There is something the matter with Glasgow. Everybody knows it. Yet despite overwhelming evidence of decline over decades no one seems to want to do anything to tackle the slump.
Not that economic challenges are new to the city. We’ve come through the decline of transatlantic trade and the disappearance of all the boom industries of the Industrial Revolution. Yet, time and again Glasgow has been able to reinvent itself. The last time was 40 years ago when the Glasgow’s Miles Better campaign convinced a skeptical world that the city had changed and that a rough, dirty workshop was indeed a city of culture, of art, museums, music and nightlife. Glasgow, a visitor and retail destination? No one in 1979 would have believed you.
Now, despite that progress, optimism and enthusiasm we are back in the doldrums. Are the people who make Glasgow still able to enjoy living here wandering the litter-strewn streets and leaning against boarded up shopfronts? The passion that invigorated the city in the 1980s has been ground down. Endurance has replaced enthusiasm.
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The root of the cynicism we see towards politics is that none of the levels of government that fiddle with Glasgow’s care have made the city’s revival Scotland’s number one economic priority.
Because it is. Cities alone carry the critical mass to provide the scale of activities that make society work - the big employers, the museums, the restaurants, the theatres, the orchestras, the buzz. With the largest hinterland, Glasgow remains Scotland’s main engine for growth despite the mismanaged relative decline of the last 20 years. We are not like England with its Birminghams, Manchesters and Nottinghams. Glasgow is unique among Scottish cities. It needs, deserves and demands special treatment.
That treatment is obvious though extremely difficult to achieve. Glasgow must be transformed into a more dynamic city-region-hub capable of attracting inward investors both from the rest of the UK and from abroad. In this regard one should not ignore the immense impact of our two excellent schools of business who are educating the foreign students as they train to be influencers and inward investors of tomorrow.
A prerequisite for this private investment is significant public investment in the strong infrastructure that these giant footloose enterprises expect when considering any location worldwide. As for local enterprises, I know from numerous meetings that business here is eager to play its part, as it has done so many times in the past. Challenge it to put its capital where its mouth is by offering matched funding.
In world terms Glasgow is small so must again punch above its weight. For that it needs clear leadership and the ability to drive forward and coordinate its economic future. That means fundamental reform of our local political structure. We need a Greater Glasgow authority over the whole wider economy with significant economic and planning powers and the budget to implement them effectively.
Any suggestion that Glasgow might subsume the local authorities which surround it will inevitably be met with hostility. Yet the structure already exists in embryo form. The Glasgow City Region Cabinet consists of the eight local authorities - East and West Dunbartonshire Council, East Renfrewshire Council, Glasgow City Council, Inverclyde Council, North and South Lanarkshire Councils and Renfrewshire Council -that cover the relevant economic area, if not the entire travel-to-work area.
Leaders of the councils meet and agree on many economic and social projects and have successfully implemented over one billion pounds of investment. What is lacking is that the Cabinet has no powers of implementation. At the same time these politicians are running their own local functions, in many cases in highly successful ways. Thus, East Renfrewshire Council has just been recognised by the Accounts Commission’s Best Value report as an example for other authorities to follow because of its ‘high-performing’ services. You don’t chuck such excellence in the bin.
What you do is recognise the efficiency of those bodies by leaving them in place and building on them a stronger metro cabinet with powers of its own over all strategic economic areas including infrastructure investment, planning, skills, regeneration and transport - especially transport which is a whole disaster area in itself. (We don’t even have a rail link to the airport!) To that list I would add the business development support function and the large Scottish Enterprise budgets that go with it.
English cities have forged ahead with a similar model while we are stuck with small, cash starved authorities and a plethora of stuffed unelected quangos designed to suffocate local initiative.
Andy Burnham has proved such a success in Greater Manchester heading an executive (that also comprises the leaders of the constituent councils) that conventional wisdom demands an elected mayor. Would it be even more democratic and collegiate to enable each of our eight council areas directly to elect a representative to the new Combined Authority? Or, my preference, eight councillors-at-large elected by the people with loyalty to the Authority as a whole?
But words are easy. We have proposals, plans, strategies, programmes and initiatives coming out of our ears. We have to stop going round and round. The situation demands action. Any time Glasgow’s people have been called to action they have responded vigorously. In other cities I have visited in the last couple of years, from Dallas and Boston to Manchester and even allegedly douce Edinburgh, there has been a drive and urgency that is absent here.
The UK government can supply funding. But it is only our devolved administration that has the power to implement the structural changes necessary. But Holyrood has, so far, shown a distinct lack of appetite for ceding powers to the tiers below it. Yet this is the way to make our stumbling devolution work.
From the discussions on these pages a civic consensus is emerging. Let our citizens demand that all the political parties with pretensions to govern sign up to a manifesto for Glasgow, commit to ambition and promise that whatever the electoral arithmetic throws up that they will unite to deliver radical reform. Convince the rest of the country of the nationwide value of this bold move. If Glasgow works, so does Scotland.
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