Thread by @simon_brooke

I think the main reason I listen to @PolGaloreScot is to be annoyed. Being annoyed is useful. It causes one to challenge one's own thought.

So this week, what they're being intellectually lazy about is federalism, and Scottish parties.

I have blogged about federalism rather a lot, as folk may remember. The US, as everyone knows, allocates two seats in its Senate to each state, whether that's California with 39M people or Wyoming with 0.5M people. >>>

California gets rather more seats in the House of Representatives - 53, against one for Wyoming; but that's still nothing like the 80/1 population ratio. >>>

The European Parliament does something similar: Germany, with twice the population of California, has 96 seats, while Malta, about the population of Wyoming, has 6. 6/96 (= 1/16) is nothing like the population ratio of 1/166. >>>

So why do they do this? To prevent smaller states being systematically outvoted by bigger states - as presently happens at Westminster. >>>

And it's possible in both the US and the EU mainly because no state has a significant proportion of the population of the federation. California has 12% of the population of the US. Germany has 16% of the population of the EU. >>>

The UK isn't like that. England has 5/6 (83%) of the population of the UK. If, in the union parliament, England were to have the same number of seats as Wales, that would be obviously unfair, and England wouldn't accept it. >>>

If England were to have a population share of votes, it would - as it does now - outvote all the other members of the union put together, and the union would remain unworkable. >>>

Well yes, you may say, but haven't I just pointed out that both the US HoR and the EU parliament use a scaled population representation to solve that problem? >>>

OK, suppose we allocate Northern Ireland 2 (1/0.9M population), Wales 3 (1/1M), and Scotland 5 seats (1/1.1M, we could not allocate England more than 9 seats, or we'd be back into unworkable union territory. But that would give England only 1 seat for each 16M people. >>>

Again, that obviously absurd and unfair, and England would not vote for it. >>>

The third option would be to split England into about eight states. Each of those states would still have a significantly larger population than Scotland, and if England voted as a block, it would still outvote Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together, >>>

But in practice it's likely that Northumbria, Yorkshire, Cumbria and probably Wessex would pretty often vote with the 'Celtic Nations' block, since they share similar issues.

So a UK Federation of eleven states would probably work. >>>

HOWEVER,

There's no appetite in England for England to be radically dismembered. England, largely, sees itself as England (when it doesn't see itself as Britain). Attempts to create regional devolved assemblies have failed. >>>

And England has nine tenths of all seats in Westminster. So any reform of the United Kingdom will only happen if England votes for it. As I've demonstrated above, there is absolutely no likelihood that England would ever vote for meaningful federalism - why should it? >>>

So federalism is not an option. It's not an option of the @libdems propose it, it's not an option if @UKLabour propose it, it wouldn't be an option even if the @Conservatives proposed it. >>>

There is no system of federalism which could be retrofitted onto the UK which
1. would work, even in the short term, and
2. England would vote for.

To suggest otherwise is intellectually lazy: it proves you have not done your homework. >>>

So, Scottish parties - which means, in practice, @scottishlabour and @ScotTories formally separating themselves off from their UK parents and becoming independent organisations. >>>

This would have interesting consequences, but not ones which occurred to @PolGaloreScot.

Firstly, it's easy to say 'oh, yes, we'll be separate, but our Westminster MPs will still take our parent's whip'.

It won't fly. >>>

Problems crop up frequently which are in England's interests but not in Scotland's. Migration. Fisheries. Financial deregulation. Many more. >>>

Another class of issues, the political consensus in Scotland is strongly divergent from that in England. Trident. War. Refugees. Europe. Tax evasion. And that's before we get onto matters which are, or have been up to now, devolved. >>>

What happens when your parent party wants to do something which is in England's interests but not Scotland's, or aligns with the prejudices of English voters but not of Scots?

Will you lie back and think of England? And what will happen at the next election if you do? >>>

And that's before we get onto the cheap (but inevitable) rhetorical point of 'if independence is good enough for your party, why isn't it good enough for your country?' >>>

It's my strong belief that if either @ScotTories or @scottishlabour were to become independent from their UK parent, within two election cycles they would have been forced by the electoral logic into pro-independence stances. >>>

Of course, that would shake Scottish politics in more interesting ways. @TheSNP only holds together as a party because there are no separate pro-independence parties of the left and right. >>>

It's likely that under these circumstances @theSNP would wither away, with @FergusEwingMSP joining his friends on the @ScotTories benches, and something interesting happening with the rest of the party, resulting in largely new parties of the left, centre and right. >>>

But, critically, if the #ClimateEmergency hasn't wholly overtaken us by then (spoiler: it will), they'll all be pro independence. Because they'll have to be.