The Guardian has reported that:
Scottish Labour is considering backing a second independence referendum in a dramatic reversal of policy by the party leader, Richard Leonard.
Party sources have told the Guardian that Leonard will raise that possibility at Labour's Scottish executive committee on Saturday, where it could also discuss demands for it to split formally from the UK Labour party.
Leonard told his shadow cabinet on Monday he wanted to hold a special conference in May to decide Scottish Labour's position on a fresh independence referendum, where he would present proposals for Labour to back a federal UK.
Let's just discuss the politics of this, and not the rights and wrongs of independence, per se.
First, given Labour has exited Westminster for all practical purposes as far as Scotland is concerned, this makes sense. Scottish Labour as well now concentrate on Scottish politics, where it still has some representation.
Second, given how dire Labour's result was for Scottish Labour to think to it can do better with its own policies might also make sense. Even Richard Leonard has got as far as reading the runes correctly on this.
Third, this is a spoiler by Labour. The Tories say no to independence. The SNP says yes. So Labour triangulates and says the middle ground looks like an option. It's classic stuff.
But the question is, will it work?
The fear for the SNP is it might: in a three-way vote federalism might win.
The hope for the Tories is it might let them cut the SNP largely out of Westminster and cut the block grant but let Johnson say he kept the Union together.
The gain for Labour would be hard to assess: they reduce their chances of forming a government at Westminster and nothing right now is going to get them back into office in Scotland, nor will that change for a long time to come, I suspect.
So what for the people fo Scotland?
People often opt for compromise. Labour is playing on that hope. But this will be a dire compromise for Scotland. Economic policy would remain with the currency in Westminster. So whatever else is said, Scotland will not have its own central bank, or its own currency and its own control of its own economic and fiscal policy. Under federalism Scotland will remain a glorified council. And as a result federalism will offer no gains to Scotland at all. The chance of prosperity that indp0ednence would bring is lost. Instead, all it offers is a downside: Scotland will be treated as responsible when it will not be, and marginal, which it will become to an even greater extent than at present.
As pure politics go there is only one winner in this, and that's Labour. They help the Tories on the way.
For Scotland this looks like very bad news. By and large Scotland has realised that this is what Labour is for it. I hope that they will appreciate that this is the case here as well.
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As an Independinista, this looks like a great idea. While it is in the Scottish electorate’s hands to choose independence or the status quo, any move to a federal solution would have to be agreed by the electorate throughout the UK. This is fraught with issues, not the least of which is the exact form of federalism, but any form would require the English electorate to give up its current hegemony.
Let us imagine that in the three-option referendum in Scotland there is a preference for federalism, which is rejected in England. This would surely only increase the share of the vote for independence.
I personally would welcome a few years of federalism chat as the Labour and Fib Dems thrash about with the inevitably hopeless schemes to balance a federal system were one party has 85% of the population. The “no” vote for independence in Scotland is very old. Edinburgh university’s study suggested that every day 150 more “no” voters die that “yes” voters. I can wait.
Interesting argument
I like it
Thanks
I would take issue with the 150 a day number as there are only about 60000 deaths in Scotland annually. This average has held for decades. This is only about 150 a day. If we say that maybe 90% are over sixty and that 70% over 60 voted no then we’re looking at a daily death rate of about 100. Not quite the 150 but still about 35,000 no voters a year which would equate to about 170,000 no voters. Yes lost by 360,000 so we’re about halfway there. So another 5 years would do it but that’s not counting the soft No’s to Yes.
On this basis the average Scot has a very good life expectancy of more than 90 years
Or the emigrate to die
david says:
“Let us imagine that in the three-option referendum in Scotland there is a preference for federalism, which is rejected in England. This would surely only increase the share of the vote for independence.”
I don’t see this. All it is likely to do is muddy the waters as ‘Devo Max’ did. Anyway you can’t sensibly have a three way referendum, unless it is in two rounds, without causing chaos.
Does Scotland want to be in a federation with a Brexited Lesser England ? I wouldn’t have thought so. I’d want to be convinced that the arrangement allowed Scotland a lot more self-determination than at present and to be still tied to Sterling and the City bankers is a recipe for eternal servitude.
Unless Labour can put together a convincing scenario for ‘Federalism’ which would be attractive in Scotland and in Lesser England and Wales too, I can’t see any advantage at all. It sounds like a half-baked rehash of Gordon Browns regional devolution which nobody seemed much taken with.
If this is the best Richard Leonard can come up with he might aswell join the Lib Dems and be done with it. Perhaps he needs a hobby.
