“What do we want?”

“Local government reorganisation!”

“When do we want it?”

“In due course, after an appropriate period of consultation”.

The problems of post-modern post-industrial towns and rural communities (or anywhere) can’t be solved by shuffling deckchairs between council chambers. Addressing the collapse of structure, meaning and purpose in community, family and individual lives is what’s needed. But that’s really, really hard to do and it will be a long, thankless slog over many, many years.

I do think some form of federalism in the UK, especially in England is inevitable. All too often Central either just throws money at random, useless projects that put a wig on a pig, or refuse to find something that might actually help an area, such as the rail to Liverpool the author mentioned.

If we are going to go down the federalist route in England, let’s ditch the silly regions that Labour and the EU foisted on us and go back to our roots. Let us bring back Wessex (excluding London), Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria and give some historic identity and value to these regions.

A great deal of detail about an area which is close to me. I read through it and found it hard going, despite knowing all of the places fairly well. This is what happens when you get population movements. A lot of people relocated to Skem would have seen themselves as Liverpudlians, wanting to have the character of Liverpudlians but not the poverty of opportunity.

Stockport also seems to me to have no soul. It was once a proud town but has now been absorbed into the sprawl of Greater Manchester. This is surely unavoidable as the population grows, with people coming in from all directions.

A more immediate question related to this.
Why has the MP for St Helens North had the whip removed and has the Labour party not spoken about it ?

Representative systems, whether local or centralized in London, have lost the confidence of the citizens. Time, surely, to add a very large slice of direct democracy to the mix.

I don’t think any hopes of top down reorganisation are likely to bear fruit, it would upset too many vested interests.
People in western Oregon counties are campaigning to join a ‘greater’ Idaho as they are a mostly conservative rural population tacked on to a mostly liberal west coast. Perhaps people in certain parts of Lancashire should campaign to become part of a ‘greater’ Yorkshire?

This is a remarkably unconvincing and confused argument. Firstly as other commentators have pointed out, we have already had years of local government reorganisation. Recreating Lancashire Council which has a significant population and as a historic county might count on historic local support and loyalty might well be a good idea. However this would immediately run into conflict with the ambitions of Liverpool and Manchester city councils. This option is anyway for some reason not very clear reason (it is too late?).apparently ruled out by the author.

Secondly, you can’t just cut and paste the political and administrative arrangements from a country such as Germany. That country does indeed have a much more deeply routed regional system, and a number of successful regional cities rather than a single dominant central capital. But this because these were largely derived from previous long established kingdoms and principalities and their capital cities. In other countries, regional government isn’t so obviously beneficial and in France the regions only set up in the 1960s have already been subject to a wholesale reorganisation.

Lastly, there are the somewhat dubious ideas that what we most need is further tiers of party politicians, and that resources can somehow be magicked into being at the regional level when this is not possible at the national.