economic growth imperatives have marginalised other drivers of devolution. Section three unpacks the imbalances of English devolution that have resulted from unanticipated and unintended consequences in UK policymaking. We conclude that, despite the emerging elite consensus in favour of English devolution among the major parties, the current asymmetric model conflates policy agendas under the auspices of ‘levelling up’, risking the further marginalisation of ‘left behind’ communities.

2. Power asymmetries and unintended consequences in an unstable territorial constitution

The legacy of the 2007-08 financial crisis, Brexit and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on the fault lines in the UK’s territorial politics (Kenny, 2024). There is an emerging consensus that English devolution is a major part of the solution to the UK’s widening spatial disparities and deeply imbalanced political economy, but this context has yet to produce a coherent strategic vision for reform. Despite the rhetoric, the ‘legitimising mythology’ surrounding the Westminster Model’s core tenets—the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, executive dominance, ministerial accountability, and centralised power—continues to have a profound shaping effect on UK politics (Richards, 2007; Flinders et al., 2022; Marsh et al., 2024), leaving the English devolution agenda heavily constrained by an ‘unashamedly elitist model of democracy’ (Blunkett et al., 2016: 562). There remains a significant distrust in Whitehall of the capacity of subnational actors (Turner et al., 2023). Pike et al. (2016: 11) contend that the process is not devolution at all but ‘deconcentration’, defined as ‘dispersion of central government functions and responsibilities to sub-national field offices’, with steps towards ‘delegation’, ‘the transfer of policy responsibility to local government or semi-autonomous organisations that are not controlled by central government but remain accountable to it’. England does not have properly ‘devolved institutions’ because Whitehall retains the levers that make subnationally delivered ‘place based’ policy possible (Martin et al., 2021).

In England, successive Westminster governments have left subnational institutions as ‘creatures of central government’ financially dependent on the centre and lacking constitutionally guaranteed powers (Sandford, 2019; Warner et al., 2021). This is consistent with the UK’s constitutional status as a unitary state, meaning that, under the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty, the government at Westminster can intervene in any ‘clearly designated geographic or functional areas’ (Lijphart, 2012: 17). Yet there is little question the devolution process has exacerbated the inherent tensions in the UK’s complex union of nations and regions. Parliamentary sovereignty has been challenged at the sub-Westminster level, setting in train a process that cannot easily be reversed without significant public outcry as loyalties to nation and locality is an increasingly prominent aspect of the governance landscape (King, 2007; Kenny, 2024). English devolution increasingly challenges the claim that ‘[t]he onus for public policy rests wholly and exclusively with the executive’ (Norton, 2022: 9) and that there is ‘no divided accountability’ (Norton, 2022: 20). This is of course nothing new. Indeed, 40 years of public sector reform has fragmented the governance landscape (Elliott et al., 2022). Yet, ongoing tensions between central control and programmes of decentralisation and devolution have not been resolved. This has deleterious implications for wider governance structures, in which responsibility and accountability remain often bewilderingly complex and confused (Newman and Kenny, 2023).

The English devolution process has focused on reform almost exclusively at the local level. The agenda represents a combination of local government reform and narrowly focused growth policy, avoiding a more system-wide approach that conceives alterations in central institutions as a necessary accompaniment. The UK state’s inability to enact strategic, long-term reform is visible in English devolution, where its own radical and systemic critique in the Levelling Up White Paper (HM Government, 2021) quickly succumbed to bureaucratic inertia and left Whitehall free to selectively micro-manage from the centre (Diamond et al., 2023). Meanwhile, this slow-burner approach to governance reform has taken place against a backdrop of widening social and economic inequalities between the North and London and the South East (Johns et al., 2024; Tomaney and Pike, 2024).

This is a familiar set of issues symptomatic of a system of government that is increasingly dysfunctional and unable to contend with mounting public policy challenges (Warner et al., 2023). While such dysfunctionality has not yet dampened rhetorical ambitions or derailed the incremental expansion of English devolution, it raises questions about the likelihood of success. The UK’s often-acknowledged propensity for policy failure (Dunleavy, 1995; King and Crewe, 2013) underlines the fact that policymakers need to be aware of the risks associated with unintended consequences in reforming UK political institutions (Diamond and Richardson, 2023). This point relates to The Law of Large Solutions, raised four decades ago by the American policy scholar, Aaron Wildavsky (1980). Wildavsky argued that policy ‘solutions’ invariably end up creating pathologies that are more severe than the original problems they were intended to solve. Unintended consequences, both positive and negative, are an inevitable product of policy design and implementation. Our argument is that in the context of ad hoc incrementalism associated with the rollout of English devolution, the UK’s impositional and frenetic policy style (Richardson, 2018)—described by Anthony King as akin to ‘a nineteenth-century cavalry charge’ with inadequate deliberation (Diamond, 2021a: 99)—undermines long-term strategic thinking and increases the likelihood of unanticipated outcomes.

The top–down approach to English devolution lacks clarity and consistency, but has more profoundly created ‘governance gaps’ that undermine public confidence, particularly in places that experienced long-term political and economic marginalisation (Flinders and Huggins, 2021). Thus, English devolution currently offers little to deprived communities in England who invariably feel disenfranchised (Kenny, 2024), despite the fact that it is repeatedly framed as an economic equaliser in government policy (HM Government, 2021). These factors may well contribute to rising populism, however unintended that outcome may be (Richards and Smith, 2015; Flinders and Huggins, 2021).

