Is there an appetite in Cornwall for devolution?

2020 has focused attention on the workings of devolution, as the governments of Nicola Sturgeon, Mark Drakeford and Arlene Foster have devised their own responses to the pandemic in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively.

There are also growing calls, largely in the north of England, for the transfer of powers away from Whitehall. This follows well-documented disagreements between central government and northern political leaders, who feel that their regions have not been treated fairly during the health emergency.

The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has called for a more federal model of government, with the northern regions becoming “masters of their own destiny.” He told journalists that “the time has come for a more federal UK where we take more power out of Westminster, put it closer to people, and I think that in the long run this will strengthen the country and build a better way of doing politics.”

I welcome all moves to build a less centralised and more balanced state, but I find it disappointing that the calls for devolution to Cornwall from our political classes continue to be quite muted and to lack ambition. 

Nineteen years ago this month, on 12th December 2001, I was part of a delegation that delivered a CD-ROM to 10 Downing Street. It contained the names of over 50,000 people who, during the previous 18 months, had signed individual declarations calling for a Cornish Assembly.

I am so proud to have been the author of the declaration. And I will never forget how the campaign had such energy thanks to the leadership of Paddy McDonough who co-ordinated teams of petitioners that took to the streets, weekend after weekend, to sign up supporters.

It was first a Mebyon Kernow initiative, but it became much more than that. A conscious decision was taken to broaden the basis of the campaign through the cross-party Cornish Constitutional Convention and support came from across the political spectrum.

It remains a great disappointment to me that the Labour Government of the time ignored the declarations and, instead of securing more powers for Cornwall, we then had the centralisation of local government forced upon us.

Sadly, whenever the political establishments in Cornwall and London talk about “devolution” these days, it tends to be about very limited accommodations between central government and the unitary authority.

I sincerely hope that by the time we mark the 20th anniversary of the 50,000 declarations in 2021, we will have been able to reinvigorate the campaign for a National Assembly of Cornwall.

[This is my article in this week's Cornish Guardian].