This book begins with Mark Perryman’s lazy, simplistic, one dimensional analysis of post-devolution Britain, taking as its basis a fundamental misunderstanding of Scottish politics that is riddled with factual inaccuracy and woeful misrepresentation.
It proceeds along a path to persuasive oblivion with a range of contributions (eg from Kevin Williamson, Richard Thomson and Salma Yaqoob) that continue the theme of personal rather than state self determination, painting small cameos of perceived roles and perspectives that contribute little to a big picture analysis of the issues.
The book then moves on with a series of thoughtful and honest assessments of post-devolution politics across the UK by Lesley Riddoch, John Osmond and Gerry Adams, with illuminating analyses that combine to better describe our ‘jigsaw state’, and therefore more accurately assess the potential for ‘Breaking Up Britai’.
The book ends with Michael Kenny and Guy Lodge’s excellent critique of ‘Brown’s Britain’; a crass, simplistic (and culturally dangerous) construct developed in the minds of the self-styled intellectual elite of the British Labour party.
It should be noted that the people’s recent verdict on this shabby attempt to build a new Britain was at least representative of the state, or should that be the states, we’re in, with a neat, and frankly very British, political asymmetry to the European poll result – Labour beaten by the Tories in Wales, overtaken by UKIP in England and trounced by the SNP in Scotland!
A better demonstration of the missing thread that should have run through this book – the F-word of British politics – could not have been fashioned if the federalists amongst us had spun one. The evidence of collective electoral intelligence, and its often devastating use, even under first-past-the-post, that points towards federalism is all but ignored.
Instead, the fault line that runs down the middle of the book and leads to its questionable conclusion is to be found in the search for an English identity, the very basis of ‘Breaking Up Britain’. Ultimately it fails to recognise that a state that has defined itself through centuries of imperialist crushing of other’s nationhood cannot begin to define its own self until it recognises the devastating impact it has had, and continues to have, on others.
Or, in Scotland’s Year of the Homecoming perhaps the English – left, right, north, south, urban and rural, including people just like my Hampshire born mum, whose dad became the local Tory mayor – need to take to their own lion-hearts the words of Robert Burns’ and his advice to my fellow Scots ‘to see ourselves as others see us’.
This is a lesson that John Harris certainly argues strongly, when describing his take on the ‘Southern Discomfort’ political concept within England, making the wider point that there are no ‘no-go areas’ for any party in any part of the country. Under any electoral system, the public’s demand for greater choice will increase political plurality. Period.
Politics, constitutional or otherwise, is not an easy, clear-cut discussion with a right or a wrong answer, a ‘left’ or ‘right’ solution, it must be played out in glorious technicolour. The devolved areas of the UK are beginning to use the whole spectrum, fast-tracked by fairer voting systems, forging new and interesting political alliances.
In Scotland, sadly, we took a step backwards at the last election with the routing of the socialist reds and the environmental greens from their historic first term highs. This was the result not simply from a fall in electoral support (and inevitable in-fighting on the far left) but also from the shameful electoral shenanigans of the main parties, as highlighted in the Gould report. This threatened to turn our politics grey.
Mike Parker does helpfully point out some of the contradictions and colour clashes that still lurk at the heart of British politics, with the potential to burst out onto the scene. In highlighting widely held racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes amongst the British working class (now being converted into support for the BNP in England, which it should be noted is the only non-devolved part of the UK) he signals the desperate need for more colourful, positive politics, especially in times of recession.
Other contributors make useful points in seeking to define the prospects for England joining our growing ‘federal family’ through a process of self discovery, eg Vron Ware’s recognition of the importance of local community and the battle for the village green, the post office and the pub. Appropriate with the Ashes in full swing!
Meanwhile, the peoples of the UK have already moved on from the immediate post-devolution period with which this book is chiefly concerned, turning on its head the base unionist-driven political assumptions that determined the power relationships between Westminster and the devolved administrations in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh.
There is an emerging political psyche across our ‘jigsaw state’ that is the exact reverse of the legislative basis for the Scotland Act, and its sister acts for Northern Ireland and Wales. This is what I call the new ‘devolution default position’. It can be summed up thus: ‘if we can do it ourselves, then we will’ and ‘only if it is better done together, should it remain reserved to Westminster’. That is federalism.
This book is based upon an outdated premise, looking through the wrong end of the political telescope, seeing the UK from a London, or rather Westminster perspective. It reminds me of that fabulous Two Ronnies sketch in which they confuse four candles for fork handles. Four nations after a Union? It’s the wrong question looking for the right answer.