The de-facto federal system of the United Kingdom and the threat of Scottish independence

The de-facto federal system of the United Kingdom and the threat of

Scottish independence

Ralf Grabuschnig

‘One finds on the one hand workable federations or confederations of states, or

communities, associations like the Nordic Union, the Andrean Pact, the

European Community, or the United Nations Organization; on the other, an

assortment of multi-national units imposed by heredity or conquest, most of

which mercifully vanished in one or the other of the World Wars and the

remainder during the anti-colonial movement after 1946. To which category

does the existing Great-British state belong? 1

This question on the future of Great Britain was already posed in the 1970s by Tom Nairn in a book

named ‘The breakup of Britain’. The title he chose for his publication also gives us his answer to this

question: Already at that time, Nairn was convinced of the non-functionality of the British state and

predicted its imminent collapse. Yet, another 35 years have since passed and Great Britain still exists anno

2014, even though this state looks very different today to what it did 35 years ago.

Following the Labour-led devolution process of the late 90s and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament

as well as Welsh and Northern Irish National Assemblies, the United Kingdom moved ever closer to being

a federal system than ever before. In the past, it has often been argued that the Westminster model of

government, as Europe’s last ‘ancient regime’2, is by its very nature incapable of sharing political power,

and yet, this is exactly what happened in the past fifteen years. Today, the three non-English nations of the

UK, above all the Scots, have a very strong say on their internal matters and can in many instances bypass

the parliament in Westminster. Though especially in the Scottish case, this seems not to be sufficient. In

September this year, the Scottish government, led by the Scottish National Party is going to hold a

referendum on independence from the United Kingdom, which could also mean the end of the Union

itself.

1 Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, 2nd ed. (London: NLB, 1981), 74–75.

2 Alexander Grant, Uniting the Kingdom?: The Making of British History (London [u.a.: Routledge, 1995), 283.

In this paper, I will analyse the nature of the United Kingdom’s constitutional system today and the

chances of it turning into a full-fledged federation in the near future. After the nature of the state is clear, I

will turn to the question of peripheral nationalisms and their threat to the modern state of Great Britain.

For obvious reasons, the Scottish case will be in the centre of this analysis; yet, the implications are also

valid for Wales and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland. The main question is whether the UK could still

exist without Scotland being part of it and whether it would be able to establish a federal solution that

would appease all nationalities within its borders. I will argue that the Scottish referendum on

independence, whatever the outcome, will put immense pressure on the British state to reform itself into a

full-fledged federation to prevent it from falling apart into separate nation states in the near future.

The history of the Union

Before getting into the questions of the nature and possible federal character of the British state and the

prospects of a break-up thereof, it seems necessary to quickly outline how this British state came into

existence. The political unification of the British island started in the 17th century. England, Scotland and

also Wales had a history of independent statehood before. While Wales got already incorporated into the

English kingdom during the 16th century, Scotland was still an independent state which, often in

collaboration with France, for a long time resisted English conquest. In 1603, the kingdoms of England

and Scotland first got united in a personal union under the originally Scottish king James VI (James I of

England). This personal union was transformed into a legal one with the Act of Union in 1707,

transforming the two kingdoms (plus Wales) into the Kingdom of Great Britain. This resulted in the

abolition of a separate Scottish parliament and its inclusion into the former English, now British assembly

in Westminster. Later, this Kingdom of Great Britain extended to Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of

Great Britain and Ireland, which after the separation of the southern, catholic part of Ireland became

today’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland3.

The Act of Union of 1707 therefore did not constitute the creation of a federal state in the modern sense

but rather the unification of two kingdoms into a new one. Nevertheless, in a very medieval understanding

of statehood, a unification of two previously independent kingdoms also always includes the vague

3 Grant, Uniting the Kingdom?.

possibility to split up again, as it has happened in history (in the cases of Hungary and Croatia or Poland

and Lithuania for example).

Is Great Britain a federation?

