Every once in a while I encounter some talk about a “federal Britain.” I’ve heard the Liberal Democrats favor the idea, but it’s not mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#Policies Who supports it? And how would it work? I presume it would be a system where each of the nine administrative regions of England (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region_of_England) has its own elected assembly, like Wales and Scotland and NI have got already; and then each of those 12 units would have something like the powers, functions and autonomy of a state in the U.S. or Australia, or a province in Canada. But what would be the details? Would each region have its own legal system and court system? What functions would be retained by the Westminster Parliament?
And, would you (if you’re a Brit) be for it or against it? Why?
It’s not really about creating a federal structure replicating that of the countries you mention, but a more general use of the term to mean devolved and decentralised power.
The idea of regional assemblies comes about for various reasons - a perception that England (outside of London) is being unfairly treated by not having a local government structure comparable to the Scottish parliament, or the Welsh, NI & London assemblies. Current county-level local government has little real power.
However, there’s few areas where an obvious regional identity and locality presents itself as a candidate for a meaningful local assembly. If you follow the links from your second Wikipedia article, you end up with the ‘north east’ which stretches from the Scottish border down to Liverpool and Manchester, which is attempting to bring together very disparate elements. Likewise the ‘south west’, with Swindon (a London commuter town) being lumped in with Cornwall. Any attempt to create a more powerful government structure on such artificial selections of locations is going to be problematic, to say the least.
There’d certainly be no separate legal systems - after all, Wales still comes under English law. Scotland’s retention of legal independence is a unique situation that’s not going to change.
I don’t think the Lib Dems are particularly in favour of this regional structure - I was under the impression they wanted to give greater powers to existing local government, which takes things down to much smaller regions.
Perhaps it’s unique in an otherwise unitary state like the United Kingdom, but a similar legal independence happens with Louisiana and Quebec in federal states.
Louisiana’s legal system is no more “independent” than any other state’s; it is a bit different than others because it’s based on French civil law, but some of the differences have been eroded by unofficial standardization pressure, and Louisiana is under federal law to the exact same extent as every other state. And every state has its own court system. But as I understand it, in Britain there’s one legal system and court system for Scotland, and another for all the rest of the UK, which is an unusual setup.
Considering that “all the rest of the UK” is almost entirely comprised of England (with wee Wales and Northern Ireland appended), it seems to me that there is little difference between the arrangement between England and Scotland and the arrangement among the various states of the United States, which are all sovereign and free to have differing legal systems so long as they do not contradict federal law.
So, it hardly seems like a radical deviation to me.
Ha! Had me going, there. You meant North West, of course.
I see from that article that there’s a suggestion to combine Cumbria with the North East region. I hadn’t heard of this before, but it makes some sense, if only from the point of view of developing tourism.
The main reason that we need some sort of federal system is encapsulated in what was named the West Lothian Question by Tam Dalyell.
I am English by birth and live in Scotland. Aside from defence, foreign affairs, immigration, social security policy and central economic and fiscal responsibilities, all decisions about the Government’s affect on my life is made in the Scottish Parliament, elected from Scottish Constituencies; English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs cannot influence such decisions. If I lived forty miles away over the border, all of those decisions would be made by all MPs from all constituent countries. So, a smoking ban has been passed in Scotland by Scottish Parliamentarians; similarly for NI and Wales in different forms. In England all MPs for Scotland Wales and NI will vote on this matter, as on all other dometic matters. Similarly, the decision on limiting freedom of speech in England and Wales was this week decided by Scottish MPs.
Now England is a more right wing nation than Scotland or Wales. The Labour Party’s majority is currently solely due to Scottish and Welsh MPs. Otherwise the parliament in London would be a hung parliament- no overall majority. Where the London Parliament is exercising its supra-national role- international affairs etc.- there is no problem. But why oh why should the Scots and Welsh and Irish decide English matters.
In the words of the Proclaimers song “Cap in Hand”, now ironically reversed:
{i}I could tell the meaning of a word like serene
I got some ‘O’ Grades when I was sixteen
I can tell the difference between magarine and butter
I can say “Saskatchewan” without starting to stutter
[b}But I can’t understand why we let someone else rule our land, cap in hand***
A while back, while I was watching a session of Parliament, the leader of the opposition got a very big laugh with what was certainly a mistake. He referred to Blair as President Blair.
There are two distinct ideas, although both are based on the assumption that devolution should be extended to England.
On the one hand, there is what the OP asked about which is the idea of having elected regional assemblies. Regional assemblies already exist. Their main function is to coordinate policy between the lower-tier local authorities. As such, most of their members are nominated by those lower-tier local authorities and those that aren’t are nominated by other bodies. The proposal is therefore that these should be directly elected. This amounts to taking the example of Welsh devolution (and of the London assembly) and applying it to the English regions.
Which sounds a great idea, doesn’t it? Who could possibly object to the idea of direct elections? Well, when the electors of the North East region voted on the issue in a referendum in 2004, they rejected the idea. Which is why the government suddenly became reluctant to press ahead with such plans in the other regions. The main reason for its unpopularity seems to have been a feeling that it was just a job-creation scheme for politicians, that it would create more bureaucracy, that it was actually the opposite of devolution with the lower-tier authorities being the main losers and that it ignored local identities. It should also be noted that the existing assemblies are democratically accountable, albeit at one remove from direct elections by the electorate. Personally I think the original proposals were a good example of the all-too-common fallacy that more local government is somehow inevitably better.
The other approach takes not the Welsh example but the Scottish one and applies it to England. The more radical version would be to create a separate English Parliament, to legislate for England what the Scottish Parliament currently legislates for Scotland. But this isn’t going to happen either, being favoured only by Little-Englander Tories and then mostly for its shock value. Much simpler - and slightly less unlikely - is the idea of that only English and Welsh MPs would be able to vote on legislation that applies only to England and Wales. In other words, instead of creating a new institution, just change the voting rules of the House of Commons.
All these plans arise from the assumption that devolution has created a constitutional imbalance between the four constituent nations of the UK. As Scotland does now undoubtedly enjoy a privileged position, the only real way of restoring that balance would be to give the other three nations their own parliaments with comparable powers. In contrast, whatever their other advantages might be, regional assemblies cannot address that problem, not least because no one is suggesting that they be given anything like the same powers as were devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Supposing that they could ever be some sort of solution to the imbalance is just Prescottian woolly thinking.
But the real answer might well be that the constitional imbalance won’t really matter anyway. Since when did constitutions have to be strictly logical?
Scotland went, Wales went, it’s time for England to get out of the United Kingdom. England for the English!
If the loudmouthed Northern Irish wanker is so everlasting anxious to be British, I say let him have it. Then HE can deal with the Commonwealth, pay for the Royal Navy, argue with the French about beef, and all the rest of it. Oh, yeah, and he can solve (and pay for) the problem of Northern Ireland while he’s about it. The English are fed up with it.
Until the last few months, considering the way he has treated his cabinet and party, I think he had attained presidential status, rather than just having the ambition.
the EU is pushing this sort of structure, partly because it’s the sort of thing Germany does already and what works for Germany must be good for everyone, right? and also because it hopes that such small governing units, being economically unviable as independent entities, will look to the EU, rather than national government, for their defence, financial and external relations needs, causing national government to wither away in favour of one-Europe government.
Britain is about the size of Oregon (except there’s 60 million people inside it, not 3.4 million). Would you want to split Oregon up into three (or four) smaller states?
How would he manage that?