Back to the future: can Gordon Brown solve UK’s levelling-up woes?

Gordon Brown has published a long-awaited report laying out Labour’s plans to “level up” Britain by devolving power and boosting economic growth away from London.

As head of the party’s Commission on the UK's Future, the former prime minister has put forward a total of 40 recommendations in the report, titled “A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy”.

Setting out these proposals at a launch event in Leeds today, Keir Starmer said the plans represented “the biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster to the British people”, adding: “The centre hasn’t delivered.”

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What did the papers say?

Brown was originally tasked by Starmer with exploring “new forms of economic devolution”, but the former PM’s “involvement in policy-making extends far beyond this”, said The New Statesman’s deputy political editor Rachael Wearmouth. A project initially “aimed at countering nationalist movements“ in the devolved regions has turned into a “much more ambitious policy revolution, encompassing levelling up, House of Lords reform and, in the wake of a series of Tory scandals, standards in public life”.

Brown’s proposals include replacing the Lords with an elected upper chamber; creating a new Council of the UK chaired by the prime minister to examine issues common to the four home nations and manage intergovernmental relations, and giving mayors and devolved governments new economic, taxation and legislative powers. The report also recommends setting up hundreds of growth “clusters” in cities and towns across the UK as part of the drive to devolve economic power to local councils and businesses.

The recommendations are sweeping, but Brown’s “track record on constitutional reform is not great”, said Tory peer Michael Forsyth in The Telegraph.

All the same, said ConservativeHome’s deputy editor Henry Hill, there is “much to worry about” in the commission proposals”. In an article for CapX, Hill pointed to plans to ban MPs from having second jobs, which “at a stroke, would make MPs more homogenous, more dependent on the Executive, and likely reduce the overall quality level even further”.

Along with levelling up, another key aim of the commission will be to head off the threat posed by the Scottish National Party, not only to Labour’s chances of forming the next UK government but also to the future of the union.

Starmer and Brown are holding a second report launch event today in Edinburgh, in what Politico’s London Playbook said was a “continuation of the love-bombing for Scots (where Labour desperately needs to win back seats at the next election)”.

Brown has said the proposed reforms to Britain’s political system, which include “enhanced Scottish representation” in a new Assembly of the Regions and Nations, would “make the UK work for Scotland”.

Other proposals that might win over Scottish voters unsure about full independence include greater fiscal autonomy with increased borrowing powers for Holyrood; allowing Scotland to enter into international agreements and bodies such as Erasmus, Unesco and the Nordic Council; and a pledge to move thousands of civil service jobs from London to Scotland. Labour is also arguing that Scotland should be represented in UK national bodies such as the Bank of England and energy regulator Ofgem.

BBC Scotland’s political editor Glenn Campbell predicted that “these proposals will inevitably be considered too vague and weak by some independence supporters and as a misguided attempt to appease nationalists by some supporters of the union”.

But “Labour’s hope is that instead of failing to please voters on either side of the debate, change within the UK could become a popular alternative to either independence or keeping the UK as it currently operates”, he added.

What next?

The final contents of the Brown report had been the subject of “horse-trading throughout the summer, with the publication delayed by several months”, said the Financial Times.

Starmer now “has a dilemma about whether to adopt Brown’s blueprint in full”, wrote Andrew Grice in The Independent. The report launch, originally slated for 1 September, “was postponed in the hope he would be able to do so”, Grice continued. “But some Starmer advisers think there are few votes in talking about dry constitutional matters during an economic crisis”.

All 40 of Brown’s recommendations will now be subject to consultation to decide which will end up in Labour’s manifesto for the next general election.

According to the Daily Express, “despite proposing similar Lords reforms”, Brown and Starmer “reportedly disagree over whether the move is deliverable in the first term of a Labour government”.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Starmer suggested he might not be able to abolish the Lords until Labour won a second term in government, which the paper suggested could mean a “stay of execution” for the upper chamber.

“Reforming the second chamber is a complex task that has defeated previous prime ministers,” agreed the FT, which prediced that Starmer might choose to focus instead on the proposals to devolve economic power to local councils and business.

The current Tory government has struggled to “bridge the divide between London and the different world of the poorest regions” said Grice in The Independent, but “Brown’s plan would, giving Labour some useful electoral ammunition”.

To win power, Starmer “should offer the country more than a slightly nicer version of the status quo”, Grice argued, “and live up to his own billing of the Brown reviews as ‘the boldest project Labour has embarked on for a generation’”.