Opinion

Newton Emerson: With Keir Starmer's election, conversation on federal UK will step up a gear

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Keir Starmer has talked of a convention on a federal UK
Keir Starmer has talked of a convention on a federal UK Keir Starmer has talked of a convention on a federal UK

In one of his first acts as new Labour leader, Keir Starmer wrote a piece for Scotland’s Daily Record promising a constitutional convention on a federal UK.

This is no surprise: it was the big policy idea in his leadership campaign, not that it set him apart. Rebecca Long-Bailey, who came second, said she wanted the devolved regions to be on “an equal footing” with Westminster. Lisa Nandy, who came third, said a federal UK is “inevitable”.

All contrasted this with “cosmetic” Conservative proposals to move the House of Lords to York or turn it into a chamber of the nations and regions.

The problem with a federal UK, apart from its unfortunate acronym, is the size of England relative to the whole, or “an elephant and three fleas”, as former Welsh first minister Rhodri Morgan once described it.

Starmer proposes the classic solution of creating devolved English regions. Like the old republican Eire Nua plan for a four-province federal Ireland, this is an idea that is neat in theory but leaves most people unimpressed in practice. Labour set up eight regional assemblies in England in 1998, intending them to evolve towards devolution. They were quietly abolished ten years later, having come to be seen as a contrived extra layer of bureaucracy. Sasanu Nua is an elephant designed by a committee, to paraphrase the joke about a camel.

What has evolved inside England instead are large, powerful multi-tier partnerships of councils. This has been driven by the Conservative city deal and northern powerhouse policies and also, ironically, by Labour’s years in the wilderness under Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority was sometimes seen as a New Labour government in exile; in the West Midlands and North East, Corbyn’s unelectability put a new kind of civic-booster Conservatism in office.

There is no room for devolved English regions alongside this and it would be considered a backward step to try. However, that is an issue for the constitutional convention to consider. England could have devolved city regions, as London is already, as long as the English do not mind Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland having city deals as well.

Starmer’s overarching plan is for each part of a federal UK to have equal authority, with greatly increased powers guaranteed by a written constitution. Westminster would no longer hold ultimate sovereignty over everything. As an example of how this would work, Scotland and Northern Ireland would have vetoed Brexit. There is little doubt Brexit is a factor in Starmer’s thinking. The survival of the union is his stated priority and it is significant he took his message straight to Scotland, along with a promise of more devolved powers. The relationship between Scotland and England is the most equal within the UK - more a case of a zebra and an elephant. Scottish politics hinges on the debate over whether more devolution will save the union or end it.

Northern Ireland and Wales have been bystanders in this conversation, although their fate depends on it. Morgan made his “three fleas” comment before the 2014 Scottish independence referendum not as an attack on the union but as a plea to Scots to stay in it, to help “Wales and Northern Ireland to get their voices heard.”

Now the conversation is about the step up a gear. The Conservatives may have a secure majority for the next five years but the UK at last has a credible opposition, arguably for the first time in a decade and certainly for the first time since Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015. Political debate in the UK is bound to revive dramatically and Starmer has placed federalism at the top of his agenda. The government could well engage, as the Conservatives have also shown a recent interest in constitutional reform.

It would be understandable for hearts to sink at this prospect in Northern Ireland, where we have enough of such debate and our voices would pull in opposite directions.

The call for a constitutional convention on a united Ireland, rejected by unionists, seems set to have an equivalent to be rejected by nationalists.

Perhaps that might be scope for a kind of truce, within which the executive could consider the potential for more powers - and the risk.

In Starmer’s federal UK, would abortion ever have been legalised in Northern Ireland?