Left hands and right hands

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Whilst some in ‘Welsh’ Labour are trying to start an internal party debate on a federalist future for the UK, their leader in England is allegedly trying to rebrand Labour as an English nationalist party. Even if the leak turns out to be an exaggeration, it’s time for the ‘federalists’ to recognise a lost cause when they see one.

Last week, I found myself in agreement with one small part of federalist Antoniw’s analysis, namely that it’s not for us in Wales to dictate what England should do. That is not, however, the same as saying that what England decides to do is not a relevant factor when Wales thinks about its own future. The problem is that, whilst I may not want to tell England how it should organise its affairs, I can only envision two potential solutions to the English problem which might make a federal solution start to look attractive to Wales. The first of those involves England accepting that a federal parliament/ government gives equal weight and voice to all four partners despite England accounting for 85% of the population, and the second involves England dismembering itself into a number of regions, each of which has a sovereign parliament equivalent to those in the current devolved administrations. One has only to state that clearly to understand why it’s not going to happen (and Matthew Parris has a good take on the problems with the ‘regionalisation’ option here). Unless the federalists have some other secret solution which they’ve thus far failed to articulate, it just ain’t going to happen. Neither the English Conservative and Unionist Party nor the English Labour and Unionist Party are ever going to accept either of the two potential options – and Keir Starmer embracing the union flag and ‘patriotism’ underlines that fact.

Turning the House of Lords into an elected Senate of the Regions and Nations with ‘some’ (i.e. limited) powers to block legislation from a largely unreformed House of Commons (which is what some of Labour’s federalists seem to have in mind - the idea of Commons reform seems to be a step too far for them) just doesn’t cut it. It seems to include an implicit assumption that the elected members of each region or nation will act and vote as a bloc in the Senate, allying themselves with other states in the UK as and when necessary. They won’t. They will be elected as members of one or other political party and will vote as a bloc according to the instructions of their leaders. And if we look at the last few elections, that would mean a Conservative majority for England in the Senate as well as a Conservative majority in the Commons: far from acting as a constraint on English power to dominate the other parts of the UK, it would actually strengthen that ability by putting both houses under the control of government whips.

If we assume that Scotland is going to become independent (although at the moment that’s still a bigger ‘if’ than many are assuming), and that Ireland becomes reunited (that seems more certain because of demographics, although again, the timescale is likely to be longer than some are assuming) then Wales faces a simple choice. We either go our own way or accept final and complete incorporation into England. A ‘federation’ between Wales and England is simply inconceivable. Instead of trying to find some fantastic way of breathing life into a moribund and unworkable proposal to reinvent the UK, which goes against the prevailing flow of English nationalism in both the Conservative and Labour parties, ‘Welsh’ Labour needs to start thinking very seriously about where it will stand in that debate. At the moment, they’re mostly looking clueless.