I am nursing a cold just now so not fit for any heavy duties. Tiring of rewatching old dvds I have begun yesterday to catchup with the Citizens’ Assembly in progress since last October. Am on the second day this morning and what do you know – the subject of federalism is outlined. Briefly, as it is an introductory weekend. Things are happening here that are so buried in the clamour of celebrity news and WW3 threats that they get overlooked, especially from London. Take heart Richard ( not Leonard! ) we may have been fooled once etc.
If anyone else has too much time on their hands then wander about the website
https://www.citizensassembly.scot/
Charles Stewart Parnell put it best 135 years ago this month in my home county: “No man has the right to fix a boundary on the march of a nation.”
Perhaps, in time, Labour and the other parties in Westminster will be persuaded to accept this.
My first wife was a Parnell…and proud of it
Politically the Scots are very, very conservative (small ‘c’), whatever their party allegiance (and whatever they claim); genuine Radicalism in Scotland has been a rarity since the Reformation. The Scots are also evolutionary gradualists in everything; an idea they have consolidated and made their own since the Enlightenment.
Devo Max would have won the 2014 Referendum comfortably, if a two question Referendum had been offered. I can understand why pro-Independence Scots wish independence immediately, but have never understood why they believe they can talk sufficient Scots out of their conservative-gradualism to win, without going through the inevitable multiple-stage process required. The route-map is obvious, and easy to work out. There are of course risks and tests; but of course that is why the gradualists set the test.
Whatever the weaknesses of Federalism (they are what makes Federalism a staging-post to Independence), it is more productive than the current flawed arrangements; which financially, are solely designed to make governing Scotland so difficult and opaque that it is possible for Unionists to deprive Scotland of its own resources and simultaneously blame the Scottish Government for managerial or political incompetence (and even raise the hopes of some Unionists that Boris Johnson’s majority might allow them to destroy Holyrood altogether).
Federalism is a sharing of sovereignty, requiring a codified constitution. Westminster will never propose that. If they do propose something they are pleased to call ‘federalism’ with something they are pleased to call a ‘constitution’ it will simply be designed to lock Scotland legally forever into the very situation which you describe in your final paragraph with Westminster owning power over everything, never mind the currency and the economy.
Good point
The role of the Crown might have to be defined
And that would never do…
“…. it will simply be designed to lock Scotland legally forever into the very situation which you describe in your final paragraph”. Of course it will. The incorporating union of 1707 was designed specifically to achieve precisely the same outcome. Nevertheless, within a very few years it only survived a vote in Parliament through a small number of proxy votes. Nothing is forever.
This is Realpolitik, first and last. Westminster never willingly gives anything away, now or anytime in the past; it is moved only by necessity. The problem, however is not Westminster. Opposition to independence within Westminster will collapse swiftly enough if there is a a clear, decisive and determined majority in Scotland, once established. The problem is the essential conservative-gradualist instincts of the Scottish people. Cut that any way you like: I merely suggest that you adapt to it, and push its boundaries until the decisive move is made; or you can always choose to be broken by the Scottish people’s essential resistance to being hurried.
“Federalism is a sharing of sovereignty, requiring a codified constitution. Westminster will never propose that. ”
Very good points. The main stumbling block as with the present set up is the English constitutional doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty of Westminster whose supporters claim holds writ in Scotland too, though it goes against the principles of the earliest document of note on the issue in Scots law: the “Declaration of Arbroath” which contrariwise indicates that the polity of Scotland are ultimately sovereign. The Sewel Convention has been shown to be a mere merkin over the issue of sovereignty. Westminster will not concede the point therefore no genuinely federal system has any chance of being set up.
John’s last paragraph is the best summary of GERS I’ve ever seen!
🙂
In 2014 the Labour Party in Scotland – it has never been a separate Scottish party – revealed itself by choosing to back the Tories in the “Better Together”/’No’ campaign, even fronting it. They showed that they do indeed care more about their own careers in British politics than they do about the ordinary folk of their own country. The betrayal of Scotland’s working peoples could not have been clearer – and ‘Scottish’ Labour even cheered a right-wing Tory victory. That will never be forgotten or forgiven. The electoral massacre that followed and the permanent lifting of the pro-Indpendence vote were the natural consequences – and the recent election has shown that these are not going away. In the constituency in which I campaign, Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, the Labour standard bearer, ex-MP Ian Davidson, who had memorably said that after the 2014 victory all that the Labour Party victors would need to do was “bayonet the wounded”, sank still further to 4.7% of the vote and lost his deposit.
