Paddington Bear wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:38 am
_Os_ wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:42 am
Hold up, nowhere did I say I support an Indy Scotland or whatever (it's not my fight/problem). The best course of action to me seems to let Scotland decide, which is where your opposition to devolution stops working, not many Scottish people think it has failed and want it all rolled back. The majority seems to be for more devolution.
The foreign policy element is limited to devolved areas, which will turn out to be a bit meaningless. State to state agreements happen on trade, not on which particular layer of government collects taxes. US states will have more foreign policy autonomy. What could happen maybe is the UK signs an agreement for reciprocal extradition with somewhere, and Scotland decides it would rather not be part of that (totally guessing here). I know UK citizens can be pursued from the UK in some US states but not others depending on the circumstances (complex area).
Not buying that a state called the UK which has Scotland in it, will not actually have Scotland in it. I think you're getting hung up on the exact constitutional framework, when it's all just a means to an end.
Devolving just about everything is the end of the Union sooner or later - this is why it is a bad idea! Not sure how many times I can keep rephrasing this point. We are either a country or we are not.
I think your criticism of devolution doesn't really work when the counterfactual is thought through fully. If Scotland had never had devolution. The reason Iraq/Afghanistan doesn't come up in Scottish debate as something they were forced into, is because they supported Blair/Labour under the Westminster fptp system, but also under the Scottish pr/additional member system. Devolution has removed a lot (but not all) of the representation argument, without devolution there would still be minimum 75% who wanted devolution in 1997 and probably a lot more too. Maybe enough people to force the SNP into seats even in a Westminster election (without any pr system in the background giving them a platform), that's what an existential question did to NI in Westminster elections. You seem to be saying there was another way of doing Scottish devolution maybe? Not sure how without a Scottish parliament something the Scots have an "ancient memory" of more than the people of Leicester or wherever have regarding their local council. There's every chance without devolution Scottish politics could be more toxic, the binary existential question is the key driver, wrong to think that trying to supress representation supresses the binary question (especially so when that question is fundamentally about representation).
Except that isn't the counterfactual I posed and my criticism was of Labour's tendency to not think through the effects of constitutional change rather than constitutional change itself. Devolving powers to much stronger city councils in Glasgow and Edinburgh (and Leeds and Manchester and and), and to the Highlands & Islands Council (and Cumbria and Devon etc) would have created the local control away from Westminster that I think we agree is/was necessary without fundamentally undermining the Union, which is what has happened. Ancient memory was a reference to the failed English regions as I'm sure you knew from reading but have misrepresented.
I'm not quite sure on the 'Scottish politics could have been more toxic' - the worst case would be that the system had failed, 35-50% of Scots were voting for Nationalist parties and demanding independence. Oh.
Apologies for only getting back to this now.
A nation can be fully federal and still be a nation, Texas doesn't have a seat in the UN. An obvious point I know, but also true. Brown's plan from what I've seen of it basically looks like creating some form of federal system, I'm not sure how that works without a written constitution (because Westminster can always demolish it all, if it wishes). I've tried to find the Brown discussion document once and failed (has anyone actually read it on here?). The Brown document took two years to make, and will go through at least another year inside the Labour policy team before a manifesto is made (in other words it's not final, very unlikely anything gets added now, but it is possible elements are removed).
I didn't know what your alternative was, which is why I asked. The problem with creating beefed up councils with no layer between them and national government, is the power difference between those to levels. A lot of those areas aren't going to be self sustaining and will need cash from national government, so national government can control them by slashing their budgets regardless of what formal political powers they have (which is what has been happening). You're correct that the Scottish parliament is more of a threat to Westminster, which is also why it can potentially get more done, it can bang on the door at Westminster or do what it can itself in a way a local council cannot. There's also a subsidiarity issue (how power is divided between various layers of government), if your version of devolution only has the highest level (national government) and the lowest (councils), you also make a hard limit to what can actually be devolved to the local level because a lot of functions will exceed the capacity of local government. For example regional infrastructure projects will have to remain in Westminster as they will exceed the capacity of any single local council, tax raising powers too (local business/council rates, but anything more than that would have to be at a minimum regional), and so on. You'll then be left trying to tell Scots power has actually been devolved.
Scottish politics could easily be more toxic. When a single issue dominates a polity the tendency is for movement towards the extremes, binaries are formed and the longer the question remains unresolved the more extreme the positions become. This happens regardless of electoral system. That's how NI ended up with SF and the DUP, when there were more moderate options available on both sides, on both sides it was a process of replacing successive parties with more extreme ones. Alliance getting more support from former unionist voters, is really about the question (basically "should Ireland be united?) itself coming closer to resolution, with unionist on the losing side (no point voting for a moderate unionist party, can't vote for a nationalist party, so they vote for a liberal party). If devolution had not given power to Scots in a way they find acceptable (and therefore the existential question had not been moved closer to resolution even to the extent it has), and instead Scots had been left with only their Westminster vote to try and exercise some real substantial power, it would be a safe bet that all the people who wanted devolution would still want it (a super majority) and all those who wanted independence (a large minority) would still hold those positions as you say, but the bit you miss is there's a huge difference between UUP/DUP and SDLP/SF. There's been no need for a radical version of the SNP to split from the SNP and then replace it, because the SNP has been successful, it's counter intuitive but this increases the chances of the GB part of the UK staying together because a compromise outcome becomes more likely. As soon as a SF v DUP dynamic develops it's winner takes all, and the chance of the UK ending sometime this century increases.
