In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats... more In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2011 and 2012, it is perhaps unsurprising that recent analysis has focused on the ‘toxic impact of the federal party's coalition with the Conservative party’ on the devolved state parties electoral fortunes. Certainly this significant electoral collapse, alongside the hostility to both parties recorded in the 2011 Scottish and Welsh electoral surveys, could be said to lend credence to such a research focus. However, this article argues that the real potency of the Westminster coalition has resulted from it exacerbating and exposing weaknesses that have long blighted the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and Wales. Indeed, by adopting an approach that places the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats' current woes within a historical context, this article will contend that such frailties highlight structural weaknesses at the very heart of the Liberal Democrats federally.
ABSTRACT The story of devolution in the United Kingdom is a long and chequered one which long pre... more ABSTRACT The story of devolution in the United Kingdom is a long and chequered one which long predates the establishment of devolved legislatures in Scotland and Wales after referendums in 1997. The devolution programme of Tony Blair’s Labour Government came eighteen years after the failure of the 1974–79 Labour Government’s attempts at establishing Scottish and Welsh devolution. This article explores how after establishing a Royal Commission on the Constitution in his first Government, Wilson would be left to take up the reins of devolution again after the two elections of 1974. It focuses on how Harold Wilson, and then James Callaghan, developed, often with huge reluctance and great caution, devolution proposals that would eventually form the Scotland and Wales Bill (the Labour Government’s first set of legislative proposals for devolution). The bill endured a tortuous fate in parliament and its slow progress eventually ground to a final halt in February 1977. However, despite the bill’s failure, the work that went into developing it and the concessions that were made by the government during its aborted journey through the House of Commons had consequences that were felt during the remainder of the 1974–79 Labour Government’s fraught existence and long after.
In 2012, the Netherlands held snap elections following disagreement between Mark Rutte’s governme... more In 2012, the Netherlands held snap elections following disagreement between Mark Rutte’s government, and Geert Wilders’ right-wing PVV over the country’s budget. Adam Evans writes that one year on from the elections, Rutte is once again facing difficulty negotiating support for the 2013 budget. He argues however that with the PVV enjoying high polling ratings, the prospect of forcing another snap election is likely to be considered a price too high for opposition parties, who will inevitably seek some form of compromise to push the budget through.
Last Friday, the government held a press conference responding to the Silk Commission’s recommend... more Last Friday, the government held a press conference responding to the Silk Commission’s recommendations for devolution in Wales. When one strips back the political drama of the unexpected announcement and the rhetoric of goodwill and support for fiscal accountability expressed by the UK government, it is difficult to find much evidence of a significant move to Welsh fiscal accountability, writes Adam Evans.
For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the ... more For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out parliament's remit in some, but not all, parts of the UK. These questions bedevilled Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century and have been a recurrent feature of debate following New Labour's devolution programme in the late 1990s, culminating in the adoption of a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ by the house of commons in October 2015. This article looks at this issue through the lens of the ill‐fated Scotland and Wales Bill introduced by the Callaghan government in 1976. It explores the roots of the bill and how, and why, the idea of referring the question of territorial representation, post‐devolution, to a Speaker's conference, came to secure the initial support of cabinet as the best answer to this problem, and why the government swiftly changed its mind. Parliamentary statecraft considerations served to push a Speaker's conference onto the institutional agenda, before ultimately dooming it to failure.
The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK's un... more The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK's uncodified constitution and has been an important facet of the UK's territorial governance post-devolution. It provides that the UK government will not normally seek to legislate on devolved matters, and the devolution settlements, without the consent of the respective devolved legislatures. Commonly referred to as the 'Sewel Convention', the convention's roots are often traced to the commitments made by Lord Sewel during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. This article demonstrates, however, that the convention has a far deeper history that long predated Lord Sewel's comments and goes back to the dawn of devolution in the United Kingdom, namely, the Northern Ireland Parliament that existed between 1921 and 1972. The article charts the development of the legislative consent convention from its roots in the failure of the UK government to challenge directly the Northern Ireland government over local government franchise reform in 1921, to its continued survival, even when Stormont collapsed in 1972, and argues that the convention survived owing to its role as a device of convenience and pragmatism for politicians in Westminster.
Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention.... more Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention. However, they are an aspect of parliamentary life in which there has been a series of experiments by select committees in the House of Commons. While one of the more prominent examples of such experimentation was the international grand committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy spearheaded by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, this article will look at another example of select committee‐led interparliamentary relations, namely the ‘joint inquiry’ conducted by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Assemblee nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence into Future Cruise and Anti‐Ship Missiles in 2018. This article, written by an official involved in the inquiry, offers the first reflections on the experience of this joint inquiry, demonstrates how the model undertaken for the inquiry differed from the approaches taken by other select committees involved in interparliamentary working, and explores whether it might offer a blueprint for future joint inquiries.
Since 1997, the United Kingdom's territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of cha... more Since 1997, the United Kingdom's territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of change and has resulted in the establishment of separate legislatures and governments for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and, when Stormont is operational, Northern Ireland. These changes have spawned a whole series of relationships between the institutions of the devolved UK, at executive, legislature and civil service levels. However, while intergovernmental relations has been the subject of repeated debate, there has been little attempt to document and examine the way in which the UK's four legislatures interact with one another, post-devolution. To the extent that these interactions, otherwise known as interparliamentary relations (IPR), have been the subject of scrutiny it has been largely to bemoan their modest state and/or to suggest that stronger, albeit occasionally rather unelaborated, mechanisms be established. This article seeks to correct this deficit and provide a first step towards a clearer understanding of IPR in the UK, post-devolution. The article breaks the different levels of IPR down into three main strands: 1) parliament-parliament, 2) committeecommittee, and 3) official-official and suggests that the main interactions that take place at each of these levels. Following this audit, the article concludes by highlighting the role that shared policy competence (a field that is set to grow with the UK's withdrawal from the European Union) has played in driving IPR in the UK, post-devolution and suggests some steps that may be taken to enhance IPR in the future.
Abstract The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s con... more Abstract The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s constitutional history. However, recent analysis has shed new light on this little studied moment in British constitutional history. Building on Evans (2015), this article focuses on the Conference’s deliberations on the units that would be represented by devolution (i.e. whether devolution would be on national or regional lines) to provide further evidence that the division between intra-parliamentary and directly elected devolution was a cleavage that cut through the entirety of the Conference’s work, as opposed to simply being a source of disagreement at the end of its proceedings. As this debate essentially focused on how England should be governed post-devolution, this article also sheds further light on the history of ‘the English Question’.
de m o crat icaudit .co m http://www.demo craticaudit.co m/?p=1955 By Demo cratic Audit Don't exp... more de m o crat icaudit .co m http://www.demo craticaudit.co m/?p=1955 By Demo cratic Audit Don't expect meaningful fiscal devolution for Wales any time soon The debate about the appropriate level of fiscal autonomy for Wales in the wake of the publication the Silk Commission rumbles on. But while it once looked likely that the Welsh Assembly Government would gain meaningful tax raising and spending powers, the prospects are now less bright. Adam Evans argues that a deadly concoction of political incompetence and partisan self-interest have combined to make meaningful substantial tax devolution an increasingly distant prospect. In recent articles I have argued that the f iscal devolution envisaged by the Silk Commission and the UK Government's eventual response would not amount to any meaningf ul measure of f iscal accountability. In this article I will outline why I have argued this previously and ref lect on why it seems highly unlikely that the partial devolution of income tax powers to the National Assembly f or Wales will happen any time soon. To recap, on the 19 th November 2012, the Commission on Devolution in Wales, otherwise known as the Silk Commission due to the chairmanship of f ormer Parliamentary and Assembly clerk Paul Silk, published the report of its f irst stage of inquiry on the f iscal accountability of the National Assembly f or Wales and the Welsh government (the second to be published in 2014 is a more general look at the assembly's powers and responsibilities, see here f or the report).
This paper contributes to the growing literature on intra-party politics within state-wide politi... more This paper contributes to the growing literature on intra-party politics within state-wide political parties in multi-level systems of governance. Specifically it focuses on the respective positions of the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats within the party federally up to the autumn of 2012. Whilst there has been a longstanding perception that the Scottish Liberal Democrats are a far more influential part of the federal party than their Welsh counterparts, as the early days of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition at Westminster appeared to confirm, this article argues that, in reality, the intra-party dynamics of the Liberal Democrats require a fundamental reinterpretation. By drawing attention to the federal leadership's perceptions of the Welsh party's electoral performance in 2011, the influence of key individuals in the Welsh Liberal Democrats and organizational adaptation by the party in Wales, it is argued that the Welsh party's influence, whilst still bounded, has been enhanced. Furthermore, whilst Scottish interests have certainly been more successful internally than their Welsh counterparts, by reassessing the source of such power, we can see that it is overwhelmingly rooted in Scottish Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament, rather than figures in Edinburgh. The latter is a source of influence that highlights the unbalanced nature of power within the federal party, with the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats arguably victims of structural deficiencies at the heart of the Liberal Democrats ‘federal’ organization.
Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has be... more Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there have been two attempts to treat the territorial constitution in the round: the Speaker's Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 and the Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1969–1973. This article examines both of these forums, arguing that they provide clear warnings for a future UK constitutional convention, in particular the threat of internal division that any such forum risks facing. A danger that this article highlights is heightened by the associated difficulty of reaching agreement across the UK's ‘state of unions’.
In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in Apr... more In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in April 1920, the Conference has been consigned to the margins of political and constitutional history. However, within this limited literature, one interpretation of the Conference's proceedings has been universally held: that the subject of the powers the devolved legislatures should enjoy was a rare source of consensus. This article challenges this orthodoxy, using archival evidence from the Conference to demonstrate that while a consensus on powers may have existed on paper, such agreement certainly did not exist in practice.
Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to f... more Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to federalism. This federalism stretches to the Liberal Democrats’ organisational structure and constitution and to their vision for the structure of the United Kingdom as a whole. A decade after devolution, and with proposals for further reform of the constitution, one might imagine that these federal beliefs would see the party placed at the vanguard of these constitutional debates. Looking in more detail at the party’s organisational and ideational federalism, however – and with particular emphasis on the party’s organisational and ideational English Questions – produces a very different picture, leaving the party on many fronts vulnerable to charges of being federalist in name only.
Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to f... more Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to federalism. This federalism stretches to the Liberal Democrats’ organisational structure and constitution and to their vision for the structure of the United Kingdom as a whole. A decade after devolution, and with proposals for further reform of the constitution, one might imagine that these federal beliefs would see the party placed at the vanguard of these constitutional debates. Looking in more detail at the party’s organisational and ideational federalism, however – and with particular emphasis on the party’s organisational and ideational English Questions – produces a very different picture, leaving the party on many fronts vulnerable to charges of being federalist in name only
In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats... more In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2011 and 2012, it is perhaps unsurprising that recent analysis has focused on the ‘toxic impact of the federal party's coalition with the Conservative party’ on the devolved state parties electoral fortunes. Certainly this significant electoral collapse, alongside the hostility to both parties recorded in the 2011 Scottish and Welsh electoral surveys, could be said to lend credence to such a research focus. However, this article argues that the real potency of the Westminster coalition has resulted from it exacerbating and exposing weaknesses that have long blighted the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and Wales. Indeed, by adopting an approach that places the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats' current woes within a historical context, this article will contend that such frailties highlight structural weaknesses at the very heart of the Liberal Democrats federally.
ABSTRACT The story of devolution in the United Kingdom is a long and chequered one which long pre... more ABSTRACT The story of devolution in the United Kingdom is a long and chequered one which long predates the establishment of devolved legislatures in Scotland and Wales after referendums in 1997. The devolution programme of Tony Blair’s Labour Government came eighteen years after the failure of the 1974–79 Labour Government’s attempts at establishing Scottish and Welsh devolution. This article explores how after establishing a Royal Commission on the Constitution in his first Government, Wilson would be left to take up the reins of devolution again after the two elections of 1974. It focuses on how Harold Wilson, and then James Callaghan, developed, often with huge reluctance and great caution, devolution proposals that would eventually form the Scotland and Wales Bill (the Labour Government’s first set of legislative proposals for devolution). The bill endured a tortuous fate in parliament and its slow progress eventually ground to a final halt in February 1977. However, despite the bill’s failure, the work that went into developing it and the concessions that were made by the government during its aborted journey through the House of Commons had consequences that were felt during the remainder of the 1974–79 Labour Government’s fraught existence and long after.
In 2012, the Netherlands held snap elections following disagreement between Mark Rutte’s governme... more In 2012, the Netherlands held snap elections following disagreement between Mark Rutte’s government, and Geert Wilders’ right-wing PVV over the country’s budget. Adam Evans writes that one year on from the elections, Rutte is once again facing difficulty negotiating support for the 2013 budget. He argues however that with the PVV enjoying high polling ratings, the prospect of forcing another snap election is likely to be considered a price too high for opposition parties, who will inevitably seek some form of compromise to push the budget through.