One of the most common and simple definitions of federation is ‘regional self-rule plus shared rule’4,

which was introduced by Daniel Elazar. Ronald Watts, in his book ‘Comparing Federal Systems’, building

on the work of Elazar, lists ten variants of federal systems and countries to which these apply. According

to his classification, the United Kingdom is a ‘decentralized Union with some federal features’5, therefore

no federal system in the narrower sense. It consists of four countries and five self-governing islands,

which all enjoy some sort of self-rule. The UK does not fulfil Watts’ criteria for full-fledged federations6

because it does not have an upper house, representing the interests of the regions, nor does it have a

distribution of authority in a written constitution (in the lack thereof). Yet, the UK does show other signs

of a federal system, such as regional parliaments, representation of the regions at the centre (though not in

form of a parliamentary chamber), separate competencies for the regions and, especially in the Scottish

case, a considerable degree of political freedom to manoeuvre independently from the centre.

If we agree for the moment that Great Britain represents at best some sort of ‘quasi’ or ‘de facto’

federation, we can come to the question of the nature of this state. Here the concepts of symmetry and

asymmetry are crucial. Watts differentiates between political asymmetry, which exists in almost all

federations (due to different territorial size, population and economic power of the constituent units) and

constitutional asymmetry, which refers to their legal status. Constitutional asymmetry can work in three

major ways: more authority to a region (which is the case in Quebec but arguably also in Scotland), less

authority (which is the case in England, which is the only British nation without its own representation) or

opt-out agreements (such as Britain or Denmark enjoy them in the EU)7. Britain, in this respect is

politically a highly asymmetric state. Some 85% of both Britain’s population and GDP come from

England (12% and 19% respectively from the City of London alone!), with just over 8% from Scotland,

4 Daniel Judah Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991).

5 Ronald L Watts et al., Comparing Federal Systems : Pub ished f he Sch f P icy S udies, Quee ’s

University by McGill-Quee ’s U ive si y P ess, 2008), 10–17. 6 Ibid., 9.

7 Ibid., 125–30.

5% from Wales and less than 3% from Northern Ireland8. Constitutionally, this asymmetry is deepened by

the fact that England, as the biggest constituent part, does not have its own parliament while Scotland,

Wales, Northern Ireland and even London (in form of the ‘Greater London Authority’ [GLA] and its

mayor) do. Interestingly however, a majority of the English support devolution in the other nations, but

does not want it in England itself9.

But can the United Kingdom even become a real, full-fledged federal state? Tom Nairn, who I quoted at

the beginning of this paper, would clearly argue no. Similarly, David Marquand argues that power-sharing

in the Westminster system of government is an actual impossibility, due to the structures derived from

earlier times and the difficulties to change the unwritten constitution. He argues that ‘the managers of the

British state have seen power in zero-sum terms, as a hard, impervious cricket ball, which is either held or

not held, and which cannot, by its very nature, be shared.’10

Other accounts suggest quite the opposite.

Michael Burgess for instance pointed at the many federal ideas that emerged in Britain throughout the

centuries. In relation to the Empire, Europe but most importantly Ireland, thinkers and stakeholders within

the UK repeatedly brought up possible federal solutions for the state throughout the centuries11

. These

ideas went all the way to even Winston Churchill, who in 1912 urged to consider a federal British state12

.

Burgess states that ‘Great Britain is not a federal state but this does not mean that it lacks a significant

tradition of federal ideas’13

. In addition, as Bednar et al have argued, England after the Glorious

Revolution and later the early United Kingdom did already once have the preconditions for an emerging

federal system: a fragmentation of power. Politics until the 19th century was very local in its nature.

