Introduction
By chance, I was attending a conference in Turin last year on the day when the results were announced of the referendum on Scottish independence. I was much struck by the unanimous enthusiasm with which my colleagues, not least my Italian federalist friends, greeted the referendum’s result. A number of these colleagues congratulated me personally for the decisive contribution they flatteringly (but wholly incorrectly) assumed I had made to the referendum’s outcome. I rejected their compliments with what I hope they thought was a show of false modesty. More significantly, all my colleagues seemed to take for granted that the result of this referendum assured for the indefinite future the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom and that the maintenance of this integrity was a goal that those concerned with Europe’s general welfare, and perhaps federalists in particular, should wholeheartedly endorse. Both of these assumptions seemed and seem to me in differing degrees questionable. While I am personally in favour of retaining the United Kingdom in its present configuration, I might not take the same view if I were a Scot. The United Kingdom has been for many decades a highly centralized political structure in which many Scots have understandably resented the unhealthy dominance of London in the decision-making that shapes their economic and political lives. On the face of it, this Scottish resentment is a reaction for which federalists ought to have at least some initial sympathy. Nor can it be said with any confidence that last year’s referendum has conclusively resolved the question of Scottish independence. Few people today would bet much money against the possibility of another referendum on Scottish independence within the next five to ten years, or even sooner.
After the Scottish referendum
It was apparent, even as the votes of the Scottish referendum were being announced, that the outcome left many issues unresolved. In the later stages of the campaign the leaders of the larger Unionist parties, the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, made what they described as a “vow” to the Scottish electorate, that much more in the way of political power and decision-making would be devolved to Scottish institutions. This “vow” was unashamedly made in hasty response to unfavourable opinion polling, which seemed to show only a few weeks before the referendum an extremely close race, moving perhaps towards a narrow vote in favour of Scottish independence. The “vow” was made without consultation of the Westminster Parliament, was a personal pledge of the leaders themselves and was noticeably short on detail. Like many major constitutional innovations in British history, it was an ad hoc response to an immediate perceived crisis rather than the setting forth of a long-term strategy designed to confront long-standing problems. The effect of this “vow” was to ask the Scottish electors to choose in their referendum between two largely imponderable contingencies, namely complete independence based on yet to be negotiated relations with the rest of the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union; or the maintenance of Scotland within the United Kingdom, but under a radically transformed system of devolved Scottish government. Unsurprisingly, the nationalist losers of the referendum have been quick to argue that the vote to reject Scottish independence last year was only a provisional decision of the Scottish voters, predicated upon the implementation of unspecified devolutionary reforms. When these reforms become clearer, there will no doubt be many Scottish nationalists arguing that they are insufficient, that the Scottish voters have been deceived and a new referendum is urgently necessary. The strong Scottish nationalist presence in Westminster after the last General Election will enhance the vigour with which this case can be made in the British national media.
Constitutional uncertainty
Although it seemed to be the intention of those making the “vow” to present agreed proposals for further devolution to Scotland rapidly, no agreement on the extent of this further devolution had been agreed by the time of the General Election on 7th May this year. In part this was due to genuine differences of view about such complex questions as “fiscal autonomy” for Scotland. In part, however, delay arose from the Prime Minister’s decision, in his speech welcoming the result of the Scottish referendum, to link the issue of further Scottish devolution to another controversial matter, that of Parliamentary voting on laws which affect, or can be judged to affect only England and Wales. In committing himself once more to greater devolution for Scotland, Mr. Cameron also promised to abolish the right of Scottish members of the Westminster Parliament to vote on legal texts in policy areas that have been devolved to the Scottish Assembly and governments. This concept of “English votes for English laws” has always been a technically complex and politically controversial one. The Labour Party, which until the recent General Election had a large number of Scottish MPs at Westminster, was understandably reluctant to see their rights curtailed in this fashion, and the matter remained until the General Election a barrier to agreement on further devolutionary steps in fulfilment of the “vow”. Among the arguments put forward by opponents outside the Labour Party of the introduction of “English votes for English laws” was the fear that that it might create at Westminster an inferior tier of Scottish MPs, less powerful and prestigious than their English colleagues. This compartmentalization, it was claimed, might lead to a greater sense of political separation and apartness between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. But irrespective of the final settlement of the matter of “English votes for English laws”, those fearing that Scotland and the rest of the Kingdom may already be “drifting apart” will have seen their concerns powerfully reinforced by the last General Election and the events immediately preceding it. Even casual continental observers know that the Scottish Nationalist Party won fifty six of the fifty nine Parliamentary seats contested in Scotland. Less widely known outside the United Kingdom is the important role played in the Conservative victory at the General Election by the specific concern among English voters that a minority Labour government would be unduly subservient to pressure from Scottish nationalists if it relied on the tolerance of MPs from the Scottish Nationalist Party in a hung Parliament. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was clearly aware of such English concerns and spent much of the latter part of the election campaign distancing himself from the Scottish nationalists. The Scottish nationalists, for their part, may well now be discreetly content that a Conservative government in London provides them with a convenient contrast to their own self-avowedly “progressive” policies and values. The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has for instance been swift to condemn the Conservative policy of repealing the present British Human Rights Act and possibly leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, enshrined in British law by the Act. She and her colleagues will no doubt be hoping for a number of such controversies to underpin her party’s campaign in the elections to the Scottish Parliament of May 2016. These regional elections seem likely to be highly important for the constitutional future of the United Kingdom. There has been speculation that in their election campaign the Scottish nationalists may call for a new referendum on independence and it can almost be taken for granted that they will regard as inadequate whatever new devolutionary measures the new Conservative government has put in place by then. A re-elected Scottish nationalist government after 2016 would be favourably placed to demand further concessions from the Conservative government and then argue if such concessions were not forthcoming that independence would be the only way of securing the changes sought.