Last Friday, the government held a press conference responding to the Silk Commission’s recommend... more Last Friday, the government held a press conference responding to the Silk Commission’s recommendations for devolution in Wales. When one strips back the political drama of the unexpected announcement and the rhetoric of goodwill and support for fiscal accountability expressed by the UK government, it is difficult to find much evidence of a significant move to Welsh fiscal accountability, writes Adam Evans.
For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the ... more For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out parliament's remit in some, but not all, parts of the UK. These questions bedevilled Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century and have been a recurrent feature of debate following New Labour's devolution programme in the late 1990s, culminating in the adoption of a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ by the house of commons in October 2015. This article looks at this issue through the lens of the ill‐fated Scotland and Wales Bill introduced by the Callaghan government in 1976. It explores the roots of the bill and how, and why, the idea of referring the question of territorial representation, post‐devolution, to a Speaker's conference, came to secure the initial support of cabinet as the best answer to this problem, and why the government swiftly changed its mind. Parliamentary statecraft considerations served to push a Speaker's conference onto the institutional agenda, before ultimately dooming it to failure.
The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK's un... more The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK's uncodified constitution and has been an important facet of the UK's territorial governance post-devolution. It provides that the UK government will not normally seek to legislate on devolved matters, and the devolution settlements, without the consent of the respective devolved legislatures. Commonly referred to as the 'Sewel Convention', the convention's roots are often traced to the commitments made by Lord Sewel during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. This article demonstrates, however, that the convention has a far deeper history that long predated Lord Sewel's comments and goes back to the dawn of devolution in the United Kingdom, namely, the Northern Ireland Parliament that existed between 1921 and 1972. The article charts the development of the legislative consent convention from its roots in the failure of the UK government to challenge directly the Northern Ireland government over local government franchise reform in 1921, to its continued survival, even when Stormont collapsed in 1972, and argues that the convention survived owing to its role as a device of convenience and pragmatism for politicians in Westminster.
Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention.... more Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention. However, they are an aspect of parliamentary life in which there has been a series of experiments by select committees in the House of Commons. While one of the more prominent examples of such experimentation was the international grand committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy spearheaded by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, this article will look at another example of select committee‐led interparliamentary relations, namely the ‘joint inquiry’ conducted by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Assemblee nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence into Future Cruise and Anti‐Ship Missiles in 2018. This article, written by an official involved in the inquiry, offers the first reflections on the experience of this joint inquiry, demonstrates how the model undertaken for the inquiry differed from the approaches taken by other select committees involved in interparliamentary working, and explores whether it might offer a blueprint for future joint inquiries.
Since 1997, the United Kingdom's territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of cha... more Since 1997, the United Kingdom's territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of change and has resulted in the establishment of separate legislatures and governments for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and, when Stormont is operational, Northern Ireland. These changes have spawned a whole series of relationships between the institutions of the devolved UK, at executive, legislature and civil service levels. However, while intergovernmental relations has been the subject of repeated debate, there has been little attempt to document and examine the way in which the UK's four legislatures interact with one another, post-devolution. To the extent that these interactions, otherwise known as interparliamentary relations (IPR), have been the subject of scrutiny it has been largely to bemoan their modest state and/or to suggest that stronger, albeit occasionally rather unelaborated, mechanisms be established. This article seeks to correct this deficit and provide a first step towards a clearer understanding of IPR in the UK, post-devolution. The article breaks the different levels of IPR down into three main strands: 1) parliament-parliament, 2) committeecommittee, and 3) official-official and suggests that the main interactions that take place at each of these levels. Following this audit, the article concludes by highlighting the role that shared policy competence (a field that is set to grow with the UK's withdrawal from the European Union) has played in driving IPR in the UK, post-devolution and suggests some steps that may be taken to enhance IPR in the future.
