Rebalancing power in an age of powerlessness
Andy Burnham has promised us the ‘biggest rebalancing of power the country has ever seen’ through his devolution agenda. But if devolution is to seriously tackle the crisis our democracy faces, it can’t only be about rebalancing power between politicians and political institutions. We need a devolution agenda that is bold enough to rebalance power between citizen and state too. To really rebalance power from the ‘bottom up’, and to really rebuild public trust in the politics Burnham describes as ‘broken’, the power needs to meaningfully shift towards communities.
This is not just a question of structures or layers of the state, or where fiscal responsibility or accountability sits – it is about a different type of leadership. The question we come up against again and again is: how do you convince someone to share power, when they don’t feel they have it themselves?
What stuck with me most from our Citizens’ White Paper research, published in 2024, was how powerless policymakers at all levels felt, including the former ministers and senior civil servants we spoke to. People at each level feel it’s the level(s) above that hold any real power. That includes the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer shared his frustration about the length of time between him “pulling the lever” to actually getting things done. And now, his time’s run out.
This is what we call the democratic ‘doom loop’: “When people lose trust in the system, governments struggle to build consent for difficult decisions. This leads to short-term, risk-averse policymaking, which further undermines effectiveness and trust. As frustration grows, political incentives shift toward polarisation and populism, deepening the cycle.”
To avoid facing the same fate as Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham needs to tackle the doom loop. That means making bold decisions that genuinely rebalance power and improve people’s lives. But he will need to tackle this sense of powerlessness to do so, and disentangle perception from reality.
Where exactly is this power that we want to rebalance, and who has it? Policymakers might point the finger inwards at central government or No 10, or they might point outwards at voters and stakeholders. Burnham points at an “insufficiently accountable outsourced state”. Those outside Westminster will point right back. Cue Spiderman meme.
The truth is somewhere in between. Because of the doom loop, the public do have a sort of indirect power in policymaking as voters in unstable and fragmented political times. Politicians make policy in a way they think the public want based on a surface-level understanding of public opinion and on electoral strategy. Or they spend time, effort, and money consulting on policies, and stakeholders spend time, effort, and money responding, without really intending to open up policymaking. None of this is the same as people being given a real say in policymaking, and so trust continues to decline.
In the words of Audrey Tang, a leading figure in the participatory space, citing the Chinese philosopher Laozi: “To give no trust is to get no trust.” But policymakers can’t give trust they don’t feel is theirs to give. To rebalance power, to rebalance trust, we need to look not only at who has the power, but at who thinks they have it. Only then can we unlock meaningful ways to share this power and upgrade our democracy.