The week before Christmas there was a minor explosion over South Yorkshire. By a majority of 85%, the people of Barnsley and Doncaster voted “Shexit”. In a twin-town referendum, they chose to have nothing to do with neighbouring Sheffield, the city region about to rule over them. They declared themselves loyal only to God’s own county, plain Yorkshire. That was good enough for them.

What on earth is going on? The answer is one of the fiercest civil wars in England’s debilitated local government scene. Ever since 2014, when then chancellor George Osborne proclaimed Manchester as a “northern powerhouse” and showered it with favours, Yorkshire across the Pennines has complained: what about us? At least five of its conurbations competed for Whitehall goodies that include billions in development money and extensive new powers. They had only to secure local agreement, and elect a “metro mayor”.

Barnsley and Doncaster vote for 'One Yorkshire' devolution deal Read more

Each bid gradually fell by the wayside amid political bickering and delay, until only Sheffield, at the county’s southern extreme, was left standing. Last year it won government approval and was duly promised an immediate £30m a year, with an eventual £1bn in investment following a mayoral election in May 2018. This was no bauble. Austerity has slashed Yorkshire councils’ revenues by a third over the past five years. They all need cash.

But then Sheffield’s bid began to fall apart too. Manchester is a dominant hub with satellite towns. Yorkshire is more like Renaissance Italy (with town halls to match): a patchwork of rival statelets, proudly discordant. As David Cameron once remarked, “We knew Yorkshire people hated the rest of us, but I never knew they hated each other.”

Sheffield council’s forceful boss, Julie Dore, defined her city region as embracing most of South Yorkshire, including the towns of Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, as well as journey-to-work bits of adjacent Derbyshire and Nottingham. To her this is not about local identity, but “like Manchester, about transport, economic development and skills … and we need the money.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barnsley town hall, a champion of ‘One Yorkshire’. Photograph: Jon Super/The Guardian

The trouble is that in Yorkshire blood runs thicker than gold. First the districts in Derbyshire and Nottingham took against Sheffield and dropped out. Then a bitter row broke out between Sheffield and Barnsley, chiefly over the benighted HS2 station in South Yorkshire. Should it be in central Sheffield or at Meadowhall, marginally nearer to Barnsley?

This culminated in a furious shouting match in September between Dore and Barnsley’s veteran leader, Sir Steve Houghton. He and Doncaster’s mayor Ros Jones, stormed out of the meeting and, more important, out of the region. In true Catalonian style, they decided on a £250,000 referendum on where, or rather who, their citizens wanted to be: with Sheffield or with the rest of Yorkshire. Though nonbinding and on a turnout of little over 20%, the views of 35,000 electors in December were hard to ignore.

Javid has stated categorically that 'we will not consider a deal for the whole of Yorkshire'

The walkout collapsed Dore’s Sheffield region because the law requires unanimity among local councils for money and powers to be devolved. This undermined the local government minister, Sajid Javid, since Sheffield was his only Yorkshire region. He is determined to proceed with a mayoral election, though it will be for a job with no borders, no functions, no money and, as yet, no candidates. It will be the Ruritania of the north.

The “One Yorkshire” for which Barnsley and Doncaster voted is a different matter. It is by far England’s most substantial province. Yorkshire’s 5.3 million population puts it equal with Scotland, almost double that of Wales, and nearly three times that of Northern Ireland. In European terms it compares with Norway, Denmark, Slovakia and Slovenia.

An elected regional assembly for the whole county was promoted by Labour’s John Prescott in the 2000s, but funked in 2004 when a similar assembly for the north-east was thrown out on a referendum. Prescott lost his nerve. A resulting Yorkshire party, seeking Scottish-style autonomy, has fought elections since 2014. It had 21 candidates at last year’s general election, though it rarely secures more than 3%.

In July a new bid for county-wide autonomy emerged when 17 of Yorkshire’s 20 local councils met in York and declared a “coalition of the willing”. Previous efforts to declare Yorkshire greater, wider and first merged into “One”. Yorkshire Day was nominated as 1 August. The city of York was en fete with white roses. Sheffield stayed away.

The One Yorkshire coalition, including the county’s leading civic leader, Judith Blake of Leeds city council, pleaded with Javid for northern powerhouse status. “We have shown we can work together,” she says. “The Brexit genie is out of the bottle. There is a growing sense of grievance about politics.” She is championed by Labour’s rising star, the MP for Barnsley, Dan Jarvis. He too sees Brexit as the game changer. “Yorkshire must give itself a chance nationally and internationally, and not hive off into bits like Sheffield. Yorkshire is regional England’s one iconic global brand.” He has strong support from the local CBI, businesses and trade unions. A Prescott-style referendum on devolution to a governor/mayor and assembly would surely yield a majority on a Barnsley scale.

Archbishop of York backs devolution deal for whole of Yorkshire Read more





A yearning to embed local identity in local democracy is hardly ignoble. When it is denied, as the Tories found in Scotland and the Spanish government in Catalonia, it feeds resentment. Why Theresa May should want to fill the council chambers of Leeds, Bradford, Halifax and York with enemies is a mystery. Since the Christmas vote, Javid has tried to sound emollient. But he is a centralist to the core and is fixated with his Sheffield separatists. He has stated categorically that “we will not consider a deal for the whole of Yorkshire”.

Whitehall’s policy towards devolution within England has long been to whittle away traditional sources of local revenue, and replace them with ad hoc central grants, for which local politicians must grovel and plead. It is centrism at its most humiliating and demoralising. Regeneration, so desperately needed in Yorkshire, is not about state patronage but about local confidence and self-help. It is sad that Javid, like his predecessors, should want Sheffield to drift off into the mists of the Peak District. At least the rest of Yorkshire has the guts to resist.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

• This article was amended on 4 January 2018. The population of Yorkshire is almost three times that of Northern Ireland, not double as an earlier version said.