Abstract The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s con... more Abstract The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s constitutional history. However, recent analysis has shed new light on this little studied moment in British constitutional history. Building on Evans (2015), this article focuses on the Conference’s deliberations on the units that would be represented by devolution (i.e. whether devolution would be on national or regional lines) to provide further evidence that the division between intra-parliamentary and directly elected devolution was a cleavage that cut through the entirety of the Conference’s work, as opposed to simply being a source of disagreement at the end of its proceedings. As this debate essentially focused on how England should be governed post-devolution, this article also sheds further light on the history of ‘the English Question’.
de m o crat icaudit .co m http://www.demo craticaudit.co m/?p=1955 By Demo cratic Audit Don't exp... more de m o crat icaudit .co m http://www.demo craticaudit.co m/?p=1955 By Demo cratic Audit Don't expect meaningful fiscal devolution for Wales any time soon The debate about the appropriate level of fiscal autonomy for Wales in the wake of the publication the Silk Commission rumbles on. But while it once looked likely that the Welsh Assembly Government would gain meaningful tax raising and spending powers, the prospects are now less bright. Adam Evans argues that a deadly concoction of political incompetence and partisan self-interest have combined to make meaningful substantial tax devolution an increasingly distant prospect. In recent articles I have argued that the f iscal devolution envisaged by the Silk Commission and the UK Government's eventual response would not amount to any meaningf ul measure of f iscal accountability. In this article I will outline why I have argued this previously and ref lect on why it seems highly unlikely that the partial devolution of income tax powers to the National Assembly f or Wales will happen any time soon. To recap, on the 19 th November 2012, the Commission on Devolution in Wales, otherwise known as the Silk Commission due to the chairmanship of f ormer Parliamentary and Assembly clerk Paul Silk, published the report of its f irst stage of inquiry on the f iscal accountability of the National Assembly f or Wales and the Welsh government (the second to be published in 2014 is a more general look at the assembly's powers and responsibilities, see here f or the report).
This paper contributes to the growing literature on intra-party politics within state-wide politi... more This paper contributes to the growing literature on intra-party politics within state-wide political parties in multi-level systems of governance. Specifically it focuses on the respective positions of the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats within the party federally up to the autumn of 2012. Whilst there has been a longstanding perception that the Scottish Liberal Democrats are a far more influential part of the federal party than their Welsh counterparts, as the early days of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition at Westminster appeared to confirm, this article argues that, in reality, the intra-party dynamics of the Liberal Democrats require a fundamental reinterpretation. By drawing attention to the federal leadership's perceptions of the Welsh party's electoral performance in 2011, the influence of key individuals in the Welsh Liberal Democrats and organizational adaptation by the party in Wales, it is argued that the Welsh party's influence, whilst still bounded, has been enhanced. Furthermore, whilst Scottish interests have certainly been more successful internally than their Welsh counterparts, by reassessing the source of such power, we can see that it is overwhelmingly rooted in Scottish Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament, rather than figures in Edinburgh. The latter is a source of influence that highlights the unbalanced nature of power within the federal party, with the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats arguably victims of structural deficiencies at the heart of the Liberal Democrats ‘federal’ organization.
Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has be... more Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there have been two attempts to treat the territorial constitution in the round: the Speaker's Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 and the Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1969–1973. This article examines both of these forums, arguing that they provide clear warnings for a future UK constitutional convention, in particular the threat of internal division that any such forum risks facing. A danger that this article highlights is heightened by the associated difficulty of reaching agreement across the UK's ‘state of unions’.
In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in Apr... more In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in April 1920, the Conference has been consigned to the margins of political and constitutional history. However, within this limited literature, one interpretation of the Conference's proceedings has been universally held: that the subject of the powers the devolved legislatures should enjoy was a rare source of consensus. This article challenges this orthodoxy, using archival evidence from the Conference to demonstrate that while a consensus on powers may have existed on paper, such agreement certainly did not exist in practice.
Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to f... more Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to federalism. This federalism stretches to the Liberal Democrats’ organisational structure and constitution and to their vision for the structure of the United Kingdom as a whole. A decade after devolution, and with proposals for further reform of the constitution, one might imagine that these federal beliefs would see the party placed at the vanguard of these constitutional debates. Looking in more detail at the party’s organisational and ideational federalism, however – and with particular emphasis on the party’s organisational and ideational English Questions – produces a very different picture, leaving the party on many fronts vulnerable to charges of being federalist in name only.
Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to f... more Of the main UK political parties, the Liberal Democrats have been unique in their commitment to federalism. This federalism stretches to the Liberal Democrats’ organisational structure and constitution and to their vision for the structure of the United Kingdom as a whole. A decade after devolution, and with proposals for further reform of the constitution, one might imagine that these federal beliefs would see the party placed at the vanguard of these constitutional debates. Looking in more detail at the party’s organisational and ideational federalism, however – and with particular emphasis on the party’s organisational and ideational English Questions – produces a very different picture, leaving the party on many fronts vulnerable to charges of being federalist in name only
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