What now?

With the votes counted and with a turnout of 84 per cent—unprecedented in modern British politics—it is clear that the United Kingdom is not about to be dismembered…well not in the immediate future.  The critical question was always going to be ‘what happens next?’ whether the vote for independence was won or lost.  Well it was lost and pretty emphatically.  The time has come to address the West Lothian question—why should Scottish MPs be able to vote on English matters and not vice versa.  One solution would be to complete the pack—give England its own Parliament in the same way that they exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—in other words establish a federal structure.  The role of Westminster would be relegated to being the national Parliament dealing only with issues that are common across the four countries in the Union.  So no West Lothian problem.  The fiction United Kingdom having a unitary constitution—today barely a credible proposition—would finally be ended.

At a stroke, you resolve a number of constitutional issues.  The English Parliament would be a unicameral institution like the other national parliaments.  The Union Parliament could retain two houses—making it something like the American Congress—or, more radically we could take this opportunity of abolishing the second chamber so that all parliaments in the UK have one chamber.  This could mean that the English Parliament meets in one of the current chambers in the Houses of Parliament and the Union Parliament in the other—good economics—or you could establish the English Parliament in say Birmingham centrally in the country.  You could also reduce the number of MPs to say 200 by having them chosen from within the national parliaments on the basis of say 1UMP per 100,000 of the population based on the proportion of parties within those parliaments; so Scotland with a population of about 3 million people would have 30 UMPs.  Each country would have its own First Minister while the Prime Minister would be the Union leader with a cabinet including the four First Ministers. 

Then there’s the vexed question of how MPs should be elected.  Proportional representation fell in the last referendum but a radical change in the nature of the British constitution will inevitably raise the question again.  I’m inclined to go for the system that apply in Wales combining first-past-the-post and the additional member system but the existing Scottish system with its regional dimension might be preferable.    Either way, the current electoral system needs a radical overhaul.

Finally, irrevocably it’s R-Day

The debate, one of the most dynamic I’ve ever seen, is over and voting is underway.  In less than twenty-four hours we’ll know whether Scotland has voted for independence or not.  Whether the ‘Stay Together’ campaign has done enough—just enough I suspect—to win, there really is no going back from the campaigns over the past two years.  The choice is between the visionary ambiguities of the Yes campaign and the equally ambiguous pragmatism of those calling for retention of the Union.  Given what most accept will be the closeness of the result, you have to ask what its democratic legitimacy will be.  What the referendum has done is to expose a fundamental ideological fissure within Scottish society that will, despite the weasel words from both sides, be difficult to heal.  I can’t see the two sides coming together in the immediate aftermath of the result however good natured the debate has generally been.

So, the referendum result may not be the end of the matter.  There are some who argue that, if the result favours independence, the rest of the UK should have a referendum on whether or not to accept the negotiated solution.  Now there is an argument for this especially as Scotland makes up less than 10 per cent of the total population of the UK and the result, whatever it is, affects all peoples in the UK.  Why, some have already asked, should Scotland be given special status and advantages over the other constituent parts of the UK?  The problem with a divorce is that, while the decision may be easy to make, working out the details of the split is always contentious and time-consuming.  I can’t see that being achieved by March 2016.  While the focus has been on whether there should be a monetary union between Scotland and the rest of the UK and what Scotland’s status will be in the European Union and NATO and what happens to Trident have long been the focus of debate, these are as nothing to untangling three centuries of Union.  The negotiations will be political horse-trading—you let me have X and you can have Y—they always are. Pragmatic politics almost always trumps political vision—remember that politics is the art of the possible.