Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): We are indebted to Ordovicius for bringing us Richard Wyn Jones' series of fatalist scenarios on the break-up of Britain. On an English parliament the fatalist cascade follows this train of thought:
- England is too large to be accommodated in the devolved settlement. An English parliament would be more powerful than the UK Government, it would be more central to peoples' lives and the everyday political life of the country. The supremacy and legitimacy of the UK government would be undermined, and with it our sense of Britishness.
- A more formal federal system would need to be devised to proscribe the extent and limitations of the national and federal governments in order to accommodate the English elephant in the room.
- Such a radical constitutional change is contrary to England's conservative instincts and the English will decide that such an upheaval is not a price worth paying for union with Scotland (or Wales and NI).
Despite the fact that the CEP argues for a devolved English parliament based on the Scottish model I happen to agree with Richard, I think profound tensions will arise between England and the UK, and we will by necessity require a written federal constitution. This is nothing to be scared of. If Britain is worth saving then the British people will find a way do so. If not, then so be it: Fear of the consequences for Britain is no reason to deny England's right to self-determination, and if England is denied then the union is doomed anyway.
The asymmetric constitution devised by New Labour that afforded extra privileges to everyone but the English has relied to a large extent upon the magnanimity of the English. Several members of the government have even invoked the famous English sense of fair play when imploring the us to show restraint towards the Scots in order that we might keep their unfair union together. Recently Alex Salmond has been delighted to discover that English restraint has its limits.
A devolved system would be entirely reliant on English restraint. If you can imagine a devolved English government acting in the manner of Alex Salmond's Scottish administration - forever pushing the envelope and antagonising the rest of the UK - then you can easily imagine the end of Britain. Worse still a devolved settlement not only rests on English restraint, but also upon the trust and fealty of the smaller nations, and Scotland in particular is neither trusting of English politicians or possessed of goodwill toward the Ancien Régime of England.
A federal settlement probably also requires English restraint because it is likely that the English would have to sacrifice their numerical advantage in the federal parliament, perhaps by qualified majority voting or some other mechanism, to prevent England from having the decisive say in all federal matters. Such a mechanism would effectively mean that it is ultimately the nations - and not the federal parliament - that will be sovereign. It will be very hard for unionists to turn their ideology of British sovereignty around like that, but some of them have already unwittingly done so when they pledged to uphold the sovereign right of the Scottish people - thus moving sovereignty from the centre to the periphery; from Britain to Scotland.
There is no solution that will be anomaly free and there's going to have to come a time when the British people have to ratify a solution that is acceptable to 'the British' as a whole and also to the nations of the UK individually. How we approach the 'British Question' relies upon England's answer to the English Question, and it's a fear of consequences that has prevented anyone yet asking the English for their answer to their question.
If, as Brian Barder suggests, a federal system will take 20 years to set up, the UK will have to limp on in a quasi-federal form. Personally I wouldn't put my mortgage on it lasting that long.
The fatalism of Richard's analysis runs contrary to the lack of any strong public desire to actually abolish the United Kingdom. If the break-up of Britain comes to pass it will be because of dithering, delay and drift. Resentment is building but whilst there is still majority support for the union the onus is our politicians to come up with a constitutional solution. Certainly Britain is a concept that needs to be reinvented - not so much in an emotional sense as in a political sense that will help inform the emotional sense.
