WE know what was supposed to happen. The Scottish Labour conference was supposed to be the launch pad for a new plan for the UK’s constitution. After trailing the idea for months, the Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale told the conference that a People’s Constitutional Convention would look at plans for federalism and Labour party representatives from all over the UK would be talking about how to take the idea forward. That was the plan anyway.
But has the idea unravelled before it has even begun? Speaking at a fringe event at the conference, the former Labour minister Brian Wilson called Ms Dugdale’s plan a pretty ropey idea and predicted it would not work because there is no appetite for it in England.
To make matters worse, Jeremy Corbyn did not publicly give Ms Dugdale’s plan the support it needed during his own speech. And to top it all, Ms Dugdale herself was forced to concede in an interview at the weekend that it was not UK party policy to introduce federal regions in England.
None of this looks very good for a plan that was supposed to be a flagship policy for Scottish Labour, even though federalism in the UK is a perfectly valid idea and a welcome contribution to the continuing debate about our constitution. Last year the Constitution Reform Group of MPs suggested a bottom-up federal system in which each nation would decide what is done at a national level, the idea being that it would make the UK constitution more appealing to many Scots - and as an idea, it has merit. It might even remove some of the antagonism between the constituent parts.
However, if the idea is to have any traction, there are some serious practical problems to be solved, one of which was identified by Brian Wilson when he talked about the possible asymmetry of a federal UK. Even though federalism is a good idea in principle, England is much bigger than the other nations so there would have to be mechanisms in place so that any federal structure was not dominated by the largest partner – and that logically means federalism within England. But as Mr Wilson pointed out, there does not appear to be any appetite for such an idea south of the border and unless that radically changes, the issue of how England would fit into a federal UK remains the most serious obstacle to making progress.
The other obstacle to Ms Dugdale’s plans is the state of Labour itself. Ms Dugdale says her idea would create a clear constitutional position for Labour, distinct from the all-out or all-in positions of the SNP and the Conservatives. But the problem is that if Ms Dugdale’s plans are to have any chance of thriving, they have to be internally coherent – in other words, all parts of Labour must be spreading the same message, which is not happening.
For Scottish Labour’s plans to have weight and to build support, voters also have to believe that there is a prospect of Labour forming a government and putting the plans into action. And after the disaster of the Copeland by-election, the continuing disunity in the UK party, and the lack of love between Scottish Labour and Mr Corbyn, that prospect looks further away than ever.
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