England’s mayors in diplomacy dance to shift balance of power

Good morning. Captains of industry were not the only ones to get the red carpet treatment at London’s Guildhall on Monday. 

England’s metro mayors had close to a front-row seat for the government’s global investment summit following a rush of wider ministerial diplomacy over the preceding days.

Last Thursday they convened with deputy prime minister Angela Rayner in Newcastle, ahead of the first Council of Nations and Regions in Scotland the next day, in which they joined leaders of the devolved nations to meet the prime minister. 

The mayors were then name-checked repeatedly at Monday’s glittering shop window for international investment, where they were able to lobby the world’s biggest businesses for themselves.

Away from the champagne receptions, of course, the political and policy dynamics are more complex.

Mayors on a mission

In practice, the new government is still figuring out how and where England’s growing army of mayors fit into its national strategies.

But while there have been a smattering of disgruntled briefings, more of which later, regional politicians and officials do largely seem to feel that the mayors are being brought into the tent.

The power of diplomacy and discussion has, at least initially, a role to play for a group of leaders predisposed to feeling irritated and ignored by the centre. 

One mayor notes such summits are also about the “signal” that they send to Whitehall.

“It’s our chance to say to Keir ‘this is what’s actually happening’,” they point out, adding that they hoped the Whitehall system now “kicks into gear” as a result.

One regional official said it was easy to forget the “ad hoc” way in which mayors were dealing with the centre six months ago. Others have been impressed by the level of engagement from the Office for Investment, which is now being expanded. The OfI aims to provide a “concierge” service for investors.

The deeper question is how much mayors are truly wired into central decision-making — particularly when the centre’s own sense of self has been wobbly — once the red carpet has been put away. 

It remains unclear whether mayors will sit on the “mission boards” which are supposedly going to drive Number 10’s cross-cutting priorities through Whitehall. 

Neither is it clear what formal status the Council of the Nations and Regions has; or how mayors will be able to influence the expenditure of the National Wealth Fund, even if an announcement this week promised they would be looped in. 

That hasn’t stopped the mayors from seizing their chance to raise substantive issues when the opportunity has arisen.

In Newcastle, Rayner was challenged on a briefing presented to mayors on an emerging devolution white paper. The document — a very early precursor to a bill expected in the second half of next year — appears to have fallen somewhat flat.

The King’s Speech, mayors are keen to note, referred to making devolution the “default setting” for growth, a promise which was duly repeated back to Rayner.

“I think there was a sense that it wasn’t ambitious enough for growth,” says one regional official of the emerging white paper proposals. “The sense was there wasn’t enough big stuff.”

Equally, notes another, at least these things are not being presented as a fait accompli.

Some mayors are also keen to secure a “tourism tax”, a request that was raised directly with the prime minister in Edinburgh.  

As one regional official describes it, such fiscal powers are “the only way you ever move from decentralisation to devolution — being able to stand on your own two feet”. 

Yet it is one of several proposals which are said to have political support within departments, and in some cases even in Number 10, but not necessarily the Treasury. A familiar story.

Going for growth

Alongside devolution discussions, mayors have been given the task of drawing up their own growth plans. These are intended to dovetail with the government’s Industrial Strategy, the green paper for which was published on Monday (government green papers set out proposals for discussion and public consultation). 

Mayors are said to have pushed back on what they saw as narrow Whitehall demands for a small shortlist of chosen local sectoral strengths, fearing this would exclude other priorities and economically pigeonhole their areas. (It’s worth saying that not everyone I have spoken to in regional development thinks the government’s approach is unreasonable.)

But mayoral growth plans will be about more than just a list of sectors anyway. They will also be about the cross-cutting themes which enable growth — transport, housing, health, skills. 

Mayors will hope that their plans underpin not only the industrial strategy, but others yet to be worked up from the centre, such as the national infrastructure strategy; the currently rather vaguely-defined Skills England; and the headline promise to build 1.5mn homes.

In their eyes the latter requires them having more influence over national housing body Homes England, including longer funding cycles that match the long-term nature of regeneration.

They will also be watching the Budget on October 30 for signs that these enabling themes are being supported or, at the very least, not actively undermined. Bus funding in particular is being scrutinised, since the government’s promise to hand over local control will be meaningless if there is no money to run better services, or save those currently at risk from the chop.

It is worth noting, meanwhile, that the ability to develop (and deliver) mayoral growth strategies is also limited by capacity. Some places, such as Greater Manchester, are better resourced and able to dig out and rewrite the industrial strategy they published a few prime ministers ago. Others are starting from scratch. 

Against that backdrop England’s proliferating mayoral bodies are busy stealing talent from one another. Meanwhile, the department overseeing all this from the centre — the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — has grown in headcount by 86 per cent since 2009. 

Mayors are therefore not only trying to take powers off ministers who have spent years scrambling to get to this point in their careers, but also from civil servants who won’t particularly want to be done out of a job either.  

So diplomacy is only the start. 

One senior regional figure says they hope that in practical terms, the events last Thursday and Friday will lead to the regional growth agenda being driven through Whitehall from the top. 

Another agrees that what really matters is what happens in between summits. 

“It’s not the meeting itself, it’s the process that follows,” they say. “I don’t know any more than you whether that will pay dividends — but it gives us that opportunity.”

Now try this

I’m pretty sure that if you look up the word “raunchy” in the Oxford English Dictionary, it just says “see: Jilly Cooper”.

So I for one am very much looking forward to 20th Century raunchiness officially jumping from the age of the battered paperback to the streaming era on Friday, when Disney+ airs its all-star telling of Rivals, Cooper’s classic 1988 romp.   

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