Part of the point of this post was that this is, in the end, an awful way to make a decision.
Yesterday I was arguing about devolution to Yorkshire, again, and my opponent, Jonn Elledge, kept coming out with the same point. Manchester has signed! Don’t be left behind! This is something, not nothing! Hurry up! It doesn’t seem to have struck him that you’re not allowed to sell electricity or washing machines that way. It’s against the law to insist the customer signs, now, no you can’t read the terms and conditions, yes, this price is only available today, just sign it now. If you sign up with a new electricity provider, you have a statutory right to cancel within a week (I think). There are reasons for that. Why should it be any more acceptable to sell politics that way?
And when you make decisions for bad reasons, you tend to make bad decisions.
I still haven’t been able to find anyone with access to detailed description of DevoManc NHS funding agreement. If I were another city, I’d certainly want to see what happens over the winter before I signed up to a similar agreement.
“This is something, not nothing!”, “The flaws can be sorted out later” and “If we don’t take this, the chance will be gone for a generation!” were all popular YestoAV arguments, if you remember when that was a thing.
Come to think of it, it’s BLACK FRIDAY! and I spent part of it systematically deleting everything containing that string from my e-mail.
If you’re being pushed, hassled or railroaded to accept something, it’s usually a sign that it’s not a very good deal.