Can devolution drive growth?

In the various things I've written on these topics, one of the most important documents for me is a kind of reference one.

It was published by the OECD about 13, 14 years ago.

And what the OECD does is they categorize the roles and the nature of sub-central government.

So whether it's local city region, federal lender, provincial, whatever terminology you want to use.

And there are four dimensions to subcentral governance.

And three of them are what the OECD calls citizen-facing.

And one of them is what the OECD calls market-facing.

And they're fundamentally different.

So the citizen-facing runs would be governance of the conduct of people in public office.

You know, that's...

When you're elected to a role, you take that responsibility properly.

You act judiciously.

Second one is the provision of safety of citizens, local safety.

So that's your local police forces.

That's street lighting where people can walk home at night.

They're safe.

And then the third one would be provision of local services, whether it's Bing Collection or in the UK, some local social care services and so on.

And those are the things that primarily people vote on locally because they are the kind of 24-7 experiential things that they connect with.

The fourth one is fundamentally different, and that is the market-facing role.

That's the ability to engage with the investment community that you need to do the heavy lifting.

Now, the first three, the citizen-facing roles are primarily done at very local levels.

In many cases, even neighborhood, even street level, you think about tree planting and garden preservation.

And these are things which are hyperlocal.

They're not just a London borough.

They're street level, neighborhood levels within London boroughs, community groups, things like that.