Political elites (MPs) represented their home region in parliament and did not necessarily pursue an all

English/British policy, also in the lack of a uniform state-wide party system. This mode of politics could,

in Bednar’s opinion, have led to the development of an actual federal system in Britain. It did not because

the centralization of the 19th century (due to industrialization and the emergent mass parties) interrupted

this process and there was no written constitution that would have enshrined this fragmentation of

power14

. Only these developments turned Britain into a unitary state. The question then is whether this

history of federal ideas and traditions can be strong and influential enough to make a future federal Britain

8 Statistics from the early 2000s. Patrick Dunleavy, Developments in British Politics 8 (Houndmills, Basingstoke,

Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 139. 9 Ibid., 152.

10 D vid qu d, “H w u i ed is he m de U i ed Ki gd m?”, i : Grant, Uniting the Kingdom?, 284.

11 Michael Burgess, Federalism and Federation in Western Europe (Croom Helm, 1986), 127–47.

12 Ibid., 137.

13 Ibid., 146.

14 Jenna Bednar, Wi i m Esk idge, d J h Fe ej h , “A P i ic The y f Fede ism,” Constitutional Culture and

Democratic Rule 223 (2001): 15–22.

possible in face of the structures of the British constitutional system. This question is central to the

ongoing process of devolution on the British Isles.

Devolution in Britain

Devolution is a process of political re-structuring and decentralization currently at work on the British

Isles. The emergence of the ‘Irish Question’ in the late 19th century, led to a first wave of devolution

throughout the union. Already in 1885 a Scottish Office was established, including a Scotland-Minister,

who represented the country in London15

. After the (de facto) independence of southern Ireland in the

1920s, the following financial crisis and World War, the devolution process slowed down and was only

revived in the 70s again. At that time, in Scotland the rising Scottish National Party started to put pressure

on the government and mainstream parties to promote further devolution, which was especially successful

in regards to the Labour party. After years of Conservative rule in Westminster, the new Labour led

government under Tony Blair, in the late 1990s re-activated the devolution process and developed a plan

for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies as well as the Greater London Authority. These plans

were followed by referendums in all three countries and in London and by 1999 these institutions were set

up. The different assemblies (even an official parliament in the case of Scotland) had quite different levels

of power, with Scotland having the strongest say in its internal matters as compared to Wales and

Northern Ireland16

.

The Scottish parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh has a quite clearly defined set of competencies. On most

issues concerning internal matters, the parliament has the possibility to pursue a distinct policy from

Westminster. Issues reserved for the Union are mainly concerning defence and tax collection (which is

one thing Scottish nationalists want to see devolved at the moment). Different from Westminster or the

Welsh National Assembly, Scotland has a fairly proportional system of representation in its parliamentary

elections leading to more parties represented in Holyrood than in the rest of the Union. Beside the union

wide Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the (in Scotland traditionally very weak) Conservatives,

also the powerful Scottish National Party, that is currently in government, the Greens and for a while also

a Scottish Labour Party distinct from the UK one. All in all, politics in Scotland is therefore strongly left-

15

Phi ipp K ze , “Die Sc ish N i P y U d Die Eu päische Dime si De U bhä gigkei Sch ds” (dipl, uniwien, 2009), 47–49, http://othes.univie.ac.at/3701/. 16

John Wilson and Karyn Stapleton, Devolution and Identity (Aldershot, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006), 3.

leaning in comparison to the UK as a whole, with only the weak Tories situated on the right of the

political spectrum and all other parliamentary parties either Social-Democratic or Left-Liberal in their

agendas17

.

In Wales, devolution is built on a system where the National Assembly issues only secondary legislation,

which is based on primary laws coming from Westminster. Competencies are therefore often times not

clearly divided between the Union’s central parliament in London and the National Assembly in Cardiff.

Devolution led to a Welsh National Assembly that is clearly dominated by the Labour Party, which in

elections generally ends up at around half of the seats and first governed in coalition with the Liberal

Democrats and later alone. The Welsh Labour Party tried to sharpen its profile against England and the

all-British Labour party, using the slogan ‘clear red water’ indicating its critical stance towards New

Labour and its foundations in the classical workers movement, which was to a certain extent reformed (or

forgotten, depending on one’s ideological stance) by Tony Blair’s New Labour. This ideological

difference was most strongly visible in the context of welfare, where Welsh Labour did not follow Blair’s

liberalizations policies18

.