Moreover, English devolution is an ongoing, rather than completed process. We argue that the current approach will not meaningfully address enduring place-based inequalities because it has failed to differentiate an economic growth commitment from a wider and more fundamental set of concerns associated with life-chances, well-being, and democratic trust. The long-term implications of confusion in policy priorities and emerging governance gaps remain poorly understood. There are, for example, significant risks associated with Whitehall’s elite co-option of ‘city-regions’ in the context of pervasive socio-economic inequalities outside the metropolitan areas (Diamond et al., 2023). Our analysis examines how, in the context of traditional power asymmetries and an increasingly incoherent governance landscape, new asymmetries are occurring both within regions and between regions as emerging, largely metropolitan, powerbases are embedded at the subnational level (albeit without parity in political power or resources; Marsh et al., 2024). In the long-term, unintended consequences are likely to emerge that risk further entrenching instability and inequality in the UK political system.

The next section illustrates this argument by assessing the ramifications of a model of English devolution that has been driven by a narrow economic vision of growth-led urban agglomeration shaped in Westminster and Whitehall. We are particularly concerned with how this model has failed to address spatial and socio-economic inequalities, while marginalising the political, social, and cultural rationale for English devolution that is most salient outside metropolitan areas.

3. The drivers and ambiguities of devolution in England

This section disaggregates the drivers of English devolution over the last decade. We outline an ad hoc, ambiguous project that has struggled to accommodate interrelated but discrete policy challenges. The analysis illustrates that this conception of devolution has failed to respond to inter or intra-regional inequalities, maintaining ‘place-based’ discontentment and threatening to exacerbate territorial politics as a site of conflict and contestation.

3.1 Economic drivers

The UK’s economic geography locates it among the most unequal OECD countries (McCann, 2016; Carrascal-Incera et al., 2020). Since the 1980s, successive governments have promoted deindustrialisation and the deregulation of financial services in the face of a structural shift in the UK economy from industry to services. Yet limited attention has been paid to the emergence of spatial inequalities—most notably the divide between South-East England (especially London) and former industrial regions in the North and the Midlands—alongside increasingly pronounced variation in economic and social outcomes between localities (Martin et al., 2021).

At repeated intervals, governments have adapted and rescaled their approach to regional economic policy reflecting changing political priorities. A common thread has been to favour private sector-led growth within the national economic strategy. New Labour’s Regional Development Agencies, for example, represented a rejection of the ‘old-style regional policy’ of the 1960s associated with ‘picking winners’ (Diamond, 2021b: 240). Regional Development Agencies did not protect ‘failing’ industries or address widening regional inequalities. The result was a model that exacerbated existing disparities by focusing on pockets of economic success in London and the South-East. New Labour treated ‘unequals equally’ by decentralising limited powers and resources to rich and poor regions alike (Morgan, 2006).

The failure of the 2004 referendum on the creation of an elected regional Assembly in the North East of England left the regional model without a local democratic anchor (Tickell et al., 2005; Shaw and Robinson, 2007). While regionalisation subsequently reorganised aspects of the central state along regional lines (Giovannini, 2022), Labour’s traditional ‘centralisation and lever-pulling’ approach to the machinery of government was maintained, with a national growth strategy and supply-side reform focused on favoured regions (Diamond, 2021b: 206). The accepted trade-off was ‘between national economic growth and politically tolerable levels of spatial disparities’ (Pike et al., 2012: 25). New Labour’s ‘let London rip’ strategy (Leyshon, 2021) fuelled uneven growth as London and the South-East were entrenched as ‘islands of prosperity’ while regional disparities grew (Gardiner et al., 2013; McCann, 2016). Welfare and social policy were relied on to do the ‘heavy lifting’ of tackling socio-economic inequality by ‘compensating losers’ (Diamond, 2021b: 246). This approach reflected changing expectations about the role of regional economic policy, weakening central government’s concern with spatial inequality as a policy priority.

The ‘hierarchy of priorities’ was reinforced by the resilience of London and the South-East in the aftermath of the 2007-08 financial crisis, albeit with growing concern about the fragility of the wider UK economy (Martin et al., 2021). Renewed efforts to rebalance England’s economy followed in 2010, but the thrust of economic policy did not dramatically change. The Conservative-led Coalition government unwound New Labour’s regional approach in favour of promoting agglomeration around urban ‘functional economic geographies’ (Giovannini, 2021: 475). This strategy was depicted as rebalancing the distribution of economic growth, albeit promoted through the ‘fuzzy’ political branding and contested economic assumptions of the Northern Powerhouse (Berry and Giovannini, 2017: 7–8; Lee, 2017). It entrenched the existing model in which the economic growth argument for devolution was elevated above other concerns (Sandford, 2018).

The creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in 2011 was explicitly justified as an attempt to encourage local leaders to pursue economic growth and to afford greater prominence to local business expertise (Pike et al., 2018; Newman and Gilbert, 2022). The ‘devolution’ element of LEPs was relatively weak, with particular RDA-era economic functions reclaimed by central government (Bentley et al., 2010). The model subjugated principles of transparency and democratic accountability to the wider economic agenda (Berry, 2022; Newman and Gilbert, 2022). There was no attempt to encourage distinctive territorial identities, as LEPs overlapped with one another, cut across traditional local authority boundaries, and opted for non-territorial names like “Coast-to-Coast Capital” and “Enterprise M3”. Nor was there an explicit acknowledgement that empowering local business elites through LEPs promoted new inter- and intra-regional power asymmetries reflected in capacity, expertise, and overall effectiveness (O’Brien and Pike, 2015). After barely a decade of operation, the UK government announced in 2023 that LEPs would be merged into existing local government structures.

The outgoing Labour government’s decision in 2009 to sanction the first Combined Authorities provided the bedrock upon which subsequent rounds of reform were built. For example, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, approved by the Coalition government in April 2011, was framed as ‘a stable and accountable platform’ for the government to devolve power and functions to, becoming a flagship City Deal in the context of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse agenda (for an overview, see Blakeley and Evans, 2023). Between July 2012 and August 2014, 26 City Deals were signed, followed by a far more substantial round of ‘devolution deals’ announced in 2015–16, later revived as part of the levelling up agenda in 2022–23 (Ward, 2024). This approach represents a contractual style of devolution that integrates deal-based decision-making commonly found in the private sector within the traditional hierarchies of the British state (Sandford, 2017; Newman et al., 2023). Although promoted as a vehicle to deliver regional economic development outside London and the South East (Prosser et al., 2017: 252), the contractual model was criticised as untransparent, ‘asymmetric and transactional’ (O’Brien and Pike, 2015). The metro mayors at the heart of English devolution owe much to US-inspired models of drawing political and business elites together to promote growth, while reinforcing undue influence for local business leaders (Tomaney, 2016: 549).

Despite the shift from regional to city scale, the various post-2010 reforms retain the core tenets of an economic agglomeration model that places considerable weight on unpredictable ‘spill over’ benefits for non-metropolitan areas. That model, driven more by faith in market forces than the strategic capacity of the state, is scarcely attuned to the politics of place (Berry and Giovannini, 2017; Bailey et al., 2019; Martin et al., 2021). It has advanced ‘a theory of economic development that fosters inter-urban competition and economic concentration, [and] tolerates and indeed even celebrates socio-economic inequality’ (Tomaney, 2016: 550). Bailey et al. (2019: 323) argue: ‘…except in rare circumstances, place-based policies, unless directly tied to the populations at hand, are liable to reinforce rather than redirect development to underserved regions’. Politicians tend to underplay the trade-offs that arise between attempts to grow the national economy, improve regional productivity, tackle spatial inequality, and revitalise lagging places. Each imperative has at various moments influenced the English devolution agenda. Yet, the literature paints a distinctly mixed picture about the extent to which decentralisation offers a means to those ends (Rodríguez‐Pose and Gill, 2005; Ezcurra and Pascual, 2008; Rodríguez-Pose and Ezcurra, 2011; Bartolini et al., 2016).

3.2 Political drivers

The political drivers of devolution reflect the ambiguity about devolution and sub-regional policy that is entrenched by Whitehall’s functional silos. Individual departments have been shown to adopt diverging approaches to decentralisation and localism. This reflects the contrasting views of both departments and ministers towards the process (Ayres and Pearce, 2013; Turner et al., 2023). These arrangements have led to unevenness in implementation, with ‘departments conceptualising localism in unique ways’, involving contrasting, at times contradictory, approaches that ‘hampers policy coordination’ (Ayres and Pearce, 2013: 805). In recent years, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC) has attempted to lead the English devolution and spatial policy agenda, empowered by the influence of Michael Gove. Its ambitions have largely been curtailed by the Treasury (Diamond et al., 2023). The Treasury, for example, removed DLUHC’s delegated authority over capital expenditure, ensuring it retained oversight of all capital-intensive ‘levelling up’ spending (Dunton, 2023).

Ambiguity also explains how both localism and devolution have become ‘intertwined with a centrally driven period of fiscal austerity’ (Walshe et al., 2018). The merits of a post-2010 localism agenda under the Coalition government were undermined in the context of ‘decentralised austerity’ (Lowndes and Gardner, 2016) while the ‘contract-based’ devolution model outlined above was designed to stimulate competition (and consequently fuel tensions) between perceived ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ instead of embedding collaboration (Tomaney, 2016). This is reflective of the wider political agenda of English devolution which has been repeatedly characterised by ‘disparate policies’ and ‘electoral slogans’ rather than a strategic vision to promote local empowerment (Fransham et al., 2023: 2341). As Diamond and Laffin (2021: 217) argue, successive governments have followed a ‘piecemeal, ad hoc approach to devolution with no clear rationale or overarching principle other than political expediency’. This has contributed to the uneven geography of devolution reflected in England’s incoherent governance landscape (Newman and Kenny, 2023; Richards et al., 2023).

