Rewiring the State or Rewiring Democracy?

Image Credit: Christopher Furlong / Pool via AFP

“For too long, power has been hoarded in Westminster and Whitehall.”

Andy Burnham is right.

The publication of Rewiring the State is a landmark moment in English devolution. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Together with the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, it sets out the timetable for perhaps the most significant transfer of power, money and responsibility away from Whitehall in modern times.

In less than two weeks of Andy Burnham’s premiership, the way England is governed is being turned on its head

This is no incremental reform. It is the most radical rewiring of the State and arguably the biggest shift in English governance and democracy for a generation, perhaps even longer.

The ambition deserves recognition.

Fiscal devolution. Greater local tax retention. Integrated public services. More powers over transport, housing, skills, planning, health, policing and economic development. It is bold, ambitious and long overdue.

For those of us who have spent years arguing that England is one of the most centralised democracies in the developed world, this is an extraordinary moment. But reading the paper left me asking one fundamental question. Is this a blueprint for rewiring the State, or a roadmap for rewiring democracy?

Because they are not the same thing. With greater fiscal power comes greater democratic accountability. The Government rightly recognises that if places are to grow, they need greater control over the money they raise and spend. Fiscal devolution is one of the biggest constitutional changes in the package.

But it also raises an equally important question. With greater fiscal power must come greater democratic accountability. Who decides spending priorities? Who scrutinises investment decisions? How will success be measured? What is Parliament’s role when executive power increasingly sits with mayors and strategic authorities?

The Cabinet Statement has good answers on institutional accountability. It strengthens audit, introduces Local Accounting Officers, streamlines outcomes and gives mayors clearer responsibility.

Yet Parliament barely features. As executive power leaves Westminster, Parliament’s scrutiny role should become more important, not less. MPs cannot simply become spectators while billions of pounds and major public services are devolved. Parliament must evolve too, scrutinising outcomes, public value and the effectiveness of devolved government, not simply departmental spending. That constitutional conversation has barely begun.

The accountability gap

The biggest gap, however, is not between Whitehall and Parliament. It is between government and people. The Statement promises to replace traditional consultation with “modern forms of public participation”. That sounds promising, but participation is not empowerment.

Being consulted is not the same as sharing power. There is very little about neighbourhood governance, community ownership, participatory budgeting, citizen assemblies or how communities themselves will shape the future of their places, Power appears to stop at the mayor’s office, which surely cannot be the destination.

Twenty years on…

Nearly twenty years ago I worked on one of the largest Government engagement programmes in England, supporting the Department for Communities and Local Government’s national consultation on Neighbourhood Renewal.

The challenge then was exactly the same as it is today. How do you rebuild trust? How do you engage the people who have stopped believing politics can make a difference? How do you ensure that the voices least often heard become the starting point for change, not an afterthought?

Twenty years later, we are back on the fast track, with the scale of ambition far greater. The “left behind” people and places are rightly at the heart of the Government’s agenda, but good intentions alone will not bridge a chasm of mistrust that has taken decades to develop.

Communities do not become empowered because government says they are. They become empowered because they are trusted, equipped, invested in and genuinely able to influence decisions. That takes time, leadership, and democratic renewal.

Rewiring democracy

The Government has produced an impressive blueprint for rewiring the State. Now it needs a roadmap for rewiring democracy. Real devolution is not complete when power leaves Whitehall, nor when it reaches the town hall, but only when people genuinely feel that power belongs to them.

For me, that means the next phase of devolution must be about communities as much as institutions. Neighbourhoods with a real voice, citizens involved in shaping local priorities, and community organisations recognised as partners, not consultees. Economic growth matched by community wealth, and fiscal devolution matched by democratic accountability.

Only then will we have done more than redesign government, we will have rebuilt trust between citizens and the State. That is the real prize.

And if we get that right, this won’t simply be remembered as the moment England rewired the State. It will be remembered as the moment we rewired democracy.