Regional Policy and National Politics in Britain

Abstract

Conflicts over territorial politics are intimately bound up with issues of class representation in national politics. The thesis of this paper is that the persistence of British regional policy, with support from both major parties of government over a period of forty years or more, reflects an attempt to maintain the class-based dual party system of national politics by minimising the importance of other dimensions of political preference. The paper has two main sections. In the first a series of conventional rationales for regional policy are examined in terms of efficiency, equity, and the government's interest in reelection, and it is concluded that none of these adequately explains the uncontested basis of British regional policy. In the second main section a version of Downs's model of electoral competition is adopted to investigate the stability of forms of two-party competition, and it is argued that in a class-based national system the parties have a strong interest in avoiding the emergence of a separate territorial dimension of politics. The conclusion to the paper is a consideration of the relationship between regionalism, regional politics, and regional policy in the context of Mrs Thatcher's government's weakening of regional policy and emphasis on strong central control.