The long-established power asymmetries in deal-making arrangements (Bailey and Wood, 2017; Ayres et al., 2018) have side-lined subnational voices that do not sit within the narrow project of urban agglomeration (Hildreth and Bailey, 2023). Whitehall (especially the Treasury) has embedded its policy priorities, co-opting local elites who have embraced the opportunity of controlling a greater share of financial resources and institutionalising mayors as the preferred mechanism to secure accountable leadership (Kenealy, 2016; Ayres et al., 2018).

The narrow focus of English devolution enabled central government to reconcile fiscal austerity with deterioration in the quality of public services. The unprecedented scale of fiscal retrenchment across local government has led to accusations of ‘blame-shifting’ to deflect attention from its increasingly compromised capacity to respond to social problems (Lowndes and Gardner, 2016; Bailey and Wood, 2017; Marsh et al., 2024). Indeed, Labour councils are also blamed for the impact of austerity on local services (MacKinnon, 2020: 18), reflecting the fact in many cases they are handed ‘unfunded mandates’ from central government (Rodríguez-Pose and Vidal-Bover, 2022). The politics of fragmented and complex funding arrangements has done little to overcome these suspicions, with the resulting imposition of national priorities and financial conformance (Sandford, 2019; Warner et al., 2021).

This issue has been particularly telling in relation to funding mechanisms designed to target spatial inequalities, such as the Shared Prosperity Fund, Towns Fund, and Levelling Up Fund. The allocation processes illustrate significant capacity asymmetries that undermine the effectiveness of competitive bidding processes as the vehicle to distribute funding on the basis of need (National Audit Office, 2023). Evidence of ‘pork barrel’ politics has been presented (Hanretty, 2021; Warner et al., 2021). There is also a wider debate about centralised control. This has been particularly directed at the Treasury and its involvement in a political process embedding an ‘economic appraisal’ methodology ill-suited to the complexity of the social problems to which levelling up pertains (Coyle and Sensier, 2020). The lack of transparency surrounding the process has directly politicised aspects of the levelling up and devolution agendas (Diamond et al., 2023).

As with the economic growth model, governance arrangements—including those linked to funding—have significant consequences for the ability of localities to respond to socio-economic inequalities. The ultimate power of central government lies in its ability to make, remake, and unmake devolved institutions. This significantly empowers politicians and policymakers at the centre to frame the devolution process according to their priorities, invariably at the expense of local needs, circumstances, and strategies (Newman et al., 2023). This is taking place without due attention to asymmetries emerging as an unintended consequence of political expediency in Westminster.

3.3 Socio-economic drivers

Successive governments failed to produce an ‘economic dividend’ on the back of agglomeration and supply-side reform (Pike et al., 2012). In recent years, this has led to a greater focus on England’s growing regional inequalities and their association with the UK’s overly centralised system of government (McCann, 2016; Martin et al., 2021). The low and declining resilience of many local economies contributed to fragility in local communities and local democratic structures (Martin et al., 2021). In this context, the city-centric model of English devolution had to confront the social consequences of uneven economic development, the legacy of deindustrialisation, and dissatisfaction in places that have suffered long-term economic decline (MacKinnon, 2020: 13).

The pursuit of city-level devolution after 2010 against the backdrop of the uneven spatial impact of the austerity agenda has been described by Peck (2012: 628) as a process of ‘austerity urbanism’, in which ‘local governments, and cities in particular, are … exposed to the full force of austerity’s ‘extreme economy’’. In the UK, the uneven impact of austerity and cuts to local government funding was most apparent in deprived communities, both within and beyond metropolitan areas (Gray and Barford, 2018) to the extent that Hastings et al (2017) describe austerity urbanism as regressive redistribution.

The co-emergence of austerity urbanism and city-level devolution are a clear contradiction. Davies and Blanco (2017: 1533) argue that ‘the solidity of municipal austerity regimes makes sense only in the context of the country’s centralised political tradition’. The power asymmetries in the British political system allow the central state to devolve policy responsibilities, while simultaneously withdrawing funding from local institutions.

This process occurred on top of pre-existing and deeply entrenched spatial socio-economic inequalities. Historic job losses from deindustrialisation continue to shape the structure of employment and social security (Beatty and Fothergill, 2020). Welfare reforms have exacerbated existing social and spatial cleavages (Barford and Gray, 2022). Lupton et al. (2018) argue that a focus on regional-level inequalities has shifted attention from deprivation within poor neighbourhoods. This highlights a key tension between initiatives to address regional economic performance and attempts to address localised pockets of poverty. While the devolution agenda has prioritised skills and human capital policies, it has largely excluded welfare and social security, despite initial trials and a growing case for localisation (Green et al., 2022).

The legacy of austerity became even more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated patterns of structural inequality and highlighted the sheer scale of existing inequalities (The British Academy, 2021). Both infection rates, premature deaths and the economic contraction were higher in the Midlands and North of England (Martin et al., 2021). Studies reveal that spatial inequalities across a range of measures have continued to worsen (Raikes et al., 2019; O’Brien, 2020; Houlden et al., 2022; UK2070 Commission, 2019). The inadequate capacity and powers of local and regional governments to respond to the pandemic exposed the extent to which England’s centralisation contributes to major public policy failings (Warner et al., 2021; Richards et al., 2023). The COVID-19 shock serves to demonstrate how England’s model of central control is plagued by a lack of central capacity to meaningfully respond to entrenched socio-economic inequalities.

