Just one last bump.
This podcast is about place versus party - which I admit may bring more joy to me than it does to most.
At one point, RS asks the two Andys "If you were going to be more radical and push for much more power going down to local regions, let's say some government came along in ten or fifteen years' and writes a whole new constitution and tried to lean into this question, can you give us two or three things - I'm not saying they are necessary things you support - but if you were going to be radical and bold and you had decentralisation, what would they be?"
There follows an interesting conversation with both Andies agreeing that the current model of government financing "what passes the green book", is skewed against any part of the country not already succeeding. After talking about what "Leveling Up" really means, with some praise for Gove, and being asked, again by Stewart, "What would it take to shift to a model of industrial strategies where you, as (mayors) had more control over the local application?" The whole conversation is fascinating for me, including on education.
AB seemed to grab the changes needed when he said we should, in his view, follow the German model of a written constitution in which there is a "basic" law. That law requires an equivalence of living standards between the 16 Landers of Germany. He said he believed there should be a requirement between the different parts of England.
