Constraining England

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Yesterday’s post considered the question of why people might be looking for a federal or confederal structure for the UK. Today’s returns to a consistent theme of this blog, which is that any such solution cannot overcome some fundamental problems. Let me start by saying that I believe the UK in its current form to be doomed. Not, primarily, because of the Scottish question, but because of the Irish one. A combination of demographic change in Northern Ireland (the Irish-identifying population is going to exceed the British-identifying population by a clear margin in the foreseeable future) and the fact that whilst, in pre-EU times, the Republic looked like a very socially conservative place but, post-Brexit, it is the North which looks like the more socially conservative, a factor which will affect the younger generations particularly. That’s not to say that reunification is as imminent as some believe, merely that it will not be indefinitely delayed. That means that any federal system is inevitably concerned only with England, Wales, and Scotland. How can they effectively operate as a federation or confederation?

Yesterday’s post referred to the series of articles by Glyndwr Cennydd Jones on the IWA website. It is clear that Jones has given a lot of thought to the question of how such a confederation can work without England necessarily dominating. And his starting point – that sovereignty lies in the individual nations, not in the centre, and that those individual nations delegate authority over certain shared matters to the ‘Council of the Isles’ which exercises them jointly is a reasonable one in principle (although it’s notable that all proposals for any sort of federal or confederal approach always end up suggesting that Wales and Scotland should directly exercise less control over their own futures than the Republic of Ireland, Malta, or any other member state of the EU). I’m not sure that it solves the problem though, and I’ll illustrate that with three practical and relevant examples, two relating to defence and the third to currency, all of which would be delegated to the centre in the proposed model. I assume that, based on current polling trends, there is a Conservative government in England, a Labour government in Wales and an SNP government in Scotland.

1.    Replacement of Trident. Under the scenario set out above, the governments of England definitely, and Wales probably, would wish to proceed. Does Scotland have a veto? If no, does that mean that Scotland has both to contribute to the cost and host the facility?

2.    The US wants to invade a country in the Middle East and wants the UK to join in. England says yes, Wales probably says no (after a bit of prevarication) and Scotland says no. Are Wales and Scotland bound to contribute both money and young people’s lives to the pursuit of US imperialism?

3.    There is a large deficit as a result of paying for a pandemic, and a programme of austerity is suggested. The English government is wildly enthusiastic, and both Wales and Scotland are deeply opposed, but with a single currency and single central bank, only one side can win the argument.

In all three cases, the issue comes down to the same thing: does England, with 85% of the population and wealth, get to outvote the other two, or can the other two either singly or acting in consort block what England wants? The problem is, in essence, this:

·        If the English majority gets to decide all these issues, on what basis would such a structure ever be attractive to the likely governing party in Scotland? (Wales is different – I can see ‘Welsh’ Labour going along with this in the naïve belief that Labour might one day win a majority in England and the even more naïve belief that an English Labour government would be significantly different from an English Conservative government.) Whilst the range of powers delegated to the centre is more limited than at present, it still replicates precisely one problematic element of the current situation.

·        If, on the other hand, England’s actions can be constrained either by Scotland alone exercising some sort of veto, or else by some sort of weighted voting under which combined Scottish and Welsh votes outweigh England’s voice, why would that ever be attractive to either of the parties likely to be able to form a government in England, without whose agreement such a proposal is dead in the water?

The underlying issue with any sort of confederal system proposed for the UK is that it depends on the governments and/or electorates of all three countries being ready to accept it. Once the principle of sovereignty belonging to the parts not the whole is accepted, a simple overall majority of the UK electorate to ‘delegate’ powers to the central Council is no longer enough. Whilst the proposal put forward in the five articles is a valiant effort, I really don’t see how it addresses the inherent problems. It might, conceivably, have headed off the Scottish independence movement three decades ago, but it’s now far too late.

What's the purpose of a confederation?

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There is nothing particularly new in the idea of a ‘Britannic Confederation’ as outlined by Plaid’s leader, Adam Price, last week.  In one form or another, the idea has been around for a very long time – I seem to remember Gwynfor Evans using the same term in the 1960s and 1970s.  It is clear that, whatever paths the different nations of these islands choose, their shared geography and history make it natural and desirable that close economic co-operation should continue.  And as Adam has pointed out, the Benelux model is an interesting one to study.

But – and there’s always at least one ‘but’ – the idea is not without its problems.  Whilst it’s true that Luxembourg is much smaller than either Belgium or the Netherlands, there is not, amongst those three countries, anything like the same disparity in size as exists between the countries of the UK.  One of the biggest obstacles to any form of federal or confederal structure in the UK is that one component – England – accounts for 85% of the population, and an even higher proportion of GDP.  Recognising that fact in voting power in any supranational structure leads to dominance; but failure to recognise it means England having to accept more or less ‘equal’ status with very much smaller nations.  The former looks undesirable from a Welsh perspective and the latter unachievable.

It’s true, of course, (assuming that that not insignificant obstacle could be overcome) that whether the UK is or is not a member state of the EU makes no difference at all to the practicability of a Britannic Confederation, and I understand (and agree with) Adam’s assertion that “…it will be made much more pressing and necessary if Britain were to leave”.  That does, though, highlight what I see as the two biggest problems with the proposal. 

