VOICES PHILIP MCCANN


in local economic strategies. In his view, these ideas are all pointing in the right direction. But he adds: “These are not issues that can be sorted out in a few years. The problem is 20-30 years old and calls for large-scale action.” He is particularly keen to debunk the idea that


everything that happens in the UK depends on London. McCann says London has been decoupling economically from the rest of the country since the late 1980s. “My research has shown that investing more in London does not drag the rest of the country up. In fact, the more prosperous parts of the country are more like a separate economy. Investing


“ ” 24 SOCIETY NOW WINTER 2018


skills of the British may be part of the problem


in them leaves huge areas behind. There is no way of avoiding the reality that these weaker areas are the ones that need uplift.” McCann is full of praise for Scotland, especially the way in which it has made use of devolution since the Scottish Parliament was set up in 1999. “Devolution has been helpful and has allowed Scotland to move forward. Scotland does have extra central funding under the Barnett formula [for equalising public spending in the UK regions]. But it also has a long tradition of evidence and analysis.” This, he thinks, has allowed Scotland to be a pioneer in progressive and data-driven policy. By contrast, he says, “Other regions have fewer


Professor McCann is full of praise for Scotland, especially the way in which it has made use of devolution since the Scottish Parliament was set up in 1999.


The famously tragic language


resources, and are less good at using evidence. And of course, the financial crash overwhelmed the scope for regional thinking.” But he adds that some of today’s Local Enterprise Partnerships are improving their performance, and in particular that regions including London and Manchester have become much better at using a range of evidence in policy- making. One problem is that “this approach tends to be adopted in places that are already doing well. In general there is a big disconnect between the policy rhetoric and reality as it appears in the data.” And perhaps unexpectedly, McCann adds that the famously tragic language skills of the British may be part of the problem. Near-at-hand Germany, The Netherlands and Scandinavia, he points out, are more equal and in many ways more successful societies than the UK. But nobody in Britain knows about them. He says: “The UK’s poor language abilities mean that we tend to look at how things happen in the US, Canada and Australia. These examples are often of limited use to us, because these countries are very big and have federal political structures. Their economic geography is totally different from ours. We just don’t spend enough time reading German documents on economic planning.” McCann points to a range of advantages


built into the German system that the UK might learn from. First is that the 16 Länder in which the country is divided give it a less monocentric political culture. There is no economically dominant city, and the political and business capitals are separate. In this respect, Germany is


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