Jamie Stevenson
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Support for the union has been a cornerstone of Conservative policy for two centuries. At the Scottish Conservative Conference in May 2008, David Cameron spoke of “the ugly stain of separatism…seeping through our union flag” and reaffirmed his opposition to Scottish independence. “I do not want to be the prime minister of England. I want to be prime minister of the United Kingdom – all of it, including Scotland.”
Yet not a word about the union appears on the party’s website, which promises only to “address the West Lothian question and give English MPs a decisive say on laws that affect only England.” And it was Cameron himself who pointed out in August 2006 “that the policies of Conservatives in Scotland and Wales will not always be the same as our policies in England.” Having been cunningly outflanked by Blair in 1997 on traditional Tory issues such as law and order, the party is all too wary of being outmanoeuvred on its own ground yet again: this time by Brown’s flagrant playing of the patriotism card. Adopting the recommendations of Ken Clarke’s democracy taskforce for exclusive voting rights for English MPs over England-only legislation is as far as Cameron can safely go without triggering Labour accusations of union-busting. Yet in the words of one Tory grandee, there is a strand of thinking—very much still a minority within the party—that would welcome Scottish independence, as it might mean the reduction of Labour MP’s and the enhanced prospects of Conservative governments. Even the right-wing Adam Smith Institute published a report in April 2007 arguing that independence would be good for Scotland’s economy, predicting that it could precipitate growth of up to 7 per cent in just 5 years. And it’s worth remembering that before Salmond’s makeover, the SNP had much more in common ideologically with the Conservatives than Labour; in the 1970s, their right-wing policies earned the nickname the “tartan Tories.”
For a maverick few in the Tory party, the passive and reluctant enablement of Scottish independence could prove the Cameron era’s accidental trump card. It is an open Holyrood secret that Salmond has postponed the referendum till 2010 for one reason. As Robert Hazell points out (Prospect, July 2008), a Conservative government in Westminster offers the best hope of converting Salmond’s personal popularity into a majority for independence. Even after Salmond’s robust opening year as first minister, support for independence struggles to break through 30 per cent. Tom Gallagher (Prospect, September 2008) has highlighted Scotland’s low election turnouts, the SNP’s pitiful membership numbers and its reliance on personality rather than policy as evidence of the significant obstacles to independence. Nor has Salmond shown his usual magic touch in handling the fallout from the banking crisis. Far from inflaming nationalist passions, the £37bn bailout of Scotland’s two flagship banks, the Royal Bank and the Bank of Scotland, has emphasised the usefulness of Britain’s bigger financial muscle. Salmond is struggling to counter unionist claims that an independent Scotland could not have saved its banks from the global credit meltdown; his recent accusation of “smear, fear and misinformation” against the unionist cause smacked of desperation.
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Christine Constable
Jack Straw’s description of the Conservative policy of “English votes for English laws” as “narrow English nationalism” demonstrates his willingness to adopt the tactics of the playground bully, by replacing intellectual debate with name-calling.
Labour’s partial devolution settlement aimed to ensure that only the Scots voted on Scottish matters and only the Welsh on Welsh matters. This was meant to salve years of rancour caused by the fact that neither Scotland or Wales felt they had democratic control over their own affairs. At the time, Labour politicans were adamant that this was not a matter of “narrow nationalism”; it was an essential requirement of a functioning democracy.
England, by contrast, is in democratic meltdown. For England to find herself with a prime minister whom no one in England has elected, and without an executive or parliament, is an affront to democracy. In a post-devolutionary British state, it is absurd to have ministers managing English departments who have not been elected by the people of England—Douglas Alexander, for example, MP for the Scottish constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire South, has total control over English transport, yet has no power on transport issues in Scotland.
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David Marquand
Robert Hazell has got himself into a terrible muddle in his last article for Prospect. He says, rightly, that it is time for a second wave of constitutional reform to follow the first wave that was one of the great achievements of Blair’s first term. He lists a series of radical reforms which ought to be included, ranging from further refinement of the devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to Lords reform, parliamentary reform, electoral reform and a British bill of rights. He is right about these as well. He says that Lords reform and a British bill of rights should be referred to a convention of some kind, or at least to public consultation. I applaud that too. But then, for no good reason, Hazell the radical reformer suddenly gives way to Hazell the timorous establishment whig.
