Labour and the English regions: Centralised devolution?

Abstract

The Labour party has expressed an ambivalent attitude towards regionalism. On the one hand, it has shown an interest in devolving powers. On the other hand, Labour's terms of office have usually been either tenuous or temporary or both, often in an inclement economic climate, and this has mostly discouraged the party in government from trying too hard to devolve powers only recently obtained and uncertainly held. While Labour party thought has always contained elements of both state‐centred and devolutionary philosophies, in practice central planning has been the basis for action. A comparative examination of Labour party policy in the 1960s and 1990s demonstrates this ambivalence. The article concludes, however, that for several reasons the prospects for effective devolution in England at the end of the 1990s are slightly brighter than those of the 1960s.