Social Europe have produced a paper about the impact of Brexit on the devolution settlement in the UK (HERE). It's an interesting brief history on how we got to the tangled mess that we have at present in this country. It seems to me that we have always prided ourselves in not having a written constitution and even boast about how flexible it all is. But the truth is that we have a rickety, unstable pile of ancient Acts of Parliament and precedent set in case law. The report says:
The UK is, unlike Germany, not a federation/federal union though increasingly politicians and policy experts talk about the desirability or, indeed, feasibility of federalism. Its political system has been rightly described as increasingly messy, informal, strained, and fragmented within an ever-looser union.
Decentralisation or devolution of policy-making/power in the UK has always been a reactive, sometimes panicky response to events and developments such as the rise of the Scottish National Party rather than a concerted process subject to an agreed master-plan. The three devolved governments, accordingly, have different degrees of power.
The lack of a written constitution with proper checks and balances is what has given rise to the referendum and the subsequent legal battles to actually establish who had the right to invoke Article 50 and even now, to decide if a "decision" has actually been made! The report goes on:
The UK Cabinet has been forced, very reluctantly, to allow votes on key aspects of legislation implementing Brexit in the run-up to March 2019. What concerns us here is that it has paid little more than lip-service to the 20-year-old devolution settlement. For instance, the joint ministerial committee (JMC) at which the four nations’ political leaders are meant to confer inter alia upon the modalities of leaving the EU did not meet at summit level for almost a year.
Now Brexit threatens to bring the whole shaky edifice tumbling down. The SNP have refused consent for the EU Withdrawal Bill which means either Mrs May forces it through risking a constitutional crisis or the Bill doesn't get through.
The report concludes:
In June 2016 a small majority of British voters opted to leave the EU as they were persuaded that they would thereby “take back control” and the UK would regain its “sovereignty”. But Brexit is already proving to be highly destabilising politically as well as socially and economically. To provide the country with greater political stability, Westminster and the three devolved governments should conclude a new constitutional settlement for pooling sovereignty within the UK, with fresh powers and competences given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to control their people’s destinies. Otherwise, it will only undermine the current devolution settlement and assume even greater central powers in the name of national sovereignty. The latter course will almost certainly spell the eventual end of the UK – not immediately but within a few years.
It would be an irony if Brexit was a disaster which succeeded in breaking up the 300 year old union with Scotland and uniting the island of Ireland as well. It would perhaps be a fitting epitaph for the sorry excuse for what used to be The Conservative and Unionist Party.