Jack Straw, Gordon Brown’s campaign manager, has come out for a written constitution—albeit rather gingerly. Four of the six candidates for Labour’s deputy leadership have done the same. But for reasons I cannot grasp, this is too rich a stew for Hazell. A written constitution, he says, would be a “huge project” with little public support. What, he asks fearfully, should it say about the House of Lords, the monarchy and the established church? Would it be the constitution as it is, or as it ought to be? Would it be entrenched, and if so how? These are valid questions, but they are not impenetrably difficult. And they all apply, equally strongly, to Hazell’s own proposals. The combination of Lords reform, electoral reform, refinement of devolution and a bill of rights would be a huge project. So would a convention on Lords and electoral reform and public consultation on a bill of rights.
At least two of Hazell’s proposed reforms—refinement of the devolution settlement and a British bill of rights—also raise the question of entrenchment. The Human Rights Act was not properly entrenched, and this failure has led to a series of bitter disputes between the executive and the judiciary. Without entrenchment, how can we be sure that a British bill of rights will not produce a repetition of that sorry tale?
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Robert Hazell
Britain is poised for a second big wave of constitutional reform. Tony Blair never really believed in it, but despite his minimalism, the first wave of reforms (devolution, the Human Rights Act, Lords reform stage one) has transformed Britain’s constitutional landscape and built up momentum for the second. Gordon Brown, by contrast, is a strong believer in constitutional reform. He has kept it quiet for ten years, but in the opening speech of his leadership campaign he committed himself in general terms to a new programme of reform, starting with parliament. In the same week, his campaign manager Jack Straw came out in favour of a written constitution.
Blair’s reforms have left a lot of unfinished business. The main items are devolution, parliamentary reform, Lords and electoral reform and a British bill of rights. On devolution, Alex Salmond is not the only first minister flexing his muscles; all three of the devolved assemblies will demand more powers. Brown should set up a British framework for answering their demands. Under the old regime, each would have been dealt with separately, through the Scotland office, Wales office and Northern Ireland office. Brown should merge the three offices into a single department, and revive the cabinet committee on nations and regions, which lapsed in 2005. As devolution heads into choppier waters, Brown should revive the joint ministerial committee on devolution, the forum in which the British prime minister meets his devolved counterparts, which Blair also allowed to lapse in 2003.
Parliamentary reform is one of Brown’s declared priorities. As leader of the house, Jack Straw has strengthened the legislative process with various technical but important reforms. Now we can expect scrutiny hearings of senior public appointments, as happens with the treasury select committee, which can question new members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. To reconnect parliament with the public, the government could encourage parliament to welcome public petitions, as the Scottish parliament does. The e-petitions currently directed to No 10 could be channelled through parliament, strengthening its historic role in redressing grievances.
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Paul Skidmore
When the low turnout at the 2001 general election first brought the issue of political disengagement into focus, it was often said that this was an aberration: a product either of voters’ basic contentment with New Labour, or more likely of the Conservatives’ unelectability. Neither condition is now present, yet only the most optimistic foresee a return to politics as it once was.
The final report of the Power inquiry, published in March, carefully chronicled the depth of this disengagement. The report takes aim at a political system “significantly out of step with the values, expectations and interests of the individuals and many groupings that make up British society.”
Power’s comprehensive description of this disengagement has made it a rallying point for those concerned about British democracy at the end of the Blair era. David Cameron’s enthusiastic response to the report—”the Power inquiry is one of the most important initiatives we’ve seen… for many years”—was similar to the way some Labour modernisers latched on to Charter 88 two decades earlier.
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Lewis Page
The most desirable quality in a soldier is loyalty. Skill at arms, leadership, intelligence, all are useless—even dangerous—if their possessor is not true to his salt. Still, only a handful of countries have managed to place their military leaders firmly under civilian direction, and even among that happy group the principle is sometimes quite recent. French generals, for instance, plotted to overthrow their government less than 50 years ago. In most nations, the process has scarcely begun. For a majority of the human race, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun.
Against this background, it is possible to feel concern when the head of the British army gives broad hints that he and his fellow generals strongly disagree with the policy of the elected government. General Sir Richard Dannatt is not a bluff military simpleton: he knew precisely what he was doing when he spoke to the Daily Mail in early October. But some suggested that Dannatt was acting unconstitutionally by saying what he thinks.
In fact, that isn’t true at all. By his oath of attestation, Dannatt is loyal to the Queen, not to Tony Blair or the Labour party. As a practical matter, unwritten like so much of the British constitution, this means that his true superiors are the British public. He has done nothing wrong by giving a professional opinion to his real bosses.
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Richard Reeves
In May 1873, the British establishment was shaken by a bitter row. It concerned the legacy of John Stuart Mill, who had just died. The Times had printed an obituary which was an exercise in posthumous character assassination. It was written by Abraham Hayward, a Tory lawyer and fierce critic of liberals, feminists and philosophers. Mill (who was guilty on all three counts) had been a target of Hayward’s vitriol ever since the two had faced each other in the London Debating Society half a century earlier and Mill, in the words of one observer, had “gone over Hayward as a ploughshare goes over a mouse.”