Terms like ‘regionalism’, ‘levelling up’, and ‘uneven development’ entered the debate among policymakers around this time, as the scale of geographical inequalities was forced onto the political agenda (Leyshon, 2021). In the Levelling Up White Paper, traditional economic arguments for devolution were advanced alongside a detailed discussion of the UK’s worsening inequalities and a rigorous critique of the over-centralised UK state (Diamond et al., 2023). The White Paper went beyond traditional economic metrics of performance to consider social policy issues, notably educational attainment and health inequalities. Indeed, the Conservative Party’s ‘levelling up’ slogan had its roots in social policy, with Justine Greening’s focus on tackling spatially unequal educational attainment (Newman, 2021). Yet, the social policy origins of levelling up and its explicit concern with socio-economic inequalities have not been translated into policy action. This reflects the now pervasive challenges associated with attempts at micro-management from Whitehall.

Ayres et al (2023: 6) argue that to deliver on its public health commitments, the levelling up agenda required ‘the decentralisation and devolution of policy responsibilities and resources to enable integrated, systemic policymaking at sub-regional and local levels in England’. The partial devolution of health policy in Greater Manchester has been linked to improved outcomes (Britteon et al., 2022), in line with expectations from international studies (du Plessis et al., 2019). Yet the extent to which health policy will significantly alter the direction of travel on English devolution remains an open question. For Coyle and Muhtar (2023: 5), ‘the levelling up terminology is somewhat distinctive—but not in terms of its shift towards a more active development role for the state’ (See also Berry, 2018). Social policy features in the rhetoric surrounding spatial inequality. Yet the Department for Education, the Department for Health and Social Care, and the Department for Work and Pensions, are among the most centralising Whitehall departments (Turner et al., 2023).

3.4 Cultural and territorial drivers

Territorial, regional, and local identities have become increasingly prominent in debates concerning English devolution. Yet, in contrast to devolution in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, English devolution was not driven by the same public pressure to devolve on the basis of territorial identity or democratic representation (Ayres et al., 2018: 845). Neither New Labour nor recent Conservative governments viewed English devolution ‘through the lens of territorial politics’ which explains why narrow economic arguments have predominated and marginalised other concerns (Denham, 2022; Giovannini, 2022; Kenny, 2024). Yet as Prosser et al. (2017: 263) suggest: ‘…if people do not identify with the areas in which they are governed, they are less likely to accept any new arrangements’. Moving beyond economic arguments for devolution and levelling up requires an appreciation of the social infrastructure that shapes individual communities (Tomaney et al., 2023) and greater attentiveness to the multiplicity of discontents of English voters (Kenny, 2024).

Since 2010, territorial identity has become more prominent in relation to governance in England. Notions of political Englishness became increasingly high profile in mainstream debates in the aftermath of the 2014 Scottish referendum, and the subsequent introduction of the English Votes for English Laws legislation (Kenny, 2016). Henderson et al. (2016) trace a long-standing link between English nationalism and Euroscepticism, which solidified in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and further exacerbated tensions within the UK Union. Kenny (2021) offers a more rounded explanation of how English identity became politically salient during Brexit, linking notions of Englishness to broader debates about the constitutional structure of the UK’s multi-level polity.

In Wales particularly there have been strong moves towards developing a federal vision of the UK (Rawlings, 2022). This position problematises the role of England and English governance within the Union. For federalism to be realised, a significant transfer of power would be required within England, accompanied by larger regional units. Indeed, the cohesion of the Union has itself been another important driver of English devolution. Debates about federalism are also present in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but here the political discourse is dominated by more polarised nationalist and unionist positions.

Within England, a complex patchwork of territorial identities persists. These identities are on the one hand ancient attachments to historic counties and settlements, and on the other a fragmented kaleidoscope of multi-scalar imaginaries embedded in the history of institutional and territorial churn in England’s subnational administration (Hincks et al., 2017). With the exception of Cornwall—where there is ‘a very strong sense of Cornish identity, with a distinct language, flag and other symbolisms of nationhood’ (Willett, 2016: 583)—England’s local and regional identities played a limited role in driving English devolution. Nonetheless, the patchwork of identities created major challenges in the rollout of MCAs. For example, in South Yorkshire, tensions persist between different spatial imaginaries, from Yorkshire-wide devolution to more localised resentment of Sheffield’s city-centric regional dominance (Hoole and Hincks, 2020). Similarly, the history of regional policymaking in the North East reflects a distinctive political culture and pan-regional identity that complicated the process of agreeing regional governance arrangements (Coulter and Kenny, 2024).

Overlaying England’s regional identities is the more politically salient notion of a north-south divide (Swift, 2023). The recent levelling up agenda is a response to the geography of discontent, which has been discursively focused on Northern England in the aftermath of Brexit and the political landslide of the 2019 general election (Jennings et al., 2021). The north-south divide is further expressed in anti-London sentiment and resentment against distant powerholders in Westminster and Whitehall. Brown (2019: 25) identifies ‘a feeling that the capital is remote, uncaring and disinterested in the rest of the nation’, a sentiment that grows stronger further away from London. Former Treasury Permanent Secretary, Lord Macpherson, notes that: ‘To all intents and purposes, London is another country’ (cited in Brown, 2019: 29).

