Need for a Federal UK
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was a great place to be. I’m not saying that there wasn’t any problems to solve, differences to overcome. However, there was absolutely no reason why we should have had devolution forced upon us by New Labour. Their main excuse was that they wanted to improve politics. Well we know that that was a big fat lie. It wasn’t as though they didn’t have enough to do as it was in the general running of the country. The biggest gripes I have was that: a) devolution was never actually necessary, and b) they implemented devolution in such an uneven haphazard way that it was bound to be wrong from the beginning. Above all else, the largest part of the UK, England, was given nothing when Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were given devolved assemblies initially, which have since evolved into much more. The financial arrangement, the so called Barnett formula, was imposed and this has caused no end of controversy since. Then recently, we had a referendum in Scotland for Scottish independence (18th September 2014). Which, while being good for democracy turned out to be a waste of time, because they chose NO. However, this opened a whole new can of worms with regard to the position of England within the current devolved model.
The real way to bring greater equilibrium within the UK devolved model would be to give England a devolved parliament. Sensible, practical, realistic. Doesn’t require to great a change in the devolved model of the UK, but would require the scrapping of the Barnett formula in favour of a new financial model. That’s where everything falls down. By getting rid of the Barnett formula in favour of a new financial model, could see a farer system being used instead. Yet New Labour was never about being fare, it was about breaking up Britain, helping Scotland attempt it’s dream of independence, destroying England by breaking her up into smaller regions with their own assemblies, in order to prevent a vote against staying in the EU and hopefully getting more votes at any general election that came along. Consequently removing the obstacle to pushing Britain into the Euro Zone and closer ties with the EU, preferably without a referendum. In the current run up to the General Election in 2015, you would be forgiven for thinking that there are similarities between how Labour is thinking now and in 1997. You would be right.
Even now they refuse to discuss properly the position of England within the current devolved model and still think that breaking England up in some way would be a really neat idea. They also dismiss out of hand any idea of a referendum on leaving the EU, or not, as the case may be. At the same time the Conservatives are thinking of English only MP’s debating English only matters. A sort of halfway house between no consideration for England in a devolved situation at all and a proper fully fledged devolved assembly or parliament. Nothing changes.
So how can the situation be rectified without changing the nature of governance to much, given that we already have a partial federal system already, devolution. Firstly, we have to find some way of representing each of the four (4) countries equally at the national government level, while at the same time allowing each of the four countries to have their peoples properly represented at the devolved level of governance. However, we need to create a new financial model to support the new state of affairs at national and devolved levels. The Barnett formula is clearly unacceptable, based as it is on a currently uneven devolved system created by New Labour. So some form of reorganized taxation system and other revenues collection needs to be developed in order to help properly fund the newly altered United Kingdom.
Above all else, there needs to be a new constitution created to organize the new system of governance, and set out clearly whats what.
