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Osborne has made good on his devolutionary proposals from the campaign and has announced the expansion of the powers of the Northern Powerhouse to other city regions in England from the policy’s epicentre, Manchester. Osborne has even expanded his industrial view to include the Midlands, often the forgotten belt of England, with many of the problems of the North but without the proximity to the South-East to have them ameliorated. Devolution is seemingly an unstoppable force and has the backing of huge swathes of the population and cross-party support, but despite it being a self-proclaimed democratic move, George Osborne has been pushing this agenda forward in a contradictorily undemocratic way.
Recently, a petition calling for the North of England to join up with Scotland hit the news because of its significant popular support. The numbers of people signing this and the emergence of regional parties like Yorkshire First show that there is a serious appetite for change and the capacity for self-determination in England. The Conservatives may have just gained a surprise election victory, but over 9 million people voted for Labour and many millions beside for other parties; not everyone is on board with the new government and they want to have a say over how they will be governed in the future. One of the many reasons that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have good polling figures on both sides of the border is that they represent self-determination. For all the self-determination that the petition points to, Osborne’s actions point the other way.
