The morning after: drawing up a blueprint for Britain

Where now? Alex Salmond’s face this morning showed the shock of the No verdict, his cheeks sagging and almost immobile, his words emerging at a third of their normal tumbling pace. His supporters were stunned and speechless; they had thought, as the sheer visibility of the Yes campaign’s posters and banners across Scotland had implied, that the momentum was decisively with them.

Yet even though Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom, that country has changed overnight. The Scottish National Party has won a victory, even if not the one it wanted: it has secured a version of “Devo-max,” even if no one is quite sure what, and a promise by the leaders of the three main parties to maintain the funding that Scotland now enjoys. With failure like that, who needs victories?

The vote, and the promises made, have immediate implications for the way that the UK runs itself. When David Cameron stepped out into the grey of Downing Street this morning to announce his verdict, he offered a fistful of commitments to all sides. To those who dislike him, it may have seemed a bland, supercilious touching of the bases by a member of the ruling classes who understood none of the passion of the independence campaign, recognised its seriousness far too late, and tucked the outcome of the vote into his pocket with barely concealed complacency, while he calculated the tactical advantage that such reforms may give him over Labour, if he can shut Scottish Labour MPs out of key votes in Westminster. To those who like him—and crucially, to those who do not but may be persuaded to support the Conservatives in the General Election in May—it may have seemed an expression of fairness, decency and concern for all parts of the UK, coupled with a willingness to be radical which has not so far characterised his leadership.

The Conservatives’ success in May will turn partly on whether Cameron’s message rings true with voters; whether they see in him, even if late in the day, a willingness to confront the big questions facing Britain, acknowledge and even stimulate an appetite for change in British people, and propose changes that strengthen the sense of what it is to be British which go beyond securing electoral advantage for his party.

The Liberal Democrats are, as ever, in an awkward position. They have been arguing forever about the need for constitutional change—and they have been right. But it has won no traction, not their reforms of the House of Lords, nor their belief in more federalism, more local powers. They are right about the thrust of what needs to be done but have been sketchy on the details—how much of the wealth generated by London should be shared elsewhere, for example, and how better to represent the regions in Westminster. They will need a lot of agility to avoid the fate that is looming–that their best ideas are appropriated by the main parties, without credit for their historic advocacy in the decades when these questions provoked no interest at all.

The big winner of the week, in terms of natural, instinctive appeal—the person who best put the big words to the moment—has been Gordon Brown. As Peter Kellner has written for Prospect, the former Prime Minister summoned up the passion that the other pro-Union leaders lacked. He wasn’t wrong, when in office, to have argued that a sense of Britishness united the country, that people should be conscious of it, proud of it, and work to strengthen it. He just sounded wrong—too dour, too sonorous, too much like a lobbyist for British trade, and at that point, just too Scottish. But if he continues to speak about it, he will have a powerful voice (all the more for his self-imposed silence in political debate since 2010). Ed Miliband will find that hard to match (and it seemed merely graceless to list Gordon Brown in fifth place of those he thanked on the morning after the vote for helping secure the outcome).

The starting text for the debate that now follows has to be David Cameron’s list of promises, plus the agreement that he, Miliband and Nick Clegg signed promising Scotland a continuation of its funding. But the debate hardly starts there, although those are commitments firm and explicit enough to provide a bracing framework—and timetable—for what now follows.

For all the jokes about not asking the West Lothian question, there is now a good riposte—it’s been answered. It is no longer acceptable to people in England, the past two weeks have made clear, that Scottish MPs in Westminster vote on English matters but that Scotland has increased freedom to run itself. Some kind of separation of English decisions will have to be secured.

The crucial question in this is financing, as Cameron, George Osborne, and Miliband, are acutely aware. The tactical charge now open to Cameron is to say that Scottish MPs must be shut out of finance bills. That would scythe away the 40 Scottish Labour MPs. Without their numbers, even if Labour won in May, it would very likely be unable to pass a Budget. Without that, a government does not govern. Cameron has on his side in this the sense of grievance at the financial support for Scotland that many voters in England expressed when it became clear how strong was the campaign to end the Union.

The distribution of national wealth is another. It would be very odd for a country to start from the principle that each region should receive exactly the same support from the state as others. Why should they? Some are poorer, some are further from the centre and from infrastructure or trade links. They need more help. But the Barnett formula, criticised now even by Lord Barnett, is now out of date. Wales, consistently top with Northern Ireland of the poverty measures of the UK, has suffered under the formula which has repeatedly favoured Scotland. That cannot last.

London’s wealth should be shared out, then, far more than any mayor, looking enviously at the degree of autonomy of American cities, is ever likely to support. Other cities are pockets of wealth, too, although Birmingham is, as Gisela Stuart, MP, has written for Prospect, in danger of financial collapse. The point of national finances is to smooth out at least some of those peaks. But cities deserve more powers too, and their residents want that, even if the recent proposal of mayors won little enthusiasm.

In all this, a radical reform of the House of Lords could offer a way of increasing regional representation. Here, the LibDems have done a lot of work, and could seize a new chance to push ideas through.

Cameron’s statement, inevitably, and rightly, provoked a hail of rocks from constitutional experts saying it was too much, too fast. A constitution is not for Christmas, as they say. But his ambition is right. This is a chance for British people to rewrite the rules under which they agree to be governed. Scotland’s campaign—Yes and No sides both—not only gripped the world’s attention, it stirred up politics and passions south of the border too. The chance is that this is good for Britain, as it becomes an even larger and more complex society. And it makes the May 2015 election about issues that are worth fighting over—the vision of Britain as it could be a decade or two from now.