The West Lothian question has survived since 1977 without a satisfactory answer.  Gradual devolution to the citizens of Scotland has been piecemeal and only focused on the dispensing of public funds; the Scottish Executive has authority over education, healthcare and justice policy, but almost no responsibility for raising revenue to fund them.  This has clearly led to an unsatisfactory situation where Scottish politicians spend most of their time talking about how money should be spent and how more funds can be extracted from Westminster, rather than the trade-offs and compromises which are what public policy decisions are actually about.

In their manifesto for Scottish independence, the Scottish National Party make all sorts of dodgy assertions about how Scotland is fabulously wealthy and independence will make it even more wealthy.  The economic arguments are quite convincingly demolished by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.  Even if you’re not won over by high quality fiscal analysis (a small minority, surely?) then you should be persuaded against Scottish independence by the presence of Alistair Darling – possibly the most sensible senior politician alive in the UK.

This is all very well-worn stuff.  However, a point which I hadn’t considered is the one made by the playwright, David Grieg, in the Guardian – independence in Scotland could lead to greater political and fiscal independence for cities and regions in England.

This is a very good point.

As a resident of England, I don’t really care if the Scots decide to break away from the rest of the UK as it probably won’t affect me personally very much, aside from having fewer decisions taken in Parliament by Scottish Labour MPs.  I do however care very much about diluting the power of Westminster by increasing the degree of federalism in the UK.  After living in London for six years I’ve noticed the extent to which residents of London benefit disproportionately from the economic largesse of the capital, and this is aside from the unearned windfall they get from house price rises.

The inability of the rest of the UK to manage many of its own affairs means that public money is spent on ridiculous vanity projects like the Millenium Dome, the Olympics, Crossrail and HS2.  It also means that many public institutions, both political and cultural, choose to locate in London for reasons of convenience and access to London’s labour market.

All of this is self perpetuating – people like me choose to live in London because we can earn more.  We then stay here because a) there’s quite a lot of cool stuff to do, b) even once you’ve got experience, in many industries it is difficult to find employment outside of London that maintains your standard of living and c) all our friends are here because they are in the same situation!  Employers and institutions are on the same conveyor belt.

The growth of the rest of the country is not something that is going to happen on its own.  It may not look like much of big deal now, but in twenty year’s time, the movement of much of the BBC’s activities to Manchester will have had a big impact, hopefully moving some of the media wealth of west London to Salford.  It is this type of big decision that will push influence and wealth out from the south east, and organisations are going to be more confident about making those decisions if there are powerful local governments to look after their interests.

And this is why we need to wind down Westminster.  Until the rest of England gets more devolution, and crucially, responsibility for raising revenue, resources and attention will continue to be poured in to London and the south east.  While the Scots are being asked if they want independence, the regions and cities of England should be given it.  When you haven’t had power for a thousand years it’s going to take a while to get used to the idea.