Alan Nafzger on devolved research money, a Manchester summit, a billion pounds for clusters and the old English habit of announcing decentralisation from the centre
Saturday 10 October, 8.05am, the editor’s desk, a cold cup of tea, three newspapers and a fourth cup on the way.
Dear Diary. An editor of a political site learns to distrust the words good and growth when they arrive together, so I read the Downing Street release twice before I let myself enjoy it. It is dated 9 October and carries the headline Prime Minister to hand regions innovation funding to build world-leading industries. The page names the Prime Minister as Andy Burnham, and the speech behind it was delivered at the Innovation Nation Summit in Manchester, which the text of the speech page confirms as the PM speech at the Innovation Nation Summit. I am reporting what the government’s own pages say, and nothing beyond them.
What the Release Says
The substance is sizeable. According to the release, local leaders will receive dedicated devolved research and development funding for the first time, with flexibility to back local innovation opportunities. Established mayoral strategic authorities in England will get later-stage innovation funding, and the existing Local Innovation Partnerships Fund will be devolved to them from 2028. The government commits one billion pounds through UK Research and Innovation over four years to high-growth innovation clusters in the priority sectors of the Industrial Strategy. That money will sit beside new Good Growth Funds, described as a single, flexible, long-term growth budget.
There is a new apparatus, too. No.10 North will create partnerships between clusters in the Industrial Strategy’s eight growth-driving sectors, building on the Cambridge and Manchester collaboration, and the first partnership will link the Northern Growth Corridor with the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor in life sciences, digital and technology, and advanced manufacturing. The Rewiring the State Cabinet Statement says a substantially larger share of later-stage innovation funding will go to local leaders, including areas beyond the existing mayoral authorities. The Prime Minister is quoted as aiming for good growth in every postcode and for Britain to be the world’s innovation nation.
The Editor’s Caveats
Let me be a good scholar and note what the release does not do. It covers only England; the government says it will work with the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on extending local empowerment. It gives a start date of 2028 for the partnership fund, which is a long walk from a speech in 2026. And it describes aspirations, not outcomes. A funding stream is a promise about where the money flows, and the history of British regional policy is a long book of promises about where money would flow.
Our own pages on the subject have taken a dry view of the English constitutional puzzle for some time. The piece on the English question, the part of devolution nobody wanted to think about makes the point that the United Kingdom devolved powers to three nations and then asked England to carry on as before. A regional innovation budget is one way of answering that question without ever stating it. The alternative framing, in devolution or federalism and the options for the territorial constitution, is the more learned of the two, and I commend it to anyone who enjoys footnotes.
A Short History of Announcing Things in Manchester
There is an old tradition, Diary, of London discovering the North in the autumn. A minister travels by train, finds a warehouse with exposed brick, speaks of a powerhouse or an engine or a corridor, and returns to Westminster by the evening service. The present summit is in that tradition, but with one difference of substance: the person speaking is the Prime Minister, and our own archive has already tracked his rise in Andy Burnham’s leadership bid, a piece I reread this morning with a modest sense of having been early.
I do not say that to boast. I say it because an editor who has predicted something is the most dangerous kind of reader, and the best antidote to that is to go back to the primary source and check what the man actually said. What he said, as reported on the government page, was ambitious and carefully hedged. What he will do is a different matter and a longer one.
Three Questions for the Treasury
One. If the money is devolved from 2028, who spends the intervening two years? The release does not say, and the silence is loud.
Two. What counts as a high-growth cluster? A phrase like that has a way of meaning whatever the minister was standing next to when it was coined.
Three. Who audits the audit? Devolved funding without devolved accountability produces a lot of logos.
The Case for Cautious Hope
I try not to be a cynic on a Saturday. There is a serious argument that British growth has been held back by a centralised state that cannot see beyond the M25, and that giving local leaders money and discretion is the single most promising reform on offer. Economists of different persuasions have argued for versions of it for decades. The sceptical argument is the Whitehall one: that local authorities lack the capacity, and that centrally defined sectors will crowd out local invention. Both arguments are respectable, and the only way to settle them is to try.
If you want to learn how we treat the political theatre around such announcements, our Manchester satire guide is the place to start, and for the American version of the same game you can read Bohiney Magazine. When you need a smile at the expense of whoever is speaking, The Daily Squib is a reliable companion.
11pm. The tea is cold, the pencil is blunt and the Bagehot is open on the chair. I have underlined the passage on the dignified and efficient parts of the constitution, and drawn a small star next to the word efficient, as one might for a rare bird.
Good night, Diary. Check the date on the money.
SOURCE: bohiney.com