The newsroom has been treated this week to a slick devolution of powers campaign by Cornwall Council, launched to make the “Case for Cornwall”, and while it is stuffed with buzz words galore.... there is a big BIG problem.

Much of this campaign sounds like perfect sense, on first reading, and to take the sting out of the barbs that will fly, I am all for wresting powers from central government and a cabal of unaccountable distant politicians and quango bosses, but this is not a “Case for Cornwall” for one glaringly clear and simple reason.

This is that Cornwall has not been asked about it, at all.

It is a wish list of powers and funding that councillors and officers would love to get their hands on.

Does it make sense? Maybe it does. Maybe it is the best thing since pasties on a beach, but I cannot say this loudly enough, CORNWALL COUNCIL IS NOT CORNWALL.

Yes it plays a part, but Cornwall is much bigger than the goings-on behind the doors of County Hall.

While there has clearly been enough time to create fancy booklets, a glaring fault is that there seems to not have been the time to ask Cornwall (the real one not the dubiously conflated Cornwall is Cornwall Council and vice versa version in the expensive PR) what it thinks.

Evidence of this is probably most stark in the desire to have the power to hugely hike our council tax without having to go to the trouble of asking the people who pay it. Yes, that is one of the powers the council, not ‘Cornwall’ I suspect, want to have.

Yes the “freedom” to dodge democratic accountability sits right up there with the desire to keep some fuel duty. That does not bode well.

As I have said, I am all for more devolution, after all who knows better than the people in Cornwall what should happen in Cornwall. BUT, and it is a huge but, is Cornwall Council the best way to do this?

Is the authority, with its rich history of failure and infighting, the best structure to deliver the goods with this huge array of new powers and the flood of millions of pounds they will bring?

Yes it has and does good things, and it has had as many successes as it has had mistakes, especially in troubled times with slashed budgets, but that is my point, should there not be a conversation?

Maybe it is the best body to to do this with the best of Cornish brains at the helm, but maybe it is not.

Writing lots of buzz worlds in a flashy document about how we will all have jobs, homes and jam tomorrow is not the same thing as being competent enough to actually make this happen. 

The same authority that made the most vulnerable pay council tax, leading to a huge rise in arrears, thousands of bailiff visits and a vast ocean of suffering, while conveniently forgetting that the very richest may shoulder the burden, now want the power to hike it by five percent, ten per cent to God only knows per cent, but does not want to ask us, the people of Cornwall whether that is a power we want them to have.

So by all means support the ‘Case for Cornwall', support more powers and more control of funding, but do not for one minute think it represents the best deal for the duchy, or one we have even been asked about. Rather it is the best deal for Cornwall Council in terms of vastly building its somewhat depleted and damaged empire. 

Call me old fashioned but the best deal for Cornwall is one that Cornwall decides upon, not one delivered via a slick marketing campaign from afar, ironically the very thing the ‘Case for Cornwall is arguing against. The presumption and hypocrisy are staggering.

The Skipper