Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon) Constitutional reformers are spoilt for choice in Scotland at the moment. A day after the Labour /Lib Dem /Tory announcement that Sir Kenneth Calman will head the Commission to Review the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government has unveiled the second phase of its National Conversation.
Speaking at the launch, Alex Salmond challenged his unionist rivals to submit their proposals to a referendum:
We in the Scottish Government believe that sovereignty lies with the people, and that the people have the right to decide how they are governed. That's why we launched a national dialogue, allowing everyone to participate in the progress of our constitutional future.
Wendy Alexander had earlier put the Commission's case for legitimacy.
Unlike the SNP's national conversation, the Commission has a genuine mandate from the Scottish Parliament and it enjoys real cross party support.
With support for independence flatlining and the Scottish Government's national conversation purely an exercise in legitimising the SNP's breakaway agenda, it is the Scottish Parliament Commission that will seek to make devolution work better for Scotland as part of the United Kingdom.
The vast majority of Scots want Scotland to walk tall but not walk out of the United Kingdom and it is the Scottish Parliament Commission that best reflects mainstream opinion in Scotland.
In the faces of charges that the National Conversation is purely a partisan exercise, the Scottish Government can point to the support of former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the SNP does not currently have the votes to get a referendum through the Scottish Parliament.
The Commission process has problems of its own, not least the dispute between Labour and the Lib Dems over whether it should consider returning powers to Westminster. In his Telegraph article yesterday, Gordon Brown insisted that "an environmental Union, a security Union and a Union for defence is to the benefit of all." Significantly, the first two areas are exactly those where he has previously suggested that devolution could be reversed.
For the moment, the Commission has a fundamental advantage in the patronage of Westminster, where real power still lies, as Professor John Curtice noted in The Scotsman today:
He said the commission aimed to do two things: convince Scots of the need for more financial control and persuade the English that Scots should have more financial responsibility.
"The crucial thing about this commission is who it persuades at Westminster, because all the important decisions on this will be made at Westminster," Prof Curtice said.
On this point, one key straw in the wind is provided by a leaked report from a Downing Street meeting in January:
[Brown] opened a discussion with his colleagues on the Barnett Formula, in which he noted it would be "very difficult" to reach a consensus on changing the status quo.
This was followed by Straw urging Brown to engage on Barnett to deal with the concerns in English constituencies about the funding system. The justice secretary, in emphasising his point, noted that Scotland had higher levels of public spending than Wales and regions in the north of England.
Des Browne then agreed with Straw, saying the government had to be "proactive" on any review of the parliament's financial powers.
It was in this context that Brown said the funding issue "could not be ignored" but noted there had to be a "considerable period" of public debate on the matter.
Gordon Brown may be a reluctant convert to the cause of further devolution, but neither he nor his cabinet are immune to the pressure for change building up on both sides of the border.
