Cabinet meetings outside London are rare and reluctant things. Harold Wilson held one in Brighton in 1966, but only because the Labour Party was already there for its annual conference. In 1921 David Lloyd George summoned the Liberals to Inverness because he didn't want to cut short his holiday. Gordon Brown's decision to hold his first cabinet meeting after the summer break in Birmingham, on September 8th, was born of a nobler desire to show the almost nine-tenths of Britons who live outside London that they are not ignored. He will have to do better: constitutionally, they are more sidelined now than ever.
展开▼
