The federal fallacy

I see in the Sunday National that the old ‘devo max’ idea has cropped up again (Could a written UK constitution help or hinder Scottish independence?). Why will this nonsense not die? I suppose we can take some comfort from the fact that at least it isn’t Gordon Brown making yet another of his ‘interventions’. He’s not ‘striding onto the stage’ or ‘emerging from the shadows’ to pontificate as if he were some kind of respected elder statesman rather than a has-been politician of no great repute.

Standing in for Gordon Brown on this occasion, we have an investment manager named David Kauders. My natural generosity of spirit bids me hope that being Gordon Brown’s understudy isn’t the peak of David’s career.

It seems David Kauders has written a book titled Reinventing Democracy: Improving British Political Governance, which includes a draft constitution for the UK. As luck would have it, his book appears at the same time as Andy Burnham is talking in vague terms about a written constitution for the UK.

Kauders told the Sunday National that a codified route to a referendum as part of a federal UK would stop “England from treating Scotland like a colony”.

I can see the frustration that the Scots meet dealing with the English establishment. If you look at the strategic problem of Scottish independence, Scotland is frustrated with England dictating, and most of those seem to be swept away if the UK became just a defence, foreign affairs, currency, and common standards Union. That leaves vast amounts of everything else to the nations.

Credit where it’s due! At least David Kauders is bold enough to recognise that England-as-Britain treats Scotland like a colony. I can’t imagine Gordon Brown saying such a thing. But he fails to see that the problem he is addressing in the title of his book isn’t “governance” but “British”. Kauders is looking for a non-destructive way of making the Union acceptable to the people of Scotland. Or, at least, the politically aware portion of Scotland’s population.

(I leave Wales and Northern Ireland out of this commentary because their constitutional circumstances are their own.)

Kauders is attempting to find a solution to the asymmetry of the Union, which is to be implemented by the party to the Union which benefits from the asymmetry. He is seeking a British solution to the problem of Britishness. He expects the British state to reform itself out of existence.

It is important to understand what the Union is, why it came into being, what it was intended to do, and what it still does. (I’ll leave the matter of how the Union came about to historians.)

England pretty much always regarded Scotland as an enemy. The attitude was mutual. England regarded Scotland as a weak point on its northern border, just as it regarded France to the east and Ireland to the west as both problematic states and potentially profitable territory. What the Union did — and what it still does — is give England and later England-as-Britain an overwhelming advantage in terms of the power relationship with Scotland. England already had military and economic superiority. It wanted political superiority so it could have the complete set.

England’s ruling elite worried that Scotland’s ruling elite would make choices that England’s ruling elite wouldn’t like. The obvious solution was either to ‘persuade’ Scotland’s ruling elite to make the choices that England’s ruling elite wanted or to remove from Scotland’s ruling elite the ability to make ‘inappropriate’ choices. So, they did both. The Union formalised the conquest and annexation of Scotland.

Never again would Scotland be able to make choices that England didn’t like. Decision-making was removed to London. The disparity between the number of English members of parliament and Scotland’s representation meant Scotland would always be outvoted. The Union was the ‘final solution’ to the problem of Scotland.

What David Kauders is looking to do is have the ruling elite of the British state relinquish the advantage that allows the British state to exist. How likely is that? Is it even possible?

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.

Gordon Brown and David Kauders alike think of the solution to the constitutional issue lying in what power England-as-Britain is prepared to give up. That’s not it! The solution lies in Scotland not being forced to give up any powers. Like any other nation, Scotland must be in a position to freely and fully choose the form of its association with another nation or group of nations.

A federal solution only works if every component part has precisely the same ability to choose what powers it sees fit to pool with other nations. A federal arrangement cannot emerge from an arrangement in which one component part can overrule all the others. A federal arrangement doesn’t arise from a singular entity breaking itself down into component parts. A federal arrangement is a coming together, not a breaking apart.

Only a colonised mind could regard ‘devo max’ as a compromise which might be acceptable to a nation seeking to put an end to being treated like a colony. Devolution is treating Scotland as a colony. Devolution presupposes a power relationship indistinguishable from that between coloniser and colonised.

The thing about ‘devo max’ is that it’s not independence. Devolution cannot become independence. They are two distinct conditions. If, like John Swinney, you are thinking in terms of devolution, then you are not thinking in terms of independence.

We should think of devolution as something we must bring to an end. Something we must kill rather than something we should nurture in the hope it grows up to be independence.