Scotland and Europe
A particularly intriguing series of parallels and contrasts exists within the United Kingdom between the debate about Scottish independence and that concerning the European Union. Mr. Cameron, for instance, is unequivocally committed to the maintenance of United Kingdom, but his commitment to British membership of the European Union is a highly conditional one. The Scottish nationalists reject the continuation of the United Kingdom, but do not share the conditionality of Mr. Cameron’s approach to the European Union. It is generally believed that in a referendum on British membership of the European Union a larger proportion of Scots would vote to remain within the Union than would be the case in England, and the possibility of differing majorities within the two countries cannot be excluded. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish First Ministers have called for their constituent parts of the United Kingdom to be given a veto on British withdrawal from the European Union, a demand Mr. Cameron seems very unlikely to accept. Those voting in a future European referendum for Britain to leave the European Union will no doubt be reminded by their opponents that such a vote may well encourage and hasten moves towards Scottish independence. Ironically, there is a substantial strain of English nationalist opinion within Mr. Cameron’s party that would accept the prospect of Scottish independence with equanimity, even enthusiasm. The English nationalist vote has been an important theatre of competition between the Conservative Party and the United Kingdom Independence Party in recent years.
The reaction from Westminster
It should not be supposed that the traditional British political parties in Westminster are indifferent to the challenges posed to the stability of the United Kingdom by Scottish and other nationalisms. Unfortunately, it has been very difficult for these parties to provide other than preliminary and incomplete answers, often dictated by perceived electoral advantage. The debate about “English Votes for English Laws” is a good example of this problem. In approaching this issue, neither the Labour nor the Conservative Party have been able to set aside their own narrow political interests, nor to think coherently about the wider implications of such a change or consequential constitutional innovations that might necessarily arise from it. British politicians have often, if not always accurately, prided themselves on their “pragmatism”, by which they have usually meant to express a horror of systematic thinking, particularly on constitutional issues. Those who are pessimistic about the future of the United Kingdom are in many cases pessimistic because they believe that the British Union cannot be saved without substantial and intellectually well-founded reform, reform which they doubt the capacity of the current British political system to bring about.
The Federal Trust has good reason to hope that it can make a genuine contribution to the internal constitutional debate in the United Kingdom over the coming years. While for many years the term “federalism” was (particularly in the European context) simply a term of vague abuse in the British political vocabulary, it is now considered wholly acceptable for leading politicians to describe themselves as favouring a federal structure for the United Kingdom. There are however less positive aspects to this apparently encouraging development. There is little consensus among these leading politicians just what they understand by a “federal Britain” and there is as yet little appetite to think seriously about the delicate balances between dispersal of power and solidarity, between the rights of minorities and the rights of majorities, between rights and responsibilities essential for the proper functioning of a federal system. The constitutional programme for Mr. Cameron’s new government set out in the Queen’s Speech this year envisages a number of discrete measures relating to EVEL, to devolution for Scotland, a British Bill of Rights and a referendum on the European Union which give little appearance of having been adopted as part of a coherent strategy of constitutional reform. It would be a brave observer who would predict with confidence that the integrity of the United Kingdom is guaranteed by this programme.
Conclusion
It will be clear from the above that the future stability of the United Kingdom is far from assured as a result of the Scottish referendum. The remarkable electoral success of the Scottish National Party in the General Election is proof positive that separatist feeling in Scotland has not receded after the lost referendum. The continuing crisis of the Eurozone and the rise of various shades of Eurosceptic parties throughout the Union make constitutional instability within the member states naturally unwelcome at this time to those who support the cause of European integration. There are other major member states of the Union, including Spain, France and Italy, where separatist movements would derive encouragement from any success of Scotland in detaching itself from the United Kingdom. The Spanish government in particular was eager to stress before the referendum of September 2014 that its acquiescence in the accession of an independent Scotland to the European Union should not be taken as given. Mr. Barroso was widely believed in Scotland to have acted at the behest of the many national governments concerned about separatist movements in their own country when he warned that the negotiation of Scottish accession to the European Union would be a long and uncertain process.
It is however striking and worth emphasizing that the British Federal Union has refused to take a general decision supporting or rejecting Scottish independence, believing that federalist arguments can be advanced in favour of either proposition: the United Kingdom is in many ways an unattractively centralized polity, but is an open question whether the United Kingdom can be reconstructed upon classically federalist lines, given the economic and demographic preponderance of England within the United Kingdom. It can reasonably be claimed that the non-committal attitude of the Federal Union enshrines an important truth about the European Union, namely that the principle and practices of the European nation state need to be divested of the reverential awe which its supporters claim to feel towards it. If the United Kingdom has outlived its historical usefulness, federalists should hardly be those most eager to insist on its artificial resuscitation. The recent and future evolution of the Eurozone have posed and will continue to pose challenges to traditional conceptions of the nation state much greater than that posed by the reordering within the European Union of the internal frontiers of Great Britain or any other member states that may follow the British example. It would be strange indeed for federalists to welcome and advocate these integrative reforms of the Eurozone and yet to reject a priori any democratically legitimized redrawing of current national borders.
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