The latest figures show yet more unemployment in Cornwall

Today in amongst the world going crazy debating the finer issues of the Mebyon Kernow manifesto (not really, Thatcher once again drowned out the left, she died as she lived). There was stark news about Cornwall's employment figures (story here) despite bold claims by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat government that there would be a rise in private sector jobs, this has not happened in Cornwall. Since the coalition took power Cornwall has lost 9,000 jobs. To quote from This is Cornwall:

Some 176,000 people said they were employed by business, rather than the state, across the county by September last year, down from 184,000 in the summer of 2010.


To put that into context that's pretty much every person of working age in Penzance losing their jobs. Many many more than the closures of Geevor and Wheal Jane during Margaret Thatcher's reign, or Compair Holman's and South Crofty under Tony Blair, less symbolic admittedly.

Still this is greatly troubling, differential factors like the rise in VAT to 20%, the addition of to pasties, the continuing rise in petrol prices and the increasing cost of living have all no doubt taken their toll.  The austerity agenda too has played it's part, since 2010 hundreds of millions of pounds have been taken out of the Cornish economy. Thousands of jobs have been lost in the public sector alone and many of the remaining workers have seen their wages frozen and in some case re banded downwards i.e. pay cuts. This is all money taken out of Cornwall out of Cornish workers pockets and so people are spending less.  But these factors are the same ones that have faced Devonshire over the border, yet their employment numbers are looking decidedly more healthy, 37,000 extra people work in the private sector in the same period. So why Cornwall is bucking UK trends and losing thousands of jobs whilst Devon is gaining tens of thousands proves the point that we are different, if nothing else.

One of my bugbears with the nature of centralisation is that it was always Devon centric. Cornwall had the ignominious honour of being the only part of the European Union to have Objective One administered externally (from RDA offices in Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth). Devon and Cornwall police is headquartered in Exeter, offices, executives and managers are employed there not here. There is a multiplicity of examples, when services between Cornwall and Devon (or Devon and Cornwall if you look from London) became amalgamated and offices and workers were moved out of Cornwall. This happened for decades under both Tory and Labour administrations and we still feel the effect of it. It needs to change I've written before that these things should be devolved back to Cornwall and the jobs that go with them should come to.

Of course this is only part of the solution, we need to radically rethink how the Cornish economy is directed. There seems a dominant thought that house building will somehow lead Cornwall to a brighter future, that houses means jobs. We only have to look to Ireland and Spain to see how this doesn't really work and that if house building outstrips jobs, soon enough we will have housing estates without owners and tenants. Especially in a borrowing climate where the banks are no longer willing to lend anyone a mortgage. Since Thatcherism we have had a focus away from industry and towards the service economy, which sure enough creates wealth and some decent jobs, it does not provide a great quantity of jobs.

What we need is a focus on jobs and employment led growth, I think Mebyon Kernow's plan to devolved administration to Cornwall and decision making can fulfill this. We need these jobs back in Cornwall, I know not in a month of sundays is this government going to give us proper devolution, but we should be rinsing 'localism' for all it's worth. Demanding the return of previously centralised departments, getting those jobs back. With the control this would give us, make decisions here in Cornwall for the benefit of us and our economy. The job numbers show yet again that Devonwall in all it's guises doesn't suit either side of the Tamar we are different places we need different things. We need new solutions.