Andy Burnham has announced a plan to give regional mayors a cut of income tax, which sounds great until you realize nobody knows how much money that is, what they’re allowed to do with it, or whether it actually exists yet.
The Prime Minister is simultaneously refusing to rule out tax rises for social care while insisting the income tax scheme will empower “every postcode.” This is the political equivalent of handing someone a lottery ticket and telling them not to spend it before the numbers are drawn.
Lord Houchen, a Tory mayor, wants to use his share as a rebate. Burnham wants it reinvested in communities. The PM wants it to do both. Nobody wants to explain what happens when a mayor’s budget arrives three months late or gets clawed back by Westminster halfway through the fiscal year.
Why hasn’t anyone asked the obvious question: if the government doesn’t know how much tax it will collect, how can it promise mayors a slice? Because asking that would require admitting the entire scheme is a confidence trick dressed up as devolution.
The critics are right that the plans lack detail. They lack detail the way a restaurant menu lacks food—it’s all descriptions and no actual product. Burnham is handing out power to mayors the way a casino hands out chips: you can move them around the table all you want, but the house still owns them.
Meanwhile, the social care funding question sits unanswered, waiting for a tax rise that may or may not happen, administered by a system that may or may not work, overseen by politicians who definitely will not admit they have no idea what they’re doing.