Nothing less! Nothing else!

I am a Scottish nationalist. I aspire to Scotland’s rightful status as an independent, sovereign nation fully restored. Nothing less! Nothing else!

I recently published an article titled The federal fallacy, which was prompted by a piece in the Sunday National about a federal solution to the UK’s problematic constitution devised by an investment manager by the name of David Kauders. This scheme is set out in detail in a book called Reinventing Democracy: Improving British political governance.

Mr Kauders’s book was first covered by The National in May 2024 in an article which attracted no comments at all. Which suggests that I may not have seen it, or I’d surely have felt moved to say something about it. Then again, maybe not. I am a Scottish nationalist, after all. By definition, I have zero interest in “improving British governance”.

Following publication of The federal fallacy, David Kauders contacted me in the comments on that article, saying in part:

Thank you for interpreting my book Reinventing Democracy. Your words “It seems” starting your third paragraph reveal that you have not actually read the book, even though it was discussed in The National over two years ago. The following 18 paragraphs are therefore pure conjecture on your part.

He was correct. I had not read his book. I felt no need to do so because I am a Scottish nationalist. No federal arrangement could possibly be of any interest to me. Not even one which features “a mechanism whereby the power relationship would be between absolute equals despite the numerical dominance of England”.

The fact that David Kauders supposes his work might be discussed with interest by Scottish nationalists such as myself rather suggests that he has very little understanding of Scottish nationalism. Being married to a Scottish woman and having family members by marriage who are Scottish is not sufficient to provide an understanding of the perspective of those who have recognised the Union for what it is — an ancient wrong and an abiding injustice, the deleterious effects of which reach into every aspect of life in Scotland.

This is not to say that David Kauders cannot know the sense of injustice because he is English. Plenty of English people living in Scotland recognise the reasons for resenting the Union as well or better than the average indigenous Scot. Indeed, it is clear that Mr Kauders also has some awareness of the grotesque asymmetry of the UK and seeks to address this with his scheme. But knowing the reasons for resentment is not the same as feeling its corrosive effects.

I have lived with the injustice of the Union for almost seventy years, having become aware of it as a child. Children have a sense of what is unfair even if they have little understanding of the mechanics of the injustice. Children can feel injustice without necessarily being able to understand it. Which, come to think of it, is the opposite of an Englishman like David Kauders being able to explain the injustice of the Union without being able to feel it.

At his urging, I read David Kauders’s book, and I am bound to say that it is an impressive piece of work. If I had any interest at all in making the British state function better, I would reach for this volume. There is much to commend the federal setup described. I would even venture to suggest that had these reforms been implemented fifty or one hundred years ago, Scottish nationalism might have found less purchase in the Scottish imagination.

It is even likely that some people on the pro-independence side of the constitutional divide might be attracted to David Kauders’s plan. It might find favour as a sort of ‘middle way’. There might be some who regard it as being as good as independence. Or as close to independence as makes no difference. I am a Scottish nationalist. That shortfall will always matter to me. It will never be tolerable.

That is why I felt no need to read David Kauders’s book before commenting on it. Because I was not commenting on the book per se, but on the whole idea of a federal settlement as a substitute for independence. It really doesn’t matter what the details of the federal settlement are. It doesn’t matter how ingeniously the asymmetry of power is addressed. None of that alters the fact that it is not what I aspire to. It is something less. It is something else.

My original intention was to pick out some points from the book and explain why these points represent fatal flaws in the scheme, meaning it can never be acceptable to those who aspire not to a shuffling of powers within something that remains essentially the British state as we know it, but to actual independence. There is no need for the kind of forensic analysis I had first thought to attempt. To do so would be like checking the vital signs of a mouldering corpse. A federal settlement will always be dead on the table because of what it is not.

