Is British federalism possible?

For those who aren't aware, Lib Dem conference has been taking place over the last few days. Due to the pandemic, it's taken place "virtually" - but it's been far from a muted affair. Debates have proved quite colourful and the online nature of proceedings appears to have enabled some people to take part who ordinarily wouldn't be able to.

I think most people's attention has been on the "Europe motion", and understandably so. I'll let Caron at Lib Dem Voice fill you in on the details there. Whether you interpret this as a win or defeat for the leadership - or as the triumph of pragmitism over principle - it's something of an understatement to say this was something party members debated passionately. After the vote there remain strong feelings, as can be seen within the comments on LDV. (I happen to be of the view that the voting public don't concern themselves with the precise wording of conference motions in the same way conference attendees do. In practical terms, I don't see that this changes a great amount although I can understand why some are disappointed).

There have been various other items discussed, including a much better motion on the Creation of a Federal United Kingdom. It was moved by Wendy Chamberlain MP, and summated by Cllr Robert Brown (former MSP for Glasgow). It didn't generate the same levels of controversy, but it's worth looking at in more detail, so I'll go through it line by line.

Conference notes that:

1. The future cohesion and existence of the United Kingdom is threatened by a sense of alienation and powerlessness amongst many of our citizens which has fuelled Brexit and the growth of nationalism.
   
2. The COVID-19 crisis and Brexit have demonstrated both the value of the United Kingdom and the damaging inadequacies of its current constitutional arrangements.
3. Most people across the United Kingdom have multiple identities which they recognise to varying degrees and which should be reflected in the institutions of government.
4. There is growing support for constitutional reform across the nations and regions of the United Kingdom.

I should say before I start that I think most of this is very good. However, a weakness is that it assumes quite a bit, especially the desirability from a Liberal perspective of the existence of a United Kingdom (I'm a Republican for starters...). Point A may have been made stronger by explaining why "the cohesion and existence" of the UK is necessary for the creation of a liberal society. In regards the "nationalism" cited, this clearly is not referencing British nationalism and I find the selective focus quite problematic. 

Moving onto point B, I wouldn't agree that the pandemic has shown the value of the UK at all - I'd go as far as to say it's underlined how disunited the UK is. However, I concur with the suggestion that the inadequacies of current constitutional arrangements have been well demonstrated. I'm also not of the view that Brexit has done a great deal to sell the "value of the UK" to people like me.

While the "multiple identities" point is apt,  and there is certainly "growing support for constitutional reform", I see no evidence for an increased public appetite for federalism. Where there is obvious public sympathy for change is in Scotland, where there has been some reported growth in support for independence of late; it is disingenuous to present this as reason to believe there is a developing public appetite for federalism. Again, the motion would have been better served by pointing to academic studies confirming such a shift in public attitude, because without such references it seems a product of Liberal wishful thinking. We were making much the same noises before the AV referendum disaster. I'd love to believe that whole swathes of England want to see the emergence of a federal state with STV and a democratically elected second chamber, but I don't see it. 

I suppose it depends what is meant by the general term "constitutional reform". All the same, this is just the introduction - the meat of the motion is much more interesting.

Conference believes that:

1. The constitution of the United Kingdom is not fit for the needs of a 21st century liberal democracy.
2. The best way to ensure the continued union between Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland is to create a truly federal United Kingdom, as long advocated by Liberal Democrats.

I find it impossible to disagree with the first point here. I don't feel further elaboration is necessary. As for the second, I have always favoured a federal Britain but not for reasons of "ensuring the continued union". I think that to champion a ferderalist settlement either purely or primarily for that reason would be dishonest - Lib Dems haven't historically promoted federalism because we feared a break-up of the union, but because we felt this was the best way to address the unequal relationships within the Union and to confront issues surrounding subsidiarity and democracy. Federalism is seen as good because, according to the 2012 report of the Home Rule Commission, "it gives real democratic choice to the voters of each of the four jurisdictions... a federal system would be a permanent and stable solution. It would stand the test of time and contains natural checks and balances that are missing from the UK’s current constitutional arrangements". 

