Abstract
ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the various potential impacts of Brexit on UK regions and outlines the sub-national governance challenges these potential impacts raise. In the light of these, the types of activities that UK sub-national governance bodies have initiated in preparation for Brexit are then reviewed. The conclusions suggest that the UK sub-national institutional system is largely unprepared for the post-Brexit realities.
Highlights
This paper highlights various critical emerging issues facing UK and European Union (EU) regions in the context of Brexit, issues which as yet are little articulated and underdeveloped in current policy debates on either side of the English Channel
These inabilities are currently exacerbated by Brexit, which is leading to both further governance centralization and the stalling of many policy arenas, including regional economic development
There are strong grounds for believing that a much more devolved longstanding sub-national governance system may well have limited the interregional inequalities evident arising within the UK (McCann, 2016), and as such may have lessened the likelihood of a Leave vote in the first place
Summary
This paper highlights various critical emerging issues facing UK and European Union (EU) regions in the context of Brexit, issues which as yet are little articulated and underdeveloped in current policy debates on either side of the English Channel. It remains to be seen what will emerge from these various debates, but the general point still holds that the sub-national decentralization and devolution agenda which was already in train before the EU Referendum appears to have largely stalled, while at the same time Brexit provides four serious challenges to the long-run development potential of the UK’s weaker regions. There is a serious institutional challenge because while there has been some progress in governance (Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), 2017; HM Government, 2018a), many LEPs still have no real capacity to design or deliver serious long-term and effective local industrial policies, especially in the weaker regions and in the aftermath of Brexit These four challenges ought to prompt a nationwide rethinking about what the optimal or appropriate scale of sub-national governance in England, at least, might be (McCann, 2016). It is many of these institutions that are the most acutely aware of the implications of Brexit for their communities and the most concerned to start addressing the challenges and we survey in this paper the types of activities and actions currently evident at the sub-national and sub-state levels
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