Wednesday 22 January 2020

Federalism would clearly be unacceptable to England.

Whatever your views on Devolution or Br exit, one thing that became clear after all three devolved Governments have voted against supporting Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, shows that Federalism cannot work.



The National Assembly  (shouldn't they be using Senedd now)?followed Stormont and Holyrood in saying it could not back the UK Government's plan.

Just 15 AMs backed the plan while 35 voted against. There were no abstentions.The Presiding Officer, Elin Jones, said the decision would be "communicated urgently" to both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
When the UK Parliament wants to pass a law which covers a devolved issue convention requires it to receive the consent of the devolved administration before it can pass it – so-called Legislative Consent Motions.
The Sewel Convention says that the UK Government should not go ahead with a law if devolved administrations have not backed it.
The refusal will not stop the Withdrawal Agreement Bill becoming law but there are warnings that ignoring the concerns is dangerous to the continuation of the union.
Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly voted against giving their consent on Monday and MSPs have also done so.
In March last year the Institute for Government carried out research about consent motions and found that across the three devolved legislatures there had been 352 legislative consent motions.
At that point there were just 10 occasions has consent been denied in part or in full in individual administrations. This vote will be the 13th denial of consent.
The point is that that Westminster wil ignore the concern of the other legislature  on these Islands and even if there was a Federal Structure , which give veto powers to them  the point is that England would react in outrage if they with a population 66 million would find that Northern Ireland (1.8 Million) Wales (3 million)and Scotland (5.2million) could be any way equal to them.

Of course yo could get Regional Government in England  and all power to the Yorkshire Party, though this may not alas include Cornwall who could find themselves in a South West Assembly.

But these Regions would not be nations as Wales and Scotland are and  I doubt that any English Regional Government would have a separate legal system (as Scotland has and Wales wants).

Federalism in these Islands cannot work, because it will unacceptable to England, and you can possibly see their argument.

Though it is likely they see this not so much as a matter of numbers but that they are inherently  our masters.

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