Territorial identities within England are therefore not simple drivers of devolution, as they have been (in various ways) in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. They are closely tied up with economic and socio-economic inequalities, and in recent years have been increasingly manifested in expressions of popular discontent (Kenny, 2024). For this reason, English devolution has not been imbued with the popular hopes of communities, making it particularly susceptible to the unintended consequence of capture by ill-defined political slogans (Sandford and Mor, 2019). To date, English devolution has only paid lip service to notions of ‘place’, as evidenced by the deprioritisation of territorial and cultural concerns in the pursuit of political imperatives tied to national economic growth.

Overall, the economic, political, socio-economic, and cultural-territorial drivers of English devolution have provided policymakers with a strong incentive to delegate responsibility, but they have also created tensions when confronted by the drive to maintain a Westminster-dominated political landscape. England’s devolution process has been slow-moving with limited impact on the UK’s political centre, its territorial politics, and the wider exercise of political power. The disparity is likely to become increasingly significant as, despite the ‘hierarchy of priorities’ we highlight, widening spatial inequalities and territorial concerns are reshaping the landscape of British politics.

4. Political Spatial Inequality

Over the last 30 years, English governance has paradoxically become both more devolved and yet increasingly centralised (Diamond and Laffin, 2021; Marsh et al., 2024). This has had a profound impact on the uneven development of regionalism and devolved institutions (Willett and Giovannini, 2014). Recent years have seen an acknowledgment in Whitehall that the unresolved tensions of English devolution are now embedded into the structures of regional governance. Nevertheless, the continued dominance of incrementalism in policymaking ensures that long-term decisions about priorities and trade-offs remain inadequately discussed, in large part because a systemic reform agenda is yet to emerge (Sandford, 2024). The consequence is a devolution landscape in which an array of local institutional arrangements exist—and continue to emerge—with contrasting access to knowledge, capabilities, resources, remits, levers, and legitimacy. Together, this leads to asymmetries of power between places as an unintended consequence of uneven governance arrangements. This section examines the emergence of increasingly prominent ‘political spatial inequalities’ which are currently poorly understood in policymaking surrounding English devolution. They are summarised in Table 1.

Since the advent of mayoral combined authorities (MCAs), there has been notable variation between these institutions in terms of their powers, budgets, capacities, and political influence. In large city-regions, where there is a legacy of joint working between Passenger Transport Executives, Metropolitan County Councils, and joint local authority boards, MCAs have major advantages of institutional size, quality, and policymaking capacity (Ayres and Pearce, 2013; Bates et al., 2023). These inequalities have been exaggerated by the ad hoc and asymmetric landscape of English devolution, in which competitive funding, deal-making, and ambiguous economic priorities have tended to reward MCAs with the greatest institutional capacity (Waite and Morgan, 2019; Bates et al., 2023). For many areas, that creates a trap where local institutions ‘need to evidence capacity and capability to gain devolved resources and powers, but without devolved resources and powers they cannot develop the required capacity and capability’ (Hoole et al., 2023: 2).

Asymmetries in institutional capacity are accompanied by asymmetries in the informal influence of MCA leadership. Officials in Greater Manchester have strong links with civil servants in central government, especially the Treasury; there are recent examples of key officials moving in both directions. Those informal networks are crucial in a system that lacks a formal central-local interface, where there are no dispute resolution mechanisms between the centre and local areas and the wider devolution process operates according to competitive principles (Newman et al., 2023). Existing political prejudices among national politicians about local leadership have already had a material impact on where resources are directed, such as the decision to exclude Liverpool from the recent Innovation Accelerator Pilots (Hill, 2022).

The emergence of such asymmetries in part reflects the unique histories of individual regions and localities. Greater Manchester is presented as an exemplar in local government collaboration and capacity building, enabling it to seize opportunities as the Treasury began taking its first tentative steps towards English devolution under George Osborne (Kenealy, 2016; Blakeley and Evans, 2023). In contrast, the complex history of the North East Mayoral Combined Authority, established in May 2024, reflects a more uneven process towards its current settlement, the product of its unique political culture and regional context. It has taken time to settle on a deal that makes sense to local actors in economic and geographical terms (Tomaney and Pike, 2024). These contrasting histories are replicated across the country and illustrate why a one-size-fits-all model is neither realistic nor desirable. Despite the inevitability of unevenness as the map of English devolution emerges, rushed governance arrangements could exacerbate (or create new) tensions among local actors. The uneven maturity of political institutions and governance arrangements is inevitable in an incremental model, but this reality needs to be more openly reflected in deliberations surrounding both regional and national economic strategy if unintended consequences are to be managed.