In Northern Ireland, devolution was a particularly difficult process in the late 90s and still today. From the

start, it was connected to the peace process between republican Catholics and unionist Protestants in the

country. Due to long lasting problems in this process, which were caused by the severe tensions between

the unionist parties and the catholic-republican Sinn Fein, devolved institutions were repeatedly suspended

in the early years. In theory, the devolved system of Northern Ireland established the post of a First

minister from one of the two communities and a Deputy First minister from the other. Due to lacking

willingness on both sides to work together for a long time, these mechanisms could not be fully enforced

from the beginning. Since 2007, however, the assembly in Belfast has not been dissolved and the

mechanisms seem to work better than in the past19

.

The most interesting aspect of British devolution, however, is probably the position of England in the

Union. England, comprising 85% of the UK’s population is the only constituent country without a

separate parliament, government or special representation. The only form of devolution that has been

17

Dunleavy, Developments in British Politics 8, 143–47. 18

Ibid., 140–43. 19

Ibid., 147–49.

successfully applied to the territory of England was the establishment of the GLA, which even though also

considered as a role model for future English devolution, constitutes a major exception. Further plans for

so-called ‘Elected Regional Assemblies’ in other parts of England were pursued in the early 2000s,

resulting in a referendum in the North-East of the country in 2004, which was rejected by almost 80% of

the electorate. Following this debacle, all other plans for English devolution were subsequently put on ice.

London is indeed a quite significant exception in this respect. The establishment of the GLA was approved

by 72% of its electorate in 1998, which was especially due to the perceived need for a strong regional

authority to deal with matters of transport and crime first and foremost. It may also be the case that the

people of London see themselves more as a distinct community with common interests than inhabitants of

other English regions.20

.

As we have seen, devolution in Great Britain has brought with it a very unbalanced, asymmetric kind of

quasi federal system. Beside the functionality of such an unbalanced system and the possibility to

transform it into a proper federation, the most pressing question today is a very different one: will this

devolution be enough? Will it appease nationalist parties and the population in the devolved countries or

will it only lead to more demands and even to outright independence? The Scottish case, which is as

always leading the way in this respect, at the moment, suggests the latter.

Scottish independence and the persistence of the United Kingdom: An outlook

In September this year, the Scottish population is going to be called to the polls to decide on the future of

the country. The wording of the question they will have to answer is a very simple one: Should Scotland

be an independent country? When following media reports on this topic and listening to responsible

politicians, the whole issue sometimes sounds like a standard procedure. However, it is far from it. The

wider implications of Scotland becoming independent are far reaching and hard to predict. Yet, what can

be said for sure is that a positive outcome in the referendum would have severe consequences for the

United Kingdom as a whole, not only for Scotland.

20

Ibid., 149–51.

As I have discussed above, the United Kingdom today is not a full-fledged federation but ‘only’ a unitary,

yet decentralized state with some federal characteristics. Due to this situation and a lacking written

constitution, there is no clear provision for secession either. However, the Scottish government and the

British parliament and government in London have agreed on a procedure for secession, including the

upcoming referendum and a constructive co-operation in case of a positive outcome. Westminster agreed

to acknowledge any outcome and to work constructively with the Scottish government to solve all arising

questions. The Scottish government’s plan is to negotiate the terms of independence from the day of the

referendum until March 2016, when Scotland would officially declare independence from the Union. In

these one and a half years, Scotland’s prime minister and head of the Scottish National Party Alex

Salmond wants to solve all existing legal issues with both Westminster and Brussels to allow for a smooth

transition out of the UK and into the EU21

.

