Jamie Reed sends letter to Labour MPs stressing importance of devolution in leadership debate

Copeland MP Jamie Reed last week said that he would consider a leadership bid if he did not feel the issue of devolution, particularly in relation to marginalised English communities, was being properly discussed.

The Shadow Health minister has still not spoken out on whether he will run – but he has this weekend sent a letter to his colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party stressing the importance of the issue. His fellow Labour MPs were yesterday sent the following letter:

Dear Colleague,

As we begin the process of electing a new party leader, we are presented with a strong and talented field from which to choose. I am flattered and surprised to have been approached by both current and former colleagues who have asked me to consider entering the race for the leadership.

As the MP for England’s most remotely accessible constituency from Westminster, I know more than most that the Labour Party needs to learn serious lessons from our catastrophic election defeat. Principally, our approach to peripheral areas and non-metropolitan communities must now be fundamentally reassessed, as must our approach to England. London is not England and the next Labour leader must listen to the marginalised, peripheral communities of our country as the United Kingdom risks disintegrating before us.

A successful Labour Party must always seek to reach beyond the Labour base. In addition to working to ensure that power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many and not the few, we must now add ‘nation building’ to our party’s historic purpose. This mission should consist of two elements: the preservation of the United Kingdom as the oldest most successful political union in the world and the radical devolution of power to England’s towns and cities.

In many places, the community fabric is being destroyed and the pillars of society are disappearing. The decline of the high street is well known. Local newspapers are shutting down in increasing numbers – stripping out local identity as a consequence. Town halls, courts, police stations, – symbols of permanence, community strength and civic identity – are closing. Daily life looks and feels very different in our deindustrialised towns, struggling rural villages and smaller cities and these communities are now engulfed in a quiet crisis.

These communities require progressive government and are as much part of Labour’s natural constituency as our urban centres. The next Labour leader must ensure the empowerment of these communities as part of our central mission: failure to do this may ensure that we never govern again.

The task before us is one of nation building, and this must begin with the devolution of power to England’s towns and cities and a new constitutional settlement for England. As the next Labour leader begins the work of building a consensus in the country with which to govern again in 2020, this agenda is central to this effort.

Central to achieving any of this is an understanding of how England currently is and not how we would want it to be. Some hard questions must be asked and these require detailed answers. English devolution must never fall victim to the same pitfalls of Scottish nationalism, in particular the refusal to ask and answer the tough questions. This means tackling the deep conservatism that exists in some ‘solid’ Labour areas. For local and regional economic growth to take hold, attitudes of grievance and dependency need to be challenged. In Labour’s heartlands, even given the disproportionately levied misery of austerity, the party must seek to lead these regions with a vision based upon new ambitions, not by wallowing in historic industrial decline and injustice.

The communities we represent are equal to this task; so is our movement. Unless the next Labour leader is equal to this task then we will fail our constituents, our communities, our party and our country.