Gordon Brown calls for 'council of the North'

Gordon Brown was speaking at a “these islands” conference, which focused on how to heal the divides brought by the Brexit vote.

At the conference, held at Newcastle's Discovery Museum, Mr Brown described the vote to exit the European Union and the massive Conservative majority delivered by December’s general election as a “clarion call for change”.

“When people look at the election and the majority the Conservatives received the automatic assumption by some seems to be that this 80 majority is a sign of the red wall being demolished in favour of a blue wall.

“I see it as the winds of change that started in the far north of Scotland and in Wales coming down to the North and right down into the Midlands.

“People dissatisfied with the status quo, dissatisfied with what’s happening, as they see it as rule from London.

“Never before have people been willing to change their vote so much between elections to bring that clarion call for change out into the open.”

He warned that the country has almost reached a constitutional crisis and that London’s economic and political power is excluding people outside the capital,  making them feel ignored.

He said: “I feel that raises a question about the governance of our country as a whole, it is something that over the past ten years has come to a point of almost being a constitutional crisis.

“There is a over-centralisation of power not just of business and financial power but political and administrative power in one city in the South.

“The regional inequalities in our country between regions is that they surpass the inequalities in the west of the European Union and even between the states of the United States of America.”

The former Labour Party leader claimed the only way of dealing with this is by handing more power to the regions.

“You are not going to deal with these problems if you simply say ‘I am going to build more bridges’, Boris Johnson, I always think, will promise to build more bridges even when there is no water to cross.”

Mr Brown issued a stark warning that nationalist groups are taking advantage of people’s money woes and dissatisfaction.

“Right across western Europe and right across the western world it is nationalism that has become the driving force in politics today,” he said.

“Nationalism if it is driving politics it is usually about tariffs, about closing borders, about protectionist policies about resisting immigration.

“Nationalists are being very successful at a time when class and religion and other loyalties have become less important, very successful in weaponising economic insecurity, cultural fears, and anti politics sentiment.”

To combat this he said more resources and political power needs to funnelled  to the regions including the North.

He said: “If you’re thinking about what we do about nationalism, the first thing we do is deal with economic insecurities, you can’t ignore that fact that millions of people in this country are economically insecure.

“Their expectations are not being met, their wages are stagnant, their rents are too high, the state of public services are not good enough.”

He said: “When I look at the North-East in particular, it is a region with four per cent of the population, but only three per cent of the economic activity for the country, but it’s got six per cent of the low paid, six per cent of child poverty it's got seven per cent of unemployment.

“Then you will see that twice as many people are hit by child poverty as the national average, twice as many people by unemployment, twice as many people hit by low pay as average.

“The imbalances are very deep indeed and have got so much worse over the last ten years as resources have not gone to the North.”

To put this right, he said, a “council of the North” needs to be set up to bring councillors, MPs and mayors across the region together.

Mr Brown said that this council should be able to set its own budget without interference from central Government.

It could then set up centres for enterprise and economic development around the North.

He said: “It will not be enough, in my view, simply to provide resources for the North, the North will need a voice in its own right.

“I personally would favour councils for the North, North West and Midlands that brought together the elected representatives, the mayors, the councillors, the MPs with a budget that they could allocate, with treasury money that was theirs to allocate not for the treasury to allocate.

“A forum for the nations and regions and all of them coming together many post Brexit questions that can only be properly dealt with by all the nations and all the regions coming together.”

A second chamber, or senate, should also be appointed so that politicians from the regions and nations that make up the UK can decide how to go forward together.

He added: “We need to talk about what ties us together what will be the building block of the UK of the future.

“Their needs to be a forum in the UK for them to do so, that could be a precursor to a second chamber that is elected or indirectly elected from the regions and nations of the UK and would be a senate for the regions and nations.

“What is absolutely clear to me is things have got to change.”