Differences in the powers of mayors themselves are perhaps of greatest importance here. While mayors have discrete powers, their role primarily depends on their ‘soft power’ to convene and persuade other actors (Fenwick and Johnston, 2020) and to give their region a voice at a national and international level (Shutt and Liddle, 2019). Mayors use the ‘power of the press release’ and ‘announcement-led policy’, and—intentionally or otherwise—they find the media spotlight during crises or major political events (Roberts, 2020: 1006). YouGov’s measures of public awareness provide an indication of the hierarchy of influence among the metro mayors with Sadiq Kahn scoring 90%, Andy Burnham 68%, Tracy Brabin 30%, Andy Street 25%, and Steve Rotherham just 22%. Mayors are invariably more recognisable than other local politicians, but the picture is uneven across the country. Mayors need to catch up with their more established counterparts to avoid widening differentials in soft power (Lavoie, 2024). Such differences are crucial in an ad hoc devolution process based on influence and competition rather than a coherent, long-term strategy (Sandford, 2017).

The extent to which metro mayors can ‘harness the power of place’ and draw on their local support bases to challenge national politicians and respective political parties has been underestimated (Giovannini, 2021: 477). This could point to a new flashpoint in the fraught world of UK territorial politics. Mayors operate amidst a ‘complex web of relationships, which can enable and constrain’ (Blakeley and Evans, 2024). They are subject to asymmetrical relationships with government departments that are rarely joined up, impeding their ability to promote a strategic, integrated approach to policymaking at the sub-regional level. Mayors must navigate complex relationships in their own cabinets and local power dynamics between local authorities which inevitably reflect the particularities of place. And they must constantly tend to relationships with political parties, interest groups, and the electorate. As these roles are complex and evolving, they remain subject to a great deal of uncertainty (Blakeley and Evans, 2024).

The challenge here is that such dynamics are playing out differently throughout the country, creating opportunities, but also new asymmetries and risks. New powerbases that do not fit well with central government’s agenda could become an irritant in Westminster and Whitehall (Blakeley and Evans, 2023: 231). Kenny (2024: 327) highlights ‘the difficulties of sustaining a Union when politicians at federal and national levels hold irreconcilable constitutional worldviews, and are fishing for voters in different territorial ponds’. New asymmetries at subnational level point to territorial cracks reflecting the different socio-economic policy challenges produced by England’s uneven economic geography that have not been adequately accommodated within the dominant economic paradigm. Nor is it clear that emerging powers have been assigned to reflect the particular challenges of individual places, baking in an unevenness to regional economic policy that is likely to have long-term consequences. The failure to align often competing priorities within a top–down framework of devolution risks producing new sites of resentment if asymmetries at the subnational level are promoted in the name of competition between regions.

Although these inequalities between MCAs are increasingly important, they are overshadowed by inequalities between MCA and non-MCA areas, in terms of both political influence and policymaking capacities. Those parts of the country yet to agree devolution deals or to establish combined authority arrangements often lack the historic joint-working arrangements and recognised geographies. This replicates inequalities between MCAs that enjoy distinct advantages through the maturity of collaborative working arrangements. In response to the Autumn 2023 wave of devolution deals, Paun (2023) explains that the government ‘has picked low-hanging fruit’ so that the new deals will become increasingly challenging in terms of local cooperation, geographies, and existing capacities. In other words, those areas with the weakest legacy of regional governance will be the last to receive deals and the slowest to climb through the various devolution ‘levels’. They are also likely to be worst affected by incoherent governance arrangements since the most difficult geographies have been left until last. These areas are more likely to experience territorial incoherence, while they are less able to unify the plethora of incommensurate geographies used by different local institutions, government departments, and other public sector bodies (Newman and Kenny, 2023). Leaving the map of English devolution half-built and continuing along an incremental pathway in the absence of a systemic understanding of political spatial inequalities will make it more difficult to address the likelihood of new asymmetries and the consequences of uneven growth.

For example, at the heart of England’s intensifying spatial inequality is the question of inequality within emerging city regions. The narrow policy prescriptions offered by ‘growth oriented’ and ‘export-based’ spatial policy favours dynamic urban centres at the expense of towns and suburbs, restricting the ability of places to prioritise the social policy-led development that is more often best suited to such local areas (MacKinnon et al., 2022). Deas et al. (2021) explain how lagging local authorities within city regions have pushed back against the agglomeration model, repoliticising local economic development by emphasising concepts like ‘inclusive growth’. Alternative approaches are emerging in so-called ‘left-behind’ places, including the well-being economy, community wealth building, and the foundational economy (Crisp et al., 2023). The debate resides on the relative effectiveness of such policies and is likely to become increasingly intertwined with the competing interests of cities, towns, and rural areas.

This pushback against metropolitan centres is apparent among voters, where spatial inequality is ‘lighting the fire of territorially based populism’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018: 205). The satellite towns, second cities, and more rural parts of emerging city regions resent the construction of a city-region imaginary, which clashes both with more localised town and village geographies and with larger county or regional geographies, like Yorkshire or ‘the north’ (Hoole and Hincks, 2020; Swift, 2023). These competing imaginaries are often the product of earlier spatial policy initiatives and local governance arrangements. They have an increased capacity to destabilise the current English devolution project due to the reliance on deal-making (Hincks et al., 2017). The territorial instability of England’s sub-national geography intersects with spatial inequalities that characterise the economic and social landscape in England. These inequalities are becoming more pronounced through the prioritisation in the devolution agenda of growth, cities, and agglomeration over well-being, towns, and specialisation.

