Posted: Oct 04, 2017 8:25 am
mrjonno wrote:Ronmcd : so federalism isn't really about what powers the local unit gets but whether they are constitutionally guaranteed to not have them removed. That's a fair enough answer but I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference to people on a day to day basis. Certainly not going to make any difference to keeping the UK together so I'm not sure why politicians go on about it unless its just a buzz media friendly word (unless its EU federalism of coursE)
It depends who is using the term. It's used in particular by Scottish Labour every time they feel under pressure and want to relaunch themselves, but they don't actually mean federalism at all, they mean whatever additional level of devolution that they think can get away with less than SNP and Greens want.
From BBC Scotland Political Editor in Feb:
Which brings us to the second intriguing element of the debate. Labour's proposed solution is a federal UK. But what, precisely, do they intend to federate? Again, successive speakers acknowledged that it was impossible to offer a precise answer at this stage.
Why? Because there is no agreed formula and, more, no way of prescribing a structure for the governance of England to the good and sensible people of that nation.
But as I say, I'm not advocating federalism. I'm just pointing out it's not remotely the same thing as devolution, which is power retained at Westminster. And in my opinion, watching the Tories this last couple of years, and horrific moments from the Boris Brexit conference, who the fuck wants to stay part of UK when that lot are in power and there's fuck all we can do about it? Scotland didn't vote for the Tories, and it didn't vote for brexit. Federalism can't happen, England won't want it, Westminster won't allow it. Come the end of the brexit "negotiations", the calls for Sturgeon to put indyref2 back on the agenda will be deafening I suspect.