Conference calls for:

1. A Declaration that the United Kingdom is a federal union that exists by the consent of the people of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland where the founding principles of the Union are:
1. Democratic government based on liberal values in compliance with the European Convention of Human Rights and which fully respect the diverse identities of our people.
2. An equitable distribution of resources between different parts of the United Kingdom based on their respective needs.
3. A duty of co-operation on both the Federal and State governments to work for equality of opportunity, guarantee the essentials of a decent life for our citizens, tackle climate change and meet the challenges of a global economy.
4. Subsidiarity so that the Federal Parliament does not have the power to legislate in areas of competence of the parliaments of the nations and regions of the Union without their consent and that the exercise of public responsibilities is decentralised as much as reasonably practicable.

Each of the "founding principles", a to d, are sensible and I wholeheartedly support them.

The declaration that the UK exists by "the consent" of the people of the component nations is something I naturally support. It can only exist by the consent of its citizens. What unfortunately is not addressed here is the mechanisms though which non-consent can be expressed and acted upon. Consent of citizens can never simply be assumed and there have to be authorised methods through which such consent can be withdrawn. This matters in a week in which federal leader Ed Davey suggested he would act according to his "mandate" to oppose an independence referendum, as an MP elected by the voters of Kingston and Surbiton, even if independence-sympathetic parties were to win a signfiicant majority of seats in the 2021 Holyrood election. 

The motion continues:

    2. Early measures to implement the Federal Declaration including:

1. Creating a Declaration of Rights as a foundation document of a Federal United Kingdom which includes a new, modern, inclusive definition of citizenship.
2. The enactment and endorsement of the Federal Declaration by Westminster and the Parliaments and Assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
3. The creation of a United Kingdom Constitutional Convention to lead the creation, on a wide civic and popular basis, of a codified written constitution for Britain.
4. The election of the House of Commons by Single Transferable Vote and replacement of the House of Lords by an Upper House with a proper democratic mandate on a basis that represents the nations and regions of the United Kingdom.

All this is excellent and I cannot - and will not - argue against it. A written constitution is centuries overdue. A UK Constitutional Convention is something I have thought necessary for some time, although quite how this would work in the current political (and constitutional) climate is difficult to say. Securing a "wide civic and popular basis" for the convention will be more difficult in the UK in the 2020s than it was in Scotland in the 1990s. Measures b and d are fine aspirations, but there is no obvious route to securing STV other than through securing a Lib Dem majority under First Past the Post. Similarly, neither Westminster nor the devolved parliaments would be likely to endorse the proposed Federal Declaration in the near future. All these are sound objectives, but the route to achieving them is, shall we say, uncertain.

Conference also calls for:

    3. The creation of powerful institutions to encourage and enable co-operation between the governments and parliaments of the various parts of the United Kingdom that would include:

1. Creating a United Kingdom Federal Council of Ministers to enable the governments and parliaments of the various parts of the Union to work better, building on the work of the joint Ministerial Committees.
2. A power for one government to request formally that another take specific necessary action to facilitate policy objectives in an area where the other government has the policy lead.
3. A duty on the Federal Government to consult with the governments of the particular parts of the Union on federal policies that would impact on their statutory responsibilities.
4. Reform of United Kingdom-wide institutions to enable them to serve all governments and parliaments within the United Kingdom

There's nothing of substance to disagree with here, either. I'm pleased to see something like this being voted on at Conference - into because I imagine the public will get particularly excited about it but because we are actually putting forward some kind of proposal. It's extremely positive and shows that we're giving some thought to how federalism might actually work in practice.

The motion concludes by calling for:

4. The transfer of additional powers to the Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament) to create broad parity with the powers of the Scottish Parliament including the creation of Wales as a distinct legal jurisdiction.

5. Liberal Democrats in positions of power or influence in the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru and in local and regional government to collaborate in campaigning and using their influence to build a federal United Kingdom.

And that's the motion, as passed, in full. The final point is something Ed Davey might wish to think about next time he wishes to make pronouncements that may be interpreted as undermining federalist objectives. 