Leaving aside all the difficult questions arising with this plan (concerning matters of defence with the UK

and entry into the EU most crucially), the consequences for the remaining United Kingdom would be

more than critical as well. As we have seen, the Union is already more than unbalanced and the population

of England so far has not proved willing to implement devolution in their own country too, which seems

to be the only way out of this asymmetry and into a real federation. Without this happening, the situation

of Wales and Northern Ireland within the Union will become even more marginalized than it already is. A

United Kingdom without Scotland would have an English majority population of over 91% with just over

5% Welsh and less than 3% Northern Irish22

. Concerning GDP, this imbalance would be even more

striking as both Wales and especially Northern Ireland are structurally rather weak regions in comparison

to England and especially to the City of London. It is questionable whether such a union would still be

feasible and whether the two remaining smaller nations would still agree on the terms of this new union.

This could very likely lead to enforced devolution to those two nations in the future, ending either in a

genuine federal British state or in Welsh and/or Northern Irish independence or even unification with the

Republic of Ireland (no matter how unlikely this may seem today).

Another question regards to place of the rump-United Kingdom in the European Union. Prime Minister

David Cameron already announced a referendum on Britain leaving the EU after (or rather in case) he gets

re-elected in general elections in 2015. Public opinion in England is generally more anti-EU than in

21

Sc ish G ve me , “Sc d’s Fu u e – Y u Guide I depe de Sc d,” 2013, http://www.scotreferendum.com/reports/scotlands-future-your-guide-to-an-independent-scotland/. 22

Calculated from the statistics of 2013 (Office for National Statistics – www.ons.gov.uk)

Scotland, so independence of the latter could also significantly influence the outcome of the EU

referendum. Not to mention, this would in return have influences on Wales, which is also generally more

positive towards the EU than England is. A break-up of Britain, however, would have even stronger

repercussions in Europe. It would be the first case of state-partitioning within the European Union and

especially in Spain this development will be monitored very thoroughly as Scottish independence (and

possible smooth transition into the EU) could mean a boost for Catalonian and Basque independence

movements.

It is clear that any speculations on this matter can only be this, speculations. We will find out what

possible repercussions the case could bring in September. What can be surely said at the moment is that

the United Kingdom would definitely come under immense pressure for reform, if Scotland was to declare

independence. Whether this would lead to a genuine federal system or an English nation state is

impossible to predict.

Conclusion

I have discussed here the history and nature of the current Great British state. After giving some historical

background to the Union of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland, I posed the question whether the current

British state can be considered a federation and if yes, what kind of federation. After introducing some

general theories on federal system, I concluded that Great Britain today is not a full-fledged federation,

however, it does show some important characteristics of a federal system, which are closely linked to the

process of devolution that has taken place in recent years, starting from the late 1990s. This, however, led

to the question whether this state would even be capable of becoming a real federation.

The question of the federal nature of the British state is a very important one today, if we consider a

federal system to be a feasible solution for nationalist demands and calls for self-determination (which

most scholars do). The possible independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom will once more show

the necessity for this British state to reform, no matter what the outcome of the referendum on

independence will be. If Scotland votes to leave, Great Britain will be in desperate need to find a new

workable solution for its constituent parts, beside Wales and Northern Ireland also England. But even if

the Scottish public decides to stay in the union, reforms in the UK’s political system will be unavoidable.

The current system of quasi federation proved to be insufficient for Scottish demands and this sheds a

doubtful light on the future of Wales too. It seems that the only serious alternative for the United Kingdom

can be the establishment of a genuine, full-fledged federal system, including or excluding Scotland, which

will also have to cope with the massive imbalance which is caused by the size of England. I have hinted

that such a federal system might be hard to establish in the UK due to its static and inflexible

constitutional design, yet, it is most likely to be the only solution for sustaining a United Kingdom into the

future.

Bibliography

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Kratzer, Philipp. “Die Scottish National Party Und Die Europäische Dimension Der Unabhängigkeit

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The de-facto federal system of the United Kingdom and the threat of Scottish independence

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