So… what chance for Leonard’s supposed plan for a change in position? First, few people would bet that the reported change will actually take place, such is the past evidence of unthinking anti-SNP, stuck thinking and worse in ‘Scottish’ Labour. But what if it did? The devil will be in the detail – most of all if they attempt the ‘federalist’ triangulation of which you warn here. Nobody has ever come up with even the haziest sketch of how a ‘federal UK’ would be constituted, let alone how it could work. The disparities of population size mean that only a ‘union’ of an EU kind based on a parity of nations could come anywhere near forming a workable system – and recent history has shown how utterly unacceptable such parities of power and esteem are to any of the British ‘unionist’ parties – let alone the now whipped-up post-imperial, nationalists of right-wing Tory provincial England.
All that Leonard and his supporters – should there prove to be enough for this purpose – will have done is to offer further proof that the attempts to deny the Scottish electorate a fresh chance of determining their own post-Brexit future, are doomed. The position of the Westminster parties – in and out of government – is untenable and it will break.
First of all I would like to make one thing clear: ‘Scottish Labour’ is not a political party. It is an accounting unit of the UK Labour Party. It’s leader is Jeremy Corbyn and it’s registered address is in London, England. It is sometimes known as the ‘Branch Office.’
In a way the situation that the accounting unit finds itself in reflects the situation that Scotland finds itself in. Its prospects are severely restricted by the policies and decisions made in London. Something which it cannot affect because the English part will always be able to outvote it.
I find it ironic that, having joined in coalition with the tories to oppose the independence of the people of Scotland, the accounting unit now wishes to make itself independent from its English masters. Now that will be a mighty big stick which the independent Scottish Labour party will be beaten with at every available opportunity.
I seem to recall a former UK Prime Minister regaling us with ‘Devo Max’ and the ‘closest thing to federalism in a ‘union’ where one part makes up 85%’ during the first independence referendum. What we ended up with was partial control over income tax and road signs. Happily the people of Scotland remember all those promises which were made in order to secure that No vote in 2014 and we will not be fooled by promises from the powerless again (I hope).
What the accounting unit manager isn’t telling us is how he will manage to persuade England to accept this change to the unwritten constitution of the UK. After all, he has as much power to change the direction of the UK as a handcuffed prisoner in the back of a G4S prisoner transport van. Perhaps he means when UK Labour eventually get their turn in power again, in a decade or two? I, for one, am not prepared to wait. Only Scottish independence is acceptable to me.
This proposal is about trying to boost the accounting unit’s chances at the upcoming Holyrood elections, nothing more.
It should be treated with the disdain it deserves.
🙂
Precisely. We are far past the point where anything proposed by the charlatans of either Labour or the Tories is acceptable. They have burned their credibility over the last 7 or 8 years. The UK is finished for many reasons besides Scotland and the SNP need to focus on what a sovereign progressive and viable Scotland will look like and getting that over to the people without wasting time on spoilers dreamed up by puppets like Leonard and Carlaw.
would England, Wales and N I not have to vote for that too?
If they had to the vote will not happen
Interesting and insightful article and commentaries.
As a former No – at 66 I hope I’m not one of the 150 to die off any day soon – I would have opted for Debo Max/Federalism as a compromise.
Not now, I think it would entrench irreversibly the democratic imbalance that we have at present.
There is only one option – Independence however difficult that will be to start.
Federalism cannot work evening if an Upper House were weighted to give smaller nations more clout – the US Senate works that way only because there are so many smaller states who can work collaboratively and numerically outweigh the big states. UK doesn’t have that
I sent this around 5pm but it seems to have gone AWOL. Apologies if it duplicates after sending.
Richard Leonard once again demonstrates his lack of understanding of Scottish history, historical or recent, by proposing federalism for the UK. Back in the 1970s when devolution was first the subject of referenda in Scotland and Wales, I’d have leapt at the offer of a federal solution as a means of delivering some form of Scottish-based national governance and a partial escape from Westminster’s policies which so often delivered damaging outcomes in Scotland. Having lived abroad in federal countries, I could see the benefits of locally-based political activity creating local economic engines.
Since the restoration of the Scottish Parliament on 1999, the overwhelming majority of Scots have expressed satisfaction with Holyrood’s governance, while the failure of the UK Gov’t to deliver its promises in 2014, the 2016 Brexit vote and the record of Conservative governments since 2010 have only served to accelerate the direction of travel towards greater autonomy. It’s simply far too late to suggest UK federalism now: England has always been sceptical about it because it became used to exerting absolute power across the UK, so it has always been lukewarm about federalism, and Scotland has already rejected it. End of.