There's nothing radically new in what's being said here. There is an undeniable undercurrent, however: the motion seems to be motivated to some degree by a desire to preserve the Union. That much is new, as previous pronouncements on federalism have tended to steer clear of expressing such motivations, at least overtly.

Do I have difficulties with the motion? Aside from those already mentioned, not really. As I've stated, I'm pleased conference has discussed this and passed the motion. I would have voted for it. I can only agree with its general principles and objectives. I've often quipped that "if it was an offence to be a federalist party, there wouldn't be sufficient evidence with which to convict us" - that's not as true now as it was a few days ago.

But we have to ask the question, against the backdrop of questions surrounding Scotland's future, as to whether any of this is not only desirable but also achievable. Conference motions can be - and perhaps should be - aspirational in nature, but they also have to be believable.

My concerns are not about the motion itself but for the cause of federalism. Conference hasn't had this conversation in decades. If we'd passed something like this 15-20 years ago when we had well over 50 MPs, were in government in Scotland and had significantly more influence who knows what might have been achieved? This feels like a reaction to our own "sense of alienation and powerlessness" as the constitutional situation moves on without us. We've never put forward any workable proposals for British federalism, preferring to focus on devolution, and I would suggest we're now - at the eleventh hour - trying to put it back on the table. Is it too little, too late? 

While I'm pleased this has passed I'm afraid I can't get overly excited about this. Aside from a UK-wide Constitutional Convention - and even that would require significant cross-party and civic support that I'm not sure is there - this is all out of our hands. As Tim Farron made clear in the Rejoining the EU debate today, good liberal values don't by themselves achieve change - we have to win to do that.

I also still have no idea what the party's preferred options for federalism are. There were some sound suggestions outlined within the motion, but if we're going to publicly campaign for something we need to be able to show people what it looks like (not least as this is often a basis of our own criticisms of the SNP). I understand that we would want the precise details of a federalist settlement to be determined by the convention and that it is the people of the constituent parts of any federation who should have the final say on such arrangements - but we've not committed ourselves to campaigning for a Constitutional Convention but for federalism. The idea that we shouldn't express such ideas publicly prior to the verdict of the Convention is absurd. The public have a right to know what our aspirations would mean for them if they became reality; it's also not unreasonable to suggest we should go into discussion with some reasonably well formulated ideas of what we would like a federalist Britain to look like. Would a federal UK look more like Germany, like Belgium, like Switzerland, or more like pre-1992 Yugoslavia? Would it be based on symmetric or asymmetric federalism? Where might Orkney and Shetland fit into this? What about the wider "English question" - are we advocating a "four nations" or a "three nations plus English regions" model? Lest we forget, while discussions about devolution and federalism tend to focus on the "Scottish problem", in the next few years it's the "English problem" that's going to be most difficult to resolve. We need to be public in advocating solutions to this, and open in our engagement with voters. 

If there's one thing about the motion that particularly concerns me,  it's the commitment to campaign and fight for something that hasn't yet been defined - even if only broadly.  The most important question, however, is whether British federalism is possible. We're not speaking into a vacuum - this motion has been passed against the backdrop of a growing desire for independence in Scotland and a Brexit time-bomb likely to go off sometime in 2021. Liberals like myself, whose preference would be for federalism but are implacably opposed to the constitutional status quo, may well need to see federalism as a realistic project rather than a pipe dream (similar to Lords reform, which Liberals have championed, with little success, for over a century). We've been talking about federalism since Gladstone's time - we can ill afford to wait for another 100 years to see change. 

There are immediate choices to be made and some of us will not be able to bring ourselves to support a dysfunctional Union in the hope that, at some point in the distant future, a federal Britain will become reality. There have been some interesting noises coming from Labour in recent months, and this motion is broadly positive; I'm trying to be as open-minded as possible but in order to be convinced I'd need to see more substance from Labour, more reasons to believe the public would support federalism and - quite simply - some cause to be optimistic. 

At the moment I take the view that British federalism is as likely to be achieved as Morton winning the Scottish Cup. I'd love to see both of them happening, but I wouldn't put my money on either.