In order to preserve itself, the United Kingdom may have to become a federal state...
To preserve the Union, we might have to go our separate ways
Philip Johnston
19 July 2016
The Telegraph
Northern Ireland, England and Wales: The UK provided three teams at Euro 2016, to the bafflement of many on the Continent...
Sometimes, the simplest event can exemplify the most complex of arrangements. The fact that these islands sent three teams to the recent European football championships caused no surprise here but baffled many on the Continent. Are you not a single country, they ask. Well, yes we are when it suits us to be and we will be again at the Olympic Games in Rio next month. But occasionally we choose not to be and are content to revive old rivalries.
The British are alone in behaving this way. The Germans don’t send a Bavarian team and a Saxon side to compete in international competitions, nor the Italians a Lombardian and Sicilian one. The Catalans and Basques would love to take the field separately from Castile, but the Spanish government won’t let them.
...but will provide one team for the whole country at the Rio Olympics
Our unique Union is at one and the same time centripetal and centrifugal. Its institutions tend to unify, while its traditions and history pull in the opposite direction. It is a remarkable construct – and it is in peril.
We might have imagined that the greatest existential threat to the Union had passed with the rejection of Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum. But it has returned with a vengeance following the vote to leave the European Union. Scotland voted by almost two to one to stay; and Northern Ireland did the same by 56 per cent to 44 per cent. Wales was marginally for Leave; but it was in England where the Outers really broke through with a 53/47 victory.
So much has happened in the tumultuous aftermath of the Brexit vote that the implications for the Union have been overshadowed. Even during the campaign, the Remain side made less noise than they might have done about the risk to the country’s integrity were its constituent parts to vote in different ways.
Perhaps they judged, somewhat cynically, that the English would be even more inclined to vote Leave if they thought they could get rid of Scotland at the same time. I wonder. The prospect of losing their country while simultaneously pulling out of the EU may have been a constitutional step too far for many.
It is tempting to argue that since Scotland voted to stay in the UK and the UK has decided to leave the EU, the Scots just have to go along with it. But they are clearly not going to; so the question that arises, like it or not, is how to preserve the Union in a post-Brexit world.
This matter is clearly preying on Theresa May’s mind. She mentioned it in her statement in Downing Street last week when she returned from Buckingham Palace; and her first official visit was to Edinburgh to meet Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister. Mrs May apparently left the impression that the Article 50 process leading to departure would not be triggered until all parts of the Union agreed, effectively giving the Scots a veto over timing. It is certainly true that the new PM wants to find a way of doing this that carries the entire UK along with it. After all, the alternative is to crack the Union, possibly beyond repair. Scotland is not the only problem; if anything Northern Ireland’s relationship with Ireland is just as complicated as Scotland’s with England.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, rejected Mrs Sturgeon’s interpretation of the Prime Minister’s assurances; but if the break up of the Union is the price to paid for a deal would that be acceptable to the country or to Parliament? The SNP, of course, would be delighted with such an outcome. During the referendum campaign they pushed for Remain while knowing that a vote to leave suited their separatist ambitions better.
But for Unionists, the idea that the Scots will just have to lump it is not the most rational contribution to this debate and will merely contribute to a surge in support for independence.
So perhaps something much more fundamental is required. The all-party Constitutional Reform Group (CRG) has just published proposals for a new Act of Union that would effectively turn the county into a federation, with four self-standing national units voluntarily pooling their sovereignty to a central administration. At its most radical, the plan would see an English Parliament and the replacement of the House of Lords with a new second chamber drawn from the four parts of the UK.
The proposals “start from the position that each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a unit that both can and should determine its own affairs to the extent that it considers it should; but that each unit should also be free to choose to share, through an efficient and effective United Kingdom, functions which are more effectively exercised on a shared basis”.
Common UK functions might include the constitutional monarch as head of state, national security, foreign affairs and defence, human rights, immigration, the supreme court, the currency, a central bank, some taxation powers, and the civil service. Everything else would be controlled by the nations and regions.
This is a complete reversal of what happens now, where a central government devolves power to the periphery as it sees it fit. It has encouraged some to conjure up the prospect that Scotland and Northern Ireland could stay in the EU, for instance, while remaining part of a federal Britain, though how that could work is anyone’s guess. The EU has indicated that the UK must leave as a unit since its membership was secured on that basis; and the Spanish have previously threatened to block a separate Scottish application to avoid stoking their own independence pressures. But as we have seen recently, anything is possible.
While the outside world tends to regard us as a single entity, we don’t see ourselves that way. Psychologists refer to the tensions induced by holding two seemingly contradictory positions at the same time as cognitive dissonance, and we have a national version of it. As with the football teams, we are both united and separate – and even more so now that Scotland has sent 54 Nationalist MPs to Westminster and the English have voted for a fundamentally different future for the country. We ignore these realities only if we don’t mind the Union breaking apart at the seams. If we want to keep it intact then some radical thinking is required, and soon.
