This chapter further explores the thesis in Chapter Two of this volume that Marshallian citizenship cannot be linked with simple notions of equality: that E does not MC (see also Daniel Wincott, Chapter Three, this volume; Christie et al, 2007). It focuses on the geography of citizenship, and examines the question: how uniform are ‘uniform’ services? Bogdanor (2003, in Wincott, 2006, p 170) asserts that New Labour displays a preference for diversity over uniformity, making it harder for a government of the left to secure equality of conditions in different parts of the UK. The welfare state was based on the principle that benefits and burdens would depend on need, not geography. This principle dates from the time of the Attlee government, if not from the time of Lloyd George (Bogdanor, 2002, para 24). He claims that devolution negates this need not geography principle, and so marks the end of the welfare state and a key strand of social democracy (see Wincott, Chapter Three, this volume, and 2006; Mitchell, 2006). However, this claim is too simplistic. First, it is very difficult to detect ‘fundamental’ principles in the welfare state as they are complex and varying (see Powell, 1995a). There has certainly been a long-standing objective of reducing geographical inequalities. However, dating this to Lloyd George (due to his national health insurance?) is problematic. Moreover, mention of ‘equality of conditions’, ‘uniform national standards’, ‘the benefits you get and the service you get should be exactly the same’ and securing ‘equal social and economic rights’ for all citizens (Bogdanor, 2002, 2006) are too vague and too strong claims. Second, the links between principles and service objectives are not obvious: the ‘spatial strategy of equality’ is far from clear (Powell and Boyne, 2001). Third, even if services were meant to depend on need rather than geography, major territorial variations existed throughout the ‘golden age’ of the British welfare state (see Wincott, Chapter Three, this volume). Finally, this principle may be important for a particular strand of social democracy or democratic socialism (for example, Bevan's National Health Service), but is less relevant to other conceptions such as federalism (see Obinger et al, 2005), Swedish decentralised services or Morrisonian or Robsonian versions of local democracy (see Powell, 1998; Powell and Boyne, 2001).