The Thunderer’s obit caused a retaliatory strike by the liberal cleric Stopford Brooke, during his Sunday sermon at St James’s. This provoked Hayward to print an even more savage attack, focusing on an incident from 1823, when the 17-year-old Mill had been arrested for the distribution of literature on contraception. More articles and pamphlets appeared, on both sides, and the controversy raged for weeks. One of the unfortunate by-products of the row was the decision by William Gladstone to withdraw his support from a committee to erect a monument to Mill’s memory, an act of cowardice for which he has been condemned by even his most eulogistic biographers. It was Gladstone who called Mill “the saint of rationalism,” which, though meant affectionately, contributed to the false picture of Mill handed down to us today: a boy crammed with facts who grew into an ascetic, dry, humourless, sexless, lofty intellectual.
The furious exchanges following Mill’s death point to the inadequacy of this caricature. Mill’s greatness does not in fact lie in the power of his intellectual endeavour: he is far from being Britain’s greatest thinker. Nor does it lie in his political skills—by traditional criteria he was a political failure. The greatness of John Stuart Mill lies in his refusal to separate thought and action. He was a man who, like his godson Bertrand Russell, went to jail for his beliefs. He said that “ideas have consequences”—but was rarely content to limit himself to the former.
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Robert Hazell
Constitutional reform will be seen as the Blair governments’ greatest legacy. But it is a subject in which Tony Blair is famously uninterested, and to which he has devoted only one speech as Labour leader. Significantly, that was the first John Smith memorial lecture, and the subject was chosen in homage to his predecessor, whose cause (and legacy) it was.
In Blair’s mind, constitutional reform was the agenda of his first term, when the government legislated for devolution, the Human Rights Act and Lords reform. Having legislated, Blair was able to put the issue behind him and move on to the “real” issues of education, health, crime and so on. But constitutional reform keeps coming back. It continued into the second term, and it continues strongly still. For the tidal wave of reforms in the first term released second and third waves that are still working their way through the system.
The Labour party has long believed in the need for strong and effective central government to deliver greater equality and social justice. Nye Bevan was opposed to devolution for precisely that reason, as was Neil Kinnock. Devolution and decentralisation inevitably mean greater diversity and a risk of greater inequity and inefficiency. The tension between these competing values is as old as the Jacobins and the Girondins. At heart Blair is a Jacobin, a strong, messianic leader whose instinctive response to any political problem is to tighten his grip on the levers of power.
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Tony Wright
As part of the Blair government’s constitutional reform programme, the House of Commons has been living through a period of significant upheaval. The house sits at different times. A second debating chamber has been added. More bills are considered in draft. Select committees have more resources and tasks. These have not caught the public eye in the manner of devolution or reform of the Lords but, like those latter measures, reform of the Commons, insofar as it increases the accountability of government, can be seen as part of a broader movement to reduce the concentration of executive power in Britain.
But I want to suggest, first, that the process of reform has not gone far enough; second, that the reforms so far have lacked coherence and have sometimes been contradictory; third, that there are inherent constraints on parliamentary reform; and fourth, that the prospects for radical reform will depend upon what happens on other fronts.
Who will drive reform?
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prospect
Robert Hazell (chair) How do you rate Labour’s constitutional reforms so far, and what remains to be done?
Anthony Barnett The good news is that a magnificently ambitious programme of reform has been put in place, across everything from the Human Rights Act, to the independence of the Bank of England, to varying degrees of devolution to Scotland, Wales, London and so on. This has dismantled the old order, institutionally and culturally. The bad news is that the government has done it in a high-handed manner, failing to put in place the new settlement that John Smith called for when he committed Labour to this programme.
Geoffrey Howe I think that summarises exactly what is wrong. Magnificently ambitious equals grotesquely ambitious, not least, as you say, because of the manner in which it has been undertaken. It is symptomatic of a process that has been running for some time, not only under Labour governments. Indeed, the pace was set by the way the Thatcher government reformed local government finance. As a result of the folly of the poll tax and its subsequent repeal, and of nationalising the business rates, we reduced the proportion of locally raised money from 60 per cent to as little as 20 per cent. Governments feel driven to make changes far too rapidly. It leaves people bewildered. People now don’t even know what the speed limit is. Nigel Lawson recently offered that as a plea in mitigation in a magistrates court when he was charged for speeding. Confidence in government fell sharply under the last Conservative government, Labour’s constitutional reforms do not seem to have helped.
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