Brown‘s Lords reform is destined for the long grass
Scotland is underwhelmed and England never wanted regional devolution
Gordon Brown's latest mega plan to reunite the United Kingdom brings to a conclusion an intellectual odyssey the former Labour leader has been on since the days of the Red Paper on Scotland in 1975. Unfortunately he has returned to at Ithaca just a little too late, and I fear he has lost too many of us along the way.
His 155 page road map for constitutional renewal, “A New Britain: Renewing Our Democracy and Rebuilding Our Economy” is exhaustive and exhausting as only a Gordon Brown report can be. It is full of right thinking and well-meaningness about the over-centralised, unequal state we're in. But it is destined to remain on the shelves of the great unread. Voters find constitutional change tedious at the best of times, but right now with a cost of living crisis and with people unable to heat their homes - forget it. Sir Keir Starmer’s body language said as much in Leeds on Monday when he made clear that Brown’s plan is subject to “consultation” (in the long grass).
Brown's Commission was launched after Boris Johnson's thumping election victory in 2019. No one then thought Labour was going to be a contender for government for at least two parliaments and blue sky thinking was encouraged. Now with Labour suddenly 20 points ahead in the polls, and a real possibility that Keir Starmer could be in government in 18 months, the Labour leader doesn't want to be burdened with a raft of forty finicky constitutional changes which he might actually have to deliver.
Moreover, Brown's headline reform of the House of Lords does not really make a great deal of sense in my view. Yes, the Lords is too big; yes, it should be probably be mostly elected; and yes, it makes sense to have regional representation. But Brown's plan raises a whole raft of new anomalies by trying to achieve a form of home rule all round which England just doesn't want.
An Assembly of the Nations and Regions must surely be premised on English regional devolution. But this was decisively rejected back in 2004 after the failed referendum on an assembly for the North East of England. You can't force devolution on people; they have to embrace it, as Scotland did emphatically in 1997. Otherwise it just looks like more politicians for the sake of it. I can't see an incoming Labour government proposing referendums on English devolution now.
As for the Nations, it's not clear how Scotland would be balanced against England in the new Assembly. The reason why federalism has always been rejected as impractical is because the UK is demographically out of kilter, with 85% of the population in one part of it - England. This will surely be replicated in the new upper house since England will not be meaningfully disaggregated into regional assemblies.
It's not at all clear, either, just how the Assembly of Nations and Regions would relate to the House of Commons. Brown insists that the latter should have the final say on legislation, as at present. But that is only part of it. He has also said that his reforms will “entrench” the Scottish parliament's powers in a manner “analogous to a written constitution” - which of course we do not have.
He wants the Sewel Convention, which says Holyrood has to give consent to UK legislation on devolved areas, to be “legally binding” on Westminster. To make it impossible for Westminster MPs to override acts of the Scottish parliament. This is honouring a promise enshrined in the 2016 Scotland Act. It is the right thing to do. But things have moved on. The Supreme Court of the UK ruled in 2017 that the UK parliament is sovereign in all respects and can therefore legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the Holyrood, whatever Sewel says.
This may seem an arcane point, but it could be extremely difficult to resolve if the Scottish parliament tries to legislate in ways that are seen to make laws in the rest of the UK unworkable, as it did when it passed the EU Continuity Act in 2018 . Or over the attempt by Holyrood last year to embed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law. The Supreme Court struck that down with hardly a thought, as it did a fortnight ago Nicola Sturgeon's advisory referendum. This is an insoluble constitutional contradiction, I'm afraid. Goodwill and new Councils of the UK won't sort it. The Supreme Court was entrenched first and it lays down the law.
On the economy, Brown has very little to offer Scotland other than a “consultation” on raising the ceiling on Holyrood's borrowing powers. There is a lot about hubs, clusters and regional regeneration that sounds very like Boris Johnson's levelling up. It allows the SNP to dismiss the report as yet another meaningless exercise in phoney devolution. Though no doubt the SNP would relish the opportunity to send a raft of elected members to Brown's Assembly of the Nations and Regions. They currently boycott the House of Lords.
Brown genuinely believes that the good society can be delivered by constitutional change and that the UK is the best guarantor of social security for all. And he is not wrong. If your interest is in the greatest welfare for the greatest number then it makes sense to have Scotland remain in the United Kingdom and retain the transfer payments from the Barnett Formula which underpin higher public spending in Scotland. But the SNP has managed to divert attention from the funding formula and Brown doesn't want to mention the B word either.
I agree with Brown that another binary independence referendum in a divided Scotland would be a brutal affair and, like Brexit, could shatter the economic security of the least well off. Gradualist home rule must be is a better solution than setting up a hard border against Scotland's biggest trading partner and embarking on currency wars. But any meaningful extension of home rule must involve greater economic autonomy in exchange for Scotland raising,through taxation, the majority of the money its spends. This is not on offer. Brown has tried to reconcile too many contradictory interests. His report is a noble attempt to democratise the centralised UK,but right now no one is listening. It is, I'm afraid, out of time.