UofG Centre for Public Policy

24 August 2026: The Prime Minister’s devolution agenda for England has the potential to reshape governance across the UK. University of Glasgow experts Dr David Waite and Professor Graeme Roy write that to succeed, engagement and collaboration with the complex realities of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is crucial.

Blog by Dr David Waite and Professor Graeme Roy

A shorter version of this article was published in The Times on Thursday 20 August 2026

A radical devolution agenda for England is now touted by the newly anointed PM. Early speeches have talked of fiscal devolution and a re-wiring of the State underpinned by a devo-oriented No. 10 North.

For Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, already well accustomed to devolution, the PM has so far had much less to say, beyond warm words of mutual respect and cooperation. But with nationalist parties now in power in all three, each pursuing quite distinct policy agendas, Burnham’s relationship with Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast will be an important test of his wider devolution agenda: whether it can support a more flexible and effective model of governance across the UK, or instead add to the tensions, blame-shifting and political rancour that already characterise many intergovernmental relationships.

In Scotland, the constitution has tended to cloud much else. Many in the SNP-led government will share Burnham’s belief that too much power – both economically and politically – rests in London. Alex Salmond famously once described London as the ‘dark star’, sucking in resources, people and energy, with Scotland a ‘northern light’ capable and willing to redress that balance.

But far from diminishing with devolution, that sense of rivalry has arguably intensified. The common story of the last decade has been of either the UK or Scottish governments announcing a new agenda, with the other reacting and following. Collaboration and partnership have been in short supply. This has been the modus operandi on everything from industrial strategy through to City Deals. Most famously, the UK Government’s apparently revitalised interest in the Glasgow city-region economy, in the form of the hurriedly put together billion pound 2014 City Deal agreement, miraculously came just weeks before the independence referendum. Economic development is always political, but sometimes quite brazenly so.

Nevertheless, could we envisage something more coherent and co-operative, with the different levels of government working together?

Devolution – particularly in the Burnham world – is often described as a process that is self-contained. The very act of devolving power, whether over tax, spending or planning, is all that is required. In work with Stuart McIntyre and James Mitchell, we have argued that this naively misses the need to understand that devolution requires managing policy within a necessarily more complex multi-level governance system. New tax arrangements require careful thinking about how revenues will be equalised between richer and poorer areas, how risk will be shared, and how policy will be coordinated, particularly in areas that are too big to devolve but too small to justify ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches.

One simple example of these tensions is the push toward City Mayors. These are front and centre in England yet, in the devolved administrations, the arrangements are quite different, both in practice and in the formal legislative authority to transfer powers. How will Burnham’s devolution agenda work without such figures in place, or seek to operate in a tripartite world of competing local, devolved and Westminster political ambitions?

Burnham will have to be smart, and willing to adopt more nuanced approaches, not just with leaders in each city but with politicians in Holyrood, Stormont and Cardiff Bay. One possible way forward is to start with the local growth prospects of the city-regions and regions of the devolved administrations, through local growth plans. These push questions over structures and powers into the background and instead concentrate, first off, on the drivers of economic change in local economies. From here, with priorities sketched out, a conversation can then be held about who – and crucially which branch of government – should exercise policy levers in support of those priorities. So, the process is inverted. Start with the growth plan, then debate and determine who does what.

A commitment to an industrial strategy provides one such opening to support this growth planning. Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh and Glasgow have financial services sectors that, outside London, are among the most vibrant in the UK. Carefully considering the issues and challenges for the sector – from changes in technology adoption to evolving labour market practices – will help to shape how an avowedly place-sensitive national industrial strategy can support local growth. Other sectors, from advanced manufacturing through to clean energy, provide further possibilities, as do broader enabling policy agendas in innovation and R&D, particularly where they can leverage the research power of universities based in the devolved nations.

The politics of multi-level governance are not easy. Recognising this, and finding ways to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors, will require more than warm words: it will require careful policy design and execution. Burnham’s core belief in devolution provides a window of opportunity to move from adversarial contestation towards greater policy coherence. Doing this effectively means showing craft and leadership in policymaking, while recognising and working within the complex multi-level system the UK presents.

The opportunities are surely there. Outside London, Edinburgh stands as a positive outlier in the UK for growth, productivity and highly paid jobs. It is not beyond possibility for both governments to get behind this city-region and conceive of a 10–15 year local growth plan that helps underwrite its future. An opportunity for growth planning also exists for the Cardiff Capital Region and other ‘corporate joint committees’ in Wales. Indeed, a press release from CCR leaders calls for a ‘Welsh way’, which, like Scotland, seeks to recognise the unique institutional settings at play. In Belfast too, with a UK Government-supported city-region deal in place since 2021, opportunities to help underpin the UK Government’s growth agenda can be usefully elaborated.

This all emphasises the need for a nuanced view of regional economic development – not only for English sub-national areas – that understands that devolution is not just about the transfer of powers, but about how those powers remain integrated, coordinated and complementary post-devolution.

The risk, without coherent action, is that devolution becomes a political football – and subject to continued policy ad-hocery – within an ever more complex, muddled and fragmented governance architecture.

Authors 

Dr David Waite is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Glasgow's School of Social and Political Sciences. David's research focuses on the development of second-tier city-regions, with interest in the underpinning production systems at and the governance responses for these places. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Glasgow Centre for Public Policy.

Graeme Roy is Professor of Economics, Head of the College of Social Sciences and Vice Principal at the University of Glasgow. Graeme is Chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, Scotland’s official independent economic and fiscal forecaster. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Glasgow Centre for Public Policy.

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A shorter version of this article was published in The Times on Thursday 20 August 2026. The piece reflects the views of the authors only, not any other body.

Photo Credit: Miraxh Tereziu on Unsplash

First published: 24 August 2026

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