A thread on making sense of Gove’s speech, Johnson’s previous claim to be a “Brexity Hezza” and what we might see in the forthcoming Devolution White Paper.

Many people have pointed out the apparent contradiction between Gove’s claim that the Government wants to “send power down” and his odd reference to American Governors, whilst failing to mention local government and reinventing the Government Office network (created in 1994)

I think that the answer lies in the philosophy underlying “No Stone Unturned”, the report Heseltine did for Cameron in 2012 (and on which I worked) and Johnson’s claim to be a “Brexity Hezza”.

The Report proposed: a cross Whitehall focus on growth, driven by the PM; money to be devolved to LEPs on the basis of competitive bidding, spent on the basis of agreed criteria; civil servants to be relocated to build capacity in LEPs; sectoral growth plans.

The two sticking points which prevented Heseltine’s grand vision being implemented were interdepartmental squabbling about the sums of money available to LEPs, and the proposal to move civil servants (GOs had only been abolished a year earlier).

Look at Gove’s speech against that background and it makes much more sense. The reforms to Whitehall are all about increasing No10/Cabinet Office control over Departments and the reinvention of GOs is self explanatory (plus we know ministers are working on plans for sectors).

Substitute Combined Authorities with Elected Mayors for LEPs and you can see why the reference to American Governors is in there. Of course, having elected Mayors bid for pots of money isn’t devolution in the sense in which it’s generally understood, let alone federalism.

But it’s an intellectually consistent approach and fits with the interventionist, cross Whitehall approach long championed by Heseltine. The Devolution White Paper will show whether this interpretation is correct.