The Sketch: Words that speak louder than action

The statement was on subnational economic reform. It was a beauty. Very energising. Very incentivising. I came out fizzing with ideas about how I could get my hairy snout into the trough. The main qualification is linguistic. You have to have the language, but I'm good at that. I can make up things they've never heard of. "But is it forensifiable?" I'd ask doubtfully. "The evidence base must achieve a benchmark of forensifiability." You can't bear it, I know. Reading it makes my eyeballs bulge.

In fact John Healey's statement was the most powerful exposition I've ever heard in Parliament. He explained in 10 minutes why governments fail more graphically than 300 years of the fall of the Roman empire.

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He said they had spent a year consulting 300 interested parties for a "Sub National Review". The first recommendation? Another round of consultation.

This will "consult on creating a focused statutory economic duty for local councils". Surely the results of that will be forensifiable? It gives a glimpse into their minds. This activity is to give "a clearer role for the regions of England". Who or what do they think they are? What is the role of Oxfordshire? And how on earth are they going to give it another one? Perhaps they are going to "develop proposals for Multi-Area Agreements to encourage groups of local authorities to agree collective targets for economic development priorities". This is what we're in for. This is Brown in action. This is the heart of it. Brown gives the political class its instructions. Unelected, unaccountable regional assemblies are chucked out and their responsibilities given to unelected, unaccountable quangos.

It's all to stop anyone doing anything. For instance, we all know there'll be more floods unless better drains are put in. But it will be years before "the spatial and planning aspect of the regional tier of the statutory development plan..." (rest of the sentence drowned out by guzzling snouts sucking up caviar and blasting it from both ends round the conference room).

And the floodwaters will run through the streets while they spend a year arguing whether the strategic direction should be multisyllabic or polysyllabic. And so we go ever deeper into the Brown stuff.

simoncarr@sketch.sc

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