Genuine democracy needs to be face-to-face as between governors and governed and this is only possible on the city regional scale. There can be no grass-roots democracy so long as we are brainwashed into believing that democracy equals Westminster and Whitehall. With multiple parliaments and multiple No 10's democracy becomes feasible again. West Germany has 11 'lander', Italy has 20 regions and Switzerland has 26 cantons, all with extensive powers. We and the French are miles behind.
Back in the early seventies we could and should have discussed English regionalism when the subject of Scots and Welsh nationalism came up. It was side-stepped. The trouble is that no main political party is in favour of it, since all are committed to London centralism. The serious debate and organisation have to begin outside the party political orbit.
The new imperative is a new political dimension based on volunteers and principled professionals and where decision-making is regionalised. It has been slowly emerging from the 'alternative' movements of the last 30 years and is currently underwritten by the Church's endorsement of 'compassion and justice' as the values of the future. There is new thinking about 'counter-economics' and a widespread development of cooperative and other responses to mass unemployment. Decentralist extra-Westminster democracy is slowly surfacing.
It is up to people, every freedom-and-peace movement, to make their very specific contribution to the slow dismemberment of the superpower empires from within. When the process is complete and the last of the Caesars has been laid to rest, the problems of the world will be reduced to the level of the soluble.