The first is that such a unit can only be entirely in or entirely out of the EU; it cannot have some members in and others out.  A Britannic Confederation of the sort under discussion simply would not work if Scotland (to choose a country not quite at random) were to pursue continued EU membership whilst EnglandandWales chose not to.  It limits our future freedom of choice.  And the second goes to the heart of my concern about Brexit from an independentista perspective: outside the EU, the Welsh economy, it seems to me, is likely to be bound ever more tightly to the English economy and will, in practice, have to follow the same rules and regulations.  Some sort of Confederation (depending on how the population disparity is resolved and which decisions are taken where) might give us a marginally greater role in setting those rules and regulations than simply having a handful of MPs in the Westminster parliament, but the real decisions will still be made by the dominant ‘partner’, and there is a danger that such a confederation reinforces rather than weakens that.  It's a very poor substitute for a Welsh seat at the EU table.

There’s another reason for my agreement with Adam’s contention that the need is more pressing outside the EU - or rather for me agreeing with the corollary, namely that it’s less pressing within the EU.  As a member state of the EU, Wales would have its place and voice alongside the other countries of the current UK, creating a different context in which to maintain close co-operation.  Just as I wonder whether Benelux would ever have been created if it hadn’t predated the EEC, so I also wonder what purpose a Britannic Confederation would serve if all the countries of the UK were full independent member states of the EU.  Why would we need to invent such a structure in that context?  It strikes me as adding a wholly unnecessary extra level of government into the mix.

That, though, supposes that my definition of ‘necessary’ is shared by others, and brings me to the real question about why such a proposition is being put forward at all.  Is it driven (as superficially appears to be the case) by economics and the desire for close co-operation, or is it driven by a political imperative to make the end of the UK look somehow less final?  Is it a way of taking decisions which, for whatever reason, ‘need’ to be taken collectively for a particular geographical area, or is it an attempt to provide a comforting level of continuity by arguing that there is a purpose to a UK level of government after all?  I can’t help but suspect that the driver is more a political nervousness about independence than a real conviction that the UK simply needs to be reimagined.

Britannic Confederations

Tweet There’s nothing particularly new about the idea of a confederal Britain as floated by Leanne Wood last week.  I remember Gwynfor talking about the possibility in the 1970s, and I think that he wrote a pamphlet on a “Britannic Confederation” sometime in the 1960s, although I can’t lay my hand on the copy which I’m sure I have somewhere.  Whether it’s as good an idea now as it was pre-EU and pre-devolution is another question – even the best ideas only work in context.  The idea didn't disappear for a few decades by accident.

It’s unclear to me from the reporting of the speech containing the proposal whether it replaces the ‘aspiration’ for independence for Wales or is merely an attempt to define a staging post and a process for moving forward.  I’m assuming the latter, although I’m well aware that a confederation would have been enough for many in Plaid over the decades – and been several steps too far for some.

The idea of requiring no more than a majority vote in the Assembly to move all the way to a full confederal system is certainly a bold and radical one.  It’s only a matter of months since Plaid – very sensibly – moved away from its previous position that we needed another referendum just to get the power to make a minor variation in income tax.  It looks a bit like going from one extreme to the other; but the end result is a better position to be in than part of the Labour-Tory consensus that even small changes need another referendum.

Of course, using the argument that the people will have voted for it by electing a government committed to that position means that it becomes essential that the proposition is central to any manifesto; claiming a mandate for such a change if it’s only mentioned as a vague aspiration – as independence has been recently – is simply not credible.  The proposal makes sense only as an attempt to put the question back at the centre of the party’s proposition, rather than just another way of attempting to park the question.  So, how serious a proposal it is will become very obvious when the party publishes its manifesto for the next Assembly election, I guess.

As an idea, a confederation has its merits.  For anyone who believes that Wales’ progress is likely to be gradual rather than revolutionary, it does at least set out a credible path to the acquisition of many more powers within the current UK state, whilst leaving open the option of the more radical step later.  But my fear is that what looks like a gradualist, step at a time, change in Wales will inevitably look very different from an English perspective.

Whilst it’s not clear to me at what point on the journey from where we are to a confederation the English step change would have to happen, the fact that there would have to be one is surely inevitable.  A combined UK/English government and parliament can be made to work, after a fashion, in the current context, but there would have to be a clear separation between the two in any confederal system.  That won’t look like slow and gradual change to 85% of the population of the UK.

Could the UK parties and the English electorate be persuaded that it’s a price worth paying?  Maybe, if it maintained the precious union.  Or rather, maybe that would have been possible in the past.  If a clearly thought-through proposal along these lines had been put forward in 1997 instead of the devolution proposals which were enacted, I genuinely believe that it might have been possible for the unionists to win the argument – for a lengthy period at least.  But I think it’s now too late for that.

So, that leaves us with the question – why would the English parliament and government agree to a step change in their governing arrangements of the nature required to make this proposal work when the SNP definitely, and Plaid rather more hesitantly and apologetically, are saying that they only see it as an interim solution anyway?  What’s in it for them, if they think that they will be required to undo the changes in a few years time anyway?  It’s a proposal which will only ever make sense to England if they can be persuaded that it’s going to be a long term stable solution.  And it could only be credibly presented by the SNP as the very opposite of that.  In the place where it makes most sense – Wales – we’re dependent on the Scottish and English views.

As a short term process, it looks eminently sensible from a Welsh nationalist viewpoint, but as a long term solution, it would condemn us to a foreign and defence policy which continued to be based on possession of weapons of mass destruction, and it would prevent us becoming a member of the EU in our own right.  So whilst at first sight it looks like an attractive road forward to an increasingly powerful Assembly, I wonder whether its practicability in relation to the current context has really been thought through.