As is my wont, I read David Kauders’s book with yellow highlighter in hand, ready to mark those passages on which I might comment. There were more than a few. But the core of David Kauders’s work is his draft constitution for the UK he envisages. The first three words of this draft constitution mark it for disposal. It begins:

The British people…

I am Scottish. I am not British. I abhor the very idea of Britishness, which is really just Englishness disguised. That thought nicely summarises my perception of David Kauders’s scheme. It seems to me that it doesn’t rectify the dominance of England-as-Britain so much as clothe it in a different guise. I know David Kauders will object to this, pointing out things like Article 3 of his draft constitution.

f. The Head of state shall be the Monarch. Succession shall be according to established law. The People’s Council together with not more than five representatives of every parliament, and optionally one for each Overseas Territory, shall determine accession.

g. The Head of state has the prerogative of mercy, to be exercised either on the Head of state’s own initiative or on the advice of any government. All other prerogatives are abolished.

There is no disputing the radical pedigree of David Kauders’s proposals. He could point to many instances of changes that are hugely significant and even drastic. But at no point did I lose the sense that what I was reading was a plan to save the UK. I am a Scottish nationalist. I have no interest in saving the UK.

This sense of an underlying imperative to preserve as much as possible of existing power structures was sharpened by frequent mention of powers being “reserved“ to the UK parliament. And this really is where the scheme hits the rocks as far as I am concerned. In this draft constitution, David Kauders makes much of the fact that the nations are sovereign. However, ‘sovereign’ isn’t just a descriptor that can be attached to the name of a nation. Sovereignty is absolute and indivisible. There can be no such thing as partial or shared sovereignty. When a nation is described as sovereign, there can be no ‘but’ appended to any statement to that effect. And there are some very substantial ‘buts’ attached, limpet-like, to David Kauders’s idea of sovereignty.

One of the questions I put to Mr Kauders asked what Scotland’s obligations would be to this reformed UK in terms of defence. I find the answer in Articles 41 and 42.

41. The armed services, external borders, and security/intelligence services are the responsibility of the United Kingdom parliament. The police and emergency services are the responsibility of the nations. Regional parliaments have the right to manage their police and emergency services, if approved by the people. The police must be operationally independent of all parts of the state and enforce laws equally.

42. Only the United Kingdom parliament has the authority to permit offensive military action. It may do so only to prevent an armed attack upon the border integrity of the United Kingdom, or at the request of a foreign government or international agency seeking assistance, or in extreme cases of threats to significant British interests.

A nation cannot sensibly be called ‘sovereign’ when the power to declare war or not is withheld. If David Kauders’s proposal didn’t fail on any other account, it fails completely on this one point alone.

But it isn’t alone. Article 3(b) states:

The nations agree that defence, foreign affairs, the currency, the sovereign grant, and, to the extent provided here, international agreements including trade, shall be a collective endeavour for the good of all participating nations supervised by the United Kingdom parliament.

As I wrote in The federal fallacy:

All ‘devo max’ or a ‘federal’ arrangement can do is disguise the asymmetry created by the Union. It assumes that there is a form of devolution that is the equivalent of independence. He comes at the constitutional issue with a perspective which regards the UK having powers over defence, foreign affairs, currency, etc. as the ‘natural order’. He doesn’t and probably can’t see it from the Scottish perspective, which regards this as powers being withheld from Scotland. Which is the very nub of the problem. The problem is England-as-Britain being able to withhold powers from Scotland. His ‘solution’ doesn’t change this. His ‘solution’ preserves the characteristics of the Union which grate on Scottish constitutional sensibilities.

But there is a prior problem with this or any other federal solution. How do we get there? How can Scotland and the other nations negotiate the terms of any federal constitutional settlement from within the existing pseudo-colonial setup? How can the nations have parity of status in such negotiations when they are part of an arrangement dominated by England-as-Britain?

A federal solution is a coming together of equals. But David Kauders treats it as England-as-Britain calving off bits of itself and calling them ‘sovereign’ while keeping crucial powers to itself. Scotland could only enter into a federal arrangement negotiated as a nation with equal status to England-as-Britain. In other words, independence would have to be restored before negotiation of a federal system could even begin. Then we would see whether Scotland is prepared to relinquish to a federal government that is essentially the continuing British state the power to take the nation into war.

My guess is that under those circumstances, the people of an independent Scotland would reject David Kauders’s federal notion. I’m a Scottish nationalist. I reject it now.