When we consider the ambiguous amalgamation of the multi-faceted aims of devolution and the prioritisation of economic drivers, it is unclear what—if any—strategies are in place to help new and emerging combined authorities catch-up. In the absence of such strategies, it is likely that Greater London, Greater Manchester, and the West Midlands will continue to accelerate away from the rest of England in their political influence and institutional capacity. This emerging pattern of political spatial inequality is becoming an increasingly important aspect of England’s sub-national governance. Political spatial inequality concerns the power asymmetries between regions in their political connections, policy and research capacity, institutional resources, soft power, and public profile. It is a consequence of a model of English devolution yet to be underpinned by a strategic vision that moves beyond the ‘hierarchy of priorities’ identified in this article. The biggest challenge is that political spatial inequality does not map neatly onto England’s existing economic, social, and cultural spatial inequalities, meaning it is likely to drive spatial inequality in new and unpredictable directions in the coming decades. More immediately, an English devolution agenda that fuels the boom of the metropolises is likely to also fuel political disaffection and growing place-based tension in England’s post-industrial heartlands which, after many decades, still lack effective policy solutions to their local economic decline.

5. Conclusion

This article illustrates the profound challenges that await future governments—both national and sub-national—as the existing model of English devolution is developed. The negative consequences of long-standing deficiencies in UK governance for economic and social policy outcomes are widely acknowledged across a range of complementary literatures (McCann, 2016; Tomaney, 2016; Newman and Kenny, 2023; Richards et al., 2023; Marsh et al., 2024). Yet, the model perpetuates a top–down and incremental approach to English devolution that makes ‘place-based’ policymaking more difficult. We argue that this sustains a ‘hierarchy of priorities’ for English devolution in which assumed national imperatives to promote a metropolitan-led agglomeration growth model marginalise more profound social policy concerns associated with socio-economic inequality, life-chances, well-being, and democratic trust. While the Levelling Up White Paper was ostensibly attuned to such concerns, little in the years since indicates the existing model is orientated around the interests of communities outside of favoured regions.

The failure to design a model of English devolution that accommodates both economic and social policy priorities is creating a new layer of inequality: political spatial inequality. This is a significant contribution to existing understandings of English devolution which predominantly focus on the balance of power between the centre and subnational institutions. We argue that alongside a patchwork of incoherent governance arrangements, if the incremental and uneven rollout of English devolution continues it will almost certainly involve a diverse array of institutional arrangements with significant inequalities in relation to population, territory, productive potential, institutional capacity, powers, budgets, influence at the centre and public profile. These unintended consequences are poorly understood and, as a result, few mechanisms or strategies exist to manage the implications. This is likely to drive spatial inequality in new, unanticipated directions, creating patterns of winners and losers which in turn fuels political discontent. The ‘geography of discontent’ (McCann and Ortega-Argilés, 2021), to which the levelling up agenda was in part a response, may be further exacerbated.

This point is particularly pertinent in relation to debates about ‘cities versus towns’ in UK spatial policy. If devolution is largely focused on major urban areas which have been the preference of successive governments, there is a significant risk that towns, coastal settlements, and isolated rural areas already suffering from decades of economic marginalisation will be further disadvantaged. In the context of political spatial inequality, deprioritised communities will have even less of a voice if the next phase of English devolution fails to address spatial inequality within and between regions.

This observation underlines the argument that policymakers must be alive to unintended consequences in reforming UK political institutions, as well as the prospect raised by Aaron Wildavsky (1980), that policy ‘solutions’ end up creating pathologies more severe than the original problems they were designed to solve. That does not imply that the devolution project in England should be abandoned. Instead, it draws attention to the risks associated with delivering policy when significant areas of the country are excluded or left playing catch up in the absence of a more strategic and comprehensive approach (Weinberg et al., 2024). The absence of such an approach is a key driver of political spatial inequality. This is a critical point for the new Labour government, which has committed to ‘turbocharge’ existing mayors, enhance the powers of MCAs, and complete the map of English devolution (Labour Party, 2024). It has not explained if its strategy will move beyond incrementalism towards a systemic approach capable of managing the consequences of political spatial inequality.

The Labour Party’s landslide victory in the 2024 General Election was secured with a low vote share. An important subplot is the historic success of smaller parties, including an increasing share of the vote for the populist right in post-industrial, ‘left behind’ constituencies. The fragmentation of British electoral politics continues. The government’s decision to ditch the Conservative Party’s ambiguous ‘levelling up’ tagline is understandable, but if it is serious about tackling spatial inequality, policymakers will need to fashion alternative reform agendas that more effectively devolve power without neglecting a complex political geography that has for too long fuelled discontent in England. There must be greater emphasis on deliberative engagement, enabling citizens to fully participate in policymaking at the devolved level, while embracing social policy concerns within devolved governance. A narrow growth focus to the detriment of these broader concerns, even in the short to medium-term, runs the risk of further destabilising the entire UK political system.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report

Funding

The author(s) received financial support from the ESRC’s Productivity Institute for their project ‘The UK Productivity-Governance Puzzle: Are UK’s Governing Institutions Fit for Purpose in the 21st Century?’—details of which can be found here: https://www.productivity.ac.uk/research/projects/the-uk-productivity-governance-puzzle-are-the-uks-governing-institutions-fit-for-purpose-in-the-21st-century/.

References