Thus far, this book has placed a focus entirely on territorial politics and constitutional policy as it affected each of the constituent nations and regions of the UK. The approach of central government to territorial management has been examined in each case as a key aspect of centre–periphery relations. This chapter will now place a principal focus on how the Blair governments developed the central state in the light of devolution. It explores the role of territorial pressures and constraints in thinking about adaptation at the centre; the availability of political resources in shaping approaches to reform; choices over the use of those resources; and the policy process adopted in making those choices. In so doing the chapter considers to what extent the evidence supports the proposition that following Bulpitt the Blair Governments sought to fashion an approach also to the development of the central state in the light of devolution that maintined a centre autonomy model of centre–periphery relations. The implication is that they sought this goal both to assist the successful embedding of devolution in ways amenable to the state as a whole, as well as maintaining effective UK government across all its priorities, not simply territorial management.

To address these issues and explore the validity of this thesis, section one examines the territorial politics contexts to how the Blair governments approached central state adaptation. Section two then addresses the approaches established by the Blair governments between 1997 and 1999 to articulating a vision of Britain after devolution, organising the making of law and the role of Parliament, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance, and approaches to future territorial constitutional reform. Section three then readdresses how these contexts and approaches developed between 1999 and 2007. It should be noted that the chapter draws in both sections two and three on the published work of Trench, which was based on extensive interviews in Whitehall in the early 2000s, and reconsiders it within the book's framework of analysis.

Territorial politics and the central state

In considering how the Blair governments approached central state adaptation, we need an appreciation of the pressures they were under to reform.