THE eminent journalist and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards reckons the United Kingdom is heading for a constitutional crisis and new radical thinking about the constitution is required if it is to be preserved.
She cites the new radical, federal thinking of Lord Salisbury as an example. Lord Salisbury envisages a future federal kingdom of the sovereign nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This thinking is to be welcomed but his federal arrangement doesn't go far enough. It entrenches the sickness of sectarian division in Ireland.
In the book The Theoretical Solution to the British/Irish Problem the full federal thinking is given in the concept of a Confederal Kingdom of the sovereign nations of England, Scotland, Wales and the Federal Kingdom of Ireland in which the crown is defined as head of state of each one of these independent nations and thus preserves the Kingdom.
A start can be made to this process in Northern Ireland where a new opposition party should be set up called Federal Unionism. This party should take as its platform the constitutional reform of the Kingdom in the National Government of Ireland Act.
If the constitutional mess the Kingdom is now to be cleared up the radical ideas of Lord Salisbury will have to be considered along with the further radical ideas of a Confederal Kingdom of the Isles of the North Atlantic.
