Second test of Cornish politics looms: Eustice dithers
In the 1990s the Lib Dem controlled Cornwall County Council failed to put a strong case – correct that, failed to put up any case worth noting – for a Cornish Regional Development Agency. Labour promptly lumbered us with the over-centralised South West RDA. This spineless lobbying was hardly novel behaviour. In the 1980s Cornwall County Council woefully threw away the opportunity to ensure that Cornwall got Objective One money earlier by tamely going along with a powerful business and quango-led led Devonwall (Devon and Cornwall) strategy.
It was only when the ink was drying on the reform that made Cornwall a European level 2 region and opened the door to major EU funding that the Cornish political elite reluctantly kicked their Devonwall habit. Even the Lib Dem leadership joined in scuttling the failed Devonwall project, which promptly sank without trace.
The ConLib government has now confirmed that the RDA is to be scrapped. It will be replaced by ‘local enterprise partnerships’ which will take over economic development functions in areas where there is a clear demand. A lot remains unclear, and particularly the territorial template for these new LEPs.
Thought to have been comprehensively killed off back in 1997, like zombies the Devonwallers are now crawling out from under their stones. They’re led by the Devon and Cornwall Business Council which brings together 70 of the largest of the 40,000 businesses in Devon and Cornwall but takes it upon itself to claim to ‘represent’ in some mysterious fashion the interests of all 40,000.
It’s dominated by corporations such as BT, EDF Energy, Wales and West Utilities and South West Water, transport businesses such as First Great Western, Cross Country and Exeter International Airport, banks such as the Clydesdale Bank and a hatful of Devon-based solicitors and accountants. The University of Plymouth clothes it with academic credibility while the only obvious Cornish business sponsor is St Austell Breweries. It’s headed by the lugubrious and depressing zombie in chief Tim Jones, often seen whining on local TV about how the weather forecast has affected tourism or moaning about the lack of road building or demanding more hand-outs from central government.
Yet for the walking undead the DCBC has proved impressively quick on its feet and the week before last proposed a Devon and Cornwall LEP before Vince Cable had even killed off the RDA. The mouthpiece of the discredited Devonwall project last time around was the Western Morning News and it’s pushing the same tired old agenda yet again. For instance, an anonymous businessman from Truro has been given space to call for a Devonwall LEP – on ‘pragmatic’ rather than ‘political’ grounds of course.
Déjà vu? I thought I’d fallen asleep and woken up in 1987. Here’s the WMN gravely informing us that ‘Cornwall is too small on its own to wield real influence’. But this is exactly what they said before 1997 and precisely what stopped us then getting major EU funding for several years. The truth would appear to be the complete opposite – Devonwall stopped Cornwall wielding ‘real influence’. But accorded perfectly with the marketing strategies of some regionally based corporations.
There are also apparently plans for a Cornwall and Plymouth LEP although as yet I’ve been unable to identify its backers.
In Cornwall the expectation was that Cornwall Council and the ConLib MPs would put forward a strong case for a Cornwall-based LEP. After all, we’re now at ‘the heart of government’ are we not? This would seem logical given the abject failure of the Devonwall project back in the 1980s and 1990s, At last, the humiliating anomaly whereby Cornwall is the only European region where Convergence finding is managed from outwith its boundaries could be ending.
ConLib (LD tendency) MP Steve Gilbert has duly gone on record as calling for Cornwall to stand alone, with the Cornwall Development Company taking a leading role. However, ConLib (Conservative tendency) MP George Eustice is hedging his bets. Rather than a forthright commitment to a Cornwall LEP, in this week’s West Briton Eustice, while admitting a ‘strong case’ exists for Cornwall, wants to ‘also consider other options’. He intends to speak to ‘all the parties involved with all three options’.
Eustice finally made his maiden speech in parliament last Thursday, using it to make a rather snide and unfunny ‘joke’ about John Prescott and then wheel in Richard Trevithick to call for ‘talented individuals’ to come up with solutions, not governments. Now, faced by a choice between a Cornwall-based LEP and the sirens of Devonwall big business he needs to get off the fence. But on which side? Watch this space.
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