Once the cat's out of the bag it's hellish to get in back in. And so it has been in recent times with fiscal devolution, the idea of sharing the right to raise and spend tax between national parliaments and local assemblies – it has become infectious, unstoppable, the cause du jour, spreading from nations trapped in supranational unions like Scotland and Northern Ireland, or Catalonia, to "neglected" regions, even to cities ....
For some it’s to do with national pride, apartness, and self-determination, and others, a calculation by the wealthy that this is the way to stop poorer regions from sharing so effectively in/draining their prosperity. For some, dare one mention Flanders, it’s both.
Now, according to a new survey, London will soon be staking a claim. Asked if local government should have more control over setting and spending taxes, 60 per cent of Londone voters agreed, according to a ComRes poll carried out for new think-tank London Tomorrow. In 2011 only 20 per cent were in favour.Nine in 10 councillors and 56 per cent of London businesses also supported fiscal devolution.
And why not? By any similar logic to Scotland. It is a place apart, almost another country . Its population of over 8.6 million is not only the most diverse in the UK, but possibly the world. More than a third of its people are foreign-born – little room here for Ukip. Its economy is in a different gear, growing twice the UK average between 2007 and 2011, at the end of which output by gross value added per capita was 175 per cent of the British average. Average house prices are double the UK average.
And yet the Greater London Authority retains only 7 per cent of taxes raised in the capital, compared with 50 per cent in New York, and 70 per cent in Tokyo, while it gets two-thirds of its income from central government, compared to 31 per cent for New York and 7.7 per cent in Tokyo. Another survey of business and political leaders quoted by the Financial Times predicts that modest English devolution could add £144 billionn to the UK economy by 2020 by handing greater spending control to the regions. Little wonder the capital's leaders are beginning to see the case for devolution.
When Scotland voted for independence last summer many suggested the union had been saved. But the price paid by Westminster was a new fiscal devolution deal and debate that did not finish the argument but merely opened it up and raised as many questions as it answered. English regional devolution is now a major issue in thegeneral election campaign and parliament is deeply divided by a constitutional row about limiting votes on “English” issues to English MPs.
The fiscal devolution cat is well and truly out of the bag.