But Richard Leonard has to be asked what he thinks Scotland might gain from federalism, given the power-grabbing elective dictatorship currently ensconced at Westminster. Our economy will continue to be controlled as it currently is, our workers’ and human rights are at the mercy of that government, devolved powers will be taken back by Westminster, even our hard-won parliament is at risk with the Tories overruling/ignoring Holyrood’s decisions (cf Holyrood’s overwhelming rejection of Johnson’s Brexit Withdrawal Bill).
However, even greater issues will still continue as at present, with Scotland powerless to alter them: our children will still be more likely than not to be drawn into wars that Scotland doesn’t support (I saw a chilling statistic that claimed that, in the 313 year existence of the UK, it was at war somewhere in the world for about 240 years i.e.78% of the time). Then we have WMDs foisted on us without any say in the matter and posing an ever-present risk to our populace. These last two points alone make a very convincing case for independence, never mind economic, social and ecological considerations.
Apologies Ken
Rather a lot of family requiring attention tonight
How would foreign (and Brexit) policy work in a federation? Would each state have a veto?
No foreign affairs would be run from the national capital as it is in all federations. In this case that would mean Westminster.
Well, this will be popular!
As a Celtic fringe person myself but at the other end of England – I’m all in favour of federalism.
True, I’m influenced by more than a few Scots friends in England, but as they point out the US manages federalism quite well.
The other important point is that Scotland (and Cornwall) could actually create their own currencies – not internationally tradeable it’s true, but locally valuable.
You need only something to spend it on and a method of collecting it in law.
That is what we need now for local control.
And amid all this far too complicated independence, local currency could be created now too – no need for independence. The facility for local control already exists.
Why on earth is nobody taking it on?
Scotland and Cornwall cannot have their own currencies
They can have tokens exchangeable into sterling that only circulate in the local economy
I am not saying these may nit be useful but they really are not currencies
I regret to say that in this Peter you are simply wrong
And they provide none of the benefits of independence and actually giving floating currencies
The way Westminster is treating Scotland’s MPs at the moment, and the way it’s demolishing the already-existing ‘agreements’ made during the setup of devolution is an indication of what a ‘compromise’ actually entails. It’s totally true that power devolved is power retained. That’s being clearly demonstrated at the moment.
Westminster can ignore devolution whenever it suits them–as it’s doing at the moment, by playing silly buggers with the Budget to attempt to wrong-foot Derek MacKay, by taking over the powers the EU has been responsible for–despite it being a total violation of the original devolution agreement. And so on. The gloves are off, and the truth is pretty plain now.
Labour can toodle around, pushing for a ‘third option’ till the cows come home. I think it’s pretty plain now that our association with Westminster is not workable–and that Westminster has no intention of making it work. Tory MPs are openly jeering while the SNP MPs stand up to speak for ordinary folk in Scotland AND for the UK as a whole. Westminster has set out its stall. Time to do the same in Scotland. We can’t afford to wait around until English Tory voters wake up to what they have just done. The ship is holed and sinking, but the band is still playing as if everything is hunky dory. We know better. Time for the lifeboat launch.
Independence is the only way Scotland gains control of its affairs. There is no ‘third option’ any more. And I do believe the majority of voters in Scotland (the ones who are not Tories) are beginning to see the truth of this. Better late than never. Roll on IndyRef2, whatever form it takes.
Does Richard Leonard not realise that a Scottish MP has already proposed this ‘federalism’ to little effect…? Will he now start rehashing all GB’s speeches?
Until Westminster accepts a written constitution agreed by an independent external body (UN?) and thereby relinquishes its imperial past we will get nowhere with this proposal….
Thank you for the Assembly link Hazel….
Do you not wonder why Labour are avoiding a Home Rule (us paying UK for services rendered) option and opting for UK-wide federalism instead.
Federalism would entail a knock down rebuild of the entire UK political system and a radical restructuring of England. Home rule for Scotland would not, it could settle Scottish “issues” while leaving Labour to propose federalism for rUK if they want.
Paint me cynical I know, but I think it is actually because Home Rule is more viable and more able to be presented rationally that Labour will avoid it – they don’t want it.
Having said that, I don’t believe either UK federalism or Scottish Home Rule will ever work. The UK is just not set up politically to accommodate either.
I agree