A new Act of Union

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The Consitutional Reform Group has put forward an interesting new proposal to radically extend the powers of the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies, the Scottish Parliament, and to create equivalent bodies in the English regions. In effect, the UK would become a federal country, with a much smaller central goverment (perhaps as few as 120 MPs) left to take decisions on issues like defence, international treaties and foreign affairs, national transport policy, 'federal' income tax and national justice policy and a supreme court, but each region and country given the mandate to self-govern on other stuff. Regions would be given the freedom to 'team up' on decisions or regional policies where it suited them - the North West, Yorkshire and North East, for example, might sign up to a common regional transport policy, or Wales and the South West a common fisheries and farming one. The Upper Chamber at Westminster would be replaced by a much smaller body of representatives of each of the regions, maybe 24 "senators" or whatever title they were given.

Would this work in the UK? It seems very close to the German model of Lander, how does it work over there?

[Lang Spoon]

No. It's far far too late. And we're not waving but drowning.

[Patrick Thistle]

I think it could work. But I doubt the current government would want that. I can't see an Imperialist bletherer like Rees-Mogg letting the oiks in the provinces have any say over their own future, the socialist scum.

[NHH]

It's a great idea, but will be added to the pile of things that need doing but it's near impossible to see how they actually happen (see electoral reform).
Also, federalism requires England to not be represented as you can't have a functioning federal state where one economy has the 6 times the combined population of the others, but Prescott fucked it by picking the wrong region to pilot his regional assemblies in, meaning that, as with the AV referendum, it will be portrayed as having been rejected and therefore should not be tried for many decades hence. Obviously, this is patent bollocks, but until there is a more powerful lobby for this than against it, it isn't going to shift.

Ultimately, this needs a Labour Government to come to power on a mandate of modernising the constitutional arrangements, and Labour have always been deeply, deeply ambivalent about this, being variously incurious, suspicious it's all a bit middle-class and sceptical that by smashing the centralised British state they lose the levers to do socialism.

[Patrick Thistle]

What's sad about your comments there NHH, is that Wales is the only place in the UK with a Labour government and where Labour has any levers to do socialism.

Labour should have abolished the House of Lords and introduced a PR second chamber based on large regions (like the top up AMs in Wales) but they didn't.