To preserve the Union, we might have to go our separate ways
To preserve the Union, we might have to go our separate ways
Philip Johnston
19 July 2016
The Telegraph
Northern Ireland, England and Wales: The UK provided three teams at Euro 2016, to the bafflement of many on the Continent...
Sometimes, the simplest event can exemplify the most complex of arrangements. The fact that these islands sent three teams to the recent European football championships caused no surprise here but baffled many on the Continent. Are you not a single country, they ask. Well, yes we are when it suits us to be and we will be again at the Olympic Games in Rio next month. But occasionally we choose not to be and are content to revive old rivalries.
The British are alone in behaving this way. The Germans don’t send a Bavarian team and a Saxon side to compete in international competitions, nor the Italians a Lombardian and Sicilian one. The Catalans and Basques would love to take the field separately from Castile, but the Spanish government won’t let them.
...but will provide one team for the whole country at the Rio Olympics
Our unique Union is at one and the same time centripetal and centrifugal. Its institutions tend to unify, while its traditions and history pull in the opposite direction. It is a remarkable construct – and it is in peril.
We might have imagined that the greatest existential threat to the Union had passed with the rejection of Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum. But it has returned with a vengeance following the vote to leave the European Union. Scotland voted by almost two to one to stay; and Northern Ireland did the same by 56 per cent to 44 per cent. Wales was marginally for Leave; but it was in England where the Outers really broke through with a 53/47 victory.
So much has happened in the tumultuous aftermath of the Brexit vote that the implications for the Union have been overshadowed. Even during the campaign, the Remain side made less noise than they might have done about the risk to the country’s integrity were its constituent parts to vote in different ways.
Perhaps they judged, somewhat cynically, that the English would be even more inclined to vote Leave if they thought they could get rid of Scotland at the same time. I wonder. The prospect of losing their country while simultaneously pulling out of the EU may have been a constitutional step too far for many.
It is tempting to argue that since Scotland voted to stay in the UK and the UK has decided to leave the EU, the Scots just have to go along with it. But they are clearly not going to; so the question that arises, like it or not, is how to preserve the Union in a post-Brexit world.
This matter is clearly preying on Theresa May’s mind. She mentioned it in her statement in Downing Street last week when she returned from Buckingham Palace; and her first official visit was to Edinburgh to meet Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister. Mrs May apparently left the impression that the Article 50 process leading to departure would not be triggered until all parts of the Union agreed, effectively giving the Scots a veto over timing. It is certainly true that the new PM wants to find a way of doing this that carries the entire UK along with it. After all, the alternative is to crack the Union, possibly beyond repair. Scotland is not the only problem; if anything Northern Ireland’s relationship with Ireland is just as complicated as Scotland’s with England.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, rejected Mrs Sturgeon’s interpretation of the Prime Minister’s assurances; but if the break up of the Union is the price to paid for a deal would that be acceptable to the country or to Parliament? The SNP, of course, would be delighted with such an outcome. During the referendum campaign they pushed for Remain while knowing that a vote to leave suited their separatist ambitions better.
But for Unionists, the idea that the Scots will just have to lump it is not the most rational contribution to this debate and will merely contribute to a surge in support for independence.
So perhaps something much more fundamental is required. The all-party Constitutional Reform Group (CRG) has just published proposals for a new Act of Union that would effectively turn the county into a federation, with four self-standing national units voluntarily pooling their sovereignty to a central administration. At its most radical, the plan would see an English Parliament and the replacement of the House of Lords with a new second chamber drawn from the four parts of the UK.
The proposals “start from the position that each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a unit that both can and should determine its own affairs to the extent that it considers it should; but that each unit should also be free to choose to share, through an efficient and effective United Kingdom, functions which are more effectively exercised on a shared basis”.
Common UK functions might include the constitutional monarch as head of state, national security, foreign affairs and defence, human rights, immigration, the supreme court, the currency, a central bank, some taxation powers, and the civil service. Everything else would be controlled by the nations and regions.
This is a complete reversal of what happens now, where a central government devolves power to the periphery as it sees it fit. It has encouraged some to conjure up the prospect that Scotland and Northern Ireland could stay in the EU, for instance, while remaining part of a federal Britain, though how that could work is anyone’s guess. The EU has indicated that the UK must leave as a unit since its membership was secured on that basis; and the Spanish have previously threatened to block a separate Scottish application to avoid stoking their own independence pressures. But as we have seen recently, anything is possible.
While the outside world tends to regard us as a single entity, we don’t see ourselves that way. Psychologists refer to the tensions induced by holding two seemingly contradictory positions at the same time as cognitive dissonance, and we have a national version of it. As with the football teams, we are both united and separate – and even more so now that Scotland has sent 54 Nationalist MPs to Westminster and the English have voted for a fundamentally different future for the country. We ignore these realities only if we don’t mind the Union breaking apart at the seams. If we want to keep it intact then some radical thinking is required, and soon.
To preserve the Union, we might have to go our separate ways
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