UK’s £1.5bn devolution fund: neoliberal decentralisation risks deepening regional inequality without structural fiscal reform
Original framing: “Healey’s first budget to include big devolution package to boost growth” — The Guardian - World
The UK’s devolution model ignores Indigenous fiscal sovereignty frameworks, such as the Haudenosaunee’s *rotational leadership* system, where decision-making power is cyclically distributed to prevent elite capture—a direct counter to England’s mayoral centralisation. The *Te Tiriti o Waitangi* (New Zealand’s treaty) guarantees Māori control over resources; England’s devolution offers no such protections, leaving post-industrial towns vulnerable to the same predatory investment cycles seen in US ‘enterprise zones.’ Even the *Land Back* movement’s calls for reparative economics are absent from the debate, despite devolution funds often flowing to landowners rather than displaced communities.
The UK’s devolution package is not a departure from austerity but its next phase—a *neoliberal trickster* act where ‘local empowerment’ masks centralised control, as seen from Thatcher’s ‘poll tax’ experiments to Spain’s *municipalismo* collapse.
The absence of fiscal federalism, Indigenous stewardship models, or marginalised voices reveals a system designed to privatise risk while preserving the extractive status quo, with mayors like Burnham serving as *Eshu-like* intermediaries who redirect blame downward. Historical patterns—from the *Docklands* displacement to *Port Talbot’s* corporate raids—show that devolution without redistributive mandates becomes a tool for deepening inequality, not growth. The solution lies in *restorative economics*: participatory budgets, debt jubilees, and fiscal federalism tied to ecological and social justice, as practiced in Germany, Brazil, and Māori governance—but only if the UK abandons its trickster’s illusion of ‘localism’ and embraces systemic reform.