Beyond Asymmetric Devolution

 Beyond Asymmetric Devolution

I'm hoping that today will give a slightly different take on constitutional issues. Less on the nuts and bolts of powers or the contesting politics of unionism and nationalism. To explore some issues that I think the pandemic is high. Rated I got a very English perspective living in Winchester, but it seemed to me that the UK media really struggled. Certainly at the beginning with devolved administrations having different COVID policies, not just with reporting what they were, but even understanding how policies could be different. Government and opposition politicians often talked confusingly about the country, whether they meant England. Indeed, yesterday's Treasury tweets about leveling up buses and housings weren't clear whether they've worked for England only. It seems to be hard to find a language of politics that works across the Union. And to judge by complaints from the Welsh First Minister about consultation the machinery for intra governmental coordination can often be lacking. The thing is, it's 20 years since devolution, but the language of politics, the culture of the media, and the organization of the state don't seem to have caught up, and I'm hoping that our speakers will explore if that's true and why, and it matters. Of course, not just for now, but because our Constitution may not be settled, and if there are reforms. Can they bring our language and culture and practice better into line? Well together is underway. Our first speaker is in Murray MP. He's the shadow secretary of. State for Scotland Ian welcome.

Well, John, thank you very much indeed. And it's, uh, it's great to be doing this seminar all be on zoom. I would rather we all huddled in a room with a cup of coffee and chatting to each other, but these are the modern ways of doing it, and I think it's a a great privilege to be involved in in in some of these discussions. And I do have a, uh, PowerPoint. I don't know if we can. Pop that up. I don't want to.
Death by PowerPoint and.
So I may go off script a little bit, but I don't know if somebody cheers the screen.
It will give us a little bit of a there we go and little bit of where we are.
And So what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to talk a little bit about where we are in Scotland.
A little bit of where I see this asymmetric devolution problem and how I think politics.
And politicians are going to have to resolve.
It and you.
Can see from the map there on the left hand side.
Obviously I don't know if it's to scale.
Actually, I'm not.
I'm not sure if it is to scale, but essentially that's all of the English regions of the Scottish regions at the Welsh and Northern Irish and the geographical makeup of.
The United Kingdom, now back in the mid 90s.
Of course the Labour Party back then when we still had conservative rule, decided that the status quo was indefensible, that we needed to have a constitutional settlement that was much more in tune with where the politics of the country was much more devolution from Whitehall and.
And when I say Whitehall, I mean sort of London in the Southeast, but primarily central London out to the nations and regions of the United.
Kingdom and there was a real first in the country after need on 18 years of Conservative government to try and do things differently.
And so we came up with a devolution settlement for the 1990s, and we went into that 1997 general election with.
The plans that.
Are now essentially in place across the UK and significant devolution in Scotland.
Significant devolution in Wales.
Also Northern Ireland came on stream and then of course pockets of England, Merseyside, Manchester, Bristol, London.
Of course a Yorkshire is ticking along.
Somewhere along that pathway in devolution and I hate to use the terms that other people have used because they do tend to come back and bite people.
But in terms of from the, from the perspective of of the Labour Party, when it brought in that definition in 1997, we always said.
That this was.
A uh, a journey and not a final solution, and indeed, devolution.
Both the debate and in actual powers, and an actual devolution has been a journey as Scotland has and Wales have both progressed at different speeds but have progressed along that devolution journey where more powers have.
Been devolved to a those assemblies in those national parliaments, and in actual fact the big debate now is getting powers out of those very centralized in Scottish Parliaments, the Senate and Cardiff and the UK Parliament to much more regional basis in those nations as well.
So just go to the next slide if we may.
And now the reason this is incredibly important is because some things have happened over that last decade or so since about 2010.
Since the Conservative Party took power at Westminster and and it's not new, it's not unique to British politics or to Scottish politics.
Indeed, it's very much a factor across the world.
If we just see what happened with Donald Trump in America, if we've been seeing what's happening with nationalist populist parties all over Europe and the Western world.
Indeed, you could even argue that in some instances Trudeau and Mccrone are a result of that national identity politics, and despite in my view, my argument would be getting the right result in that in those particular instances.
And but what you can see now in the Scottish context, and I just want to talk about us, take a few minutes.
Talking about that because it then feeds them where we go next.
And you can see now that most people in Scotland to a greater or lesser, lesser extent put their cross in the box at general elections or any election based on to a greater or lesser extent.
They where they sit on that spectrum of the Constitution and the reason that's important is because the Constitution is just about identity.
T and S&P have essentially grabbed all of that identity. All of that Scottishness, and I know John.
You talk enough a lot about Englishness and what Englishness means.
The Welsh Welshness Irishness all of those kinds of issues and feed into where we end up in terms of that kind of constitutional politics.
So we pop onto the next slide.
If we meet.
This all feeds into of course, the Union needing reform.
And and and.
The reason I mentioned the Union needing reform is because the Constitution has now become the central issue for Scottish politics.
Now, for over a decade, everything is swamped by that central issue, and the reason that it's swamped by that central issue is because people see a different constitutional settlement in Scotland, whether it be independence.
We're sticking with the Union as being the answer to all the questions that people want to pose, so whereas I.
Would argue.
Brexit was a simple answer to a complicated question about identity and about getting your fair share and about governance and about politics being closest to the people about subsidiarity independence in Scotland is essentially an argument about the very same things and what that's then led to is that scottishness
No, swamps, everything, whether it be in history, culture, education.
There is nothing British at all in Scotland at the moment.
In terms of all the surveys that have done Scotland.
First, Scottishness is 1st and we never had that before Scotland First, Scotland NHSS first Scotland schools.
At first Scotland politics as First Scotland economy is first.
America first France first, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It's a nationalist narrative, and that's why we now need some major constitutional reform.
And what that is, John said his introduction.
The pandemic has done is it showed that other parts of the country can operate in a different way and and the Welsh Government.
Scottish Government in Irish government, and indeed the powerful mayoral.
And the leaders in England have shown that maybe want to take different decisions from the centre, but on top of all of that of making different decisions from this.
Enter they want to do that for two reasons.
One, they don't like the central decisions and two the decisions that they will make are much more relevant to the lives of the people they're making them for.
And that's the big argument about where I think the Union needs to be reformed and from a Scottish perspective, much in much the same way from an.
Andy Burnham perspective as Steve Rotheram perspective in Merseyside acidic can perspective and that perspective is you don't really want full independence because you believe in the United Kingdom or you believe in something much bigger than that.
Pooling and sharing of resources and that redistribution.
But the status quo is in defence.
Visible and that asymmetric devolution that we currently have across the UK shows that we now have a situation where the status quo is indefensible and doesn't really work, but we don't want.
To go down.
The route of breaking up the United.
Kingdom and this.
Is not really a question for Scotland, although Scotland leads the debate on this or certainly from a labor perspective.
This is an English problem and the reason it is an English problem is because of asymmetric devolution.
England is too.
Big England and 90% population. In terms of that dominant force.
It's the 85% of the economic force, so when people say Oh yes, own decision making from London in the Southeast, well there is the majority of the population. The majority of the economic.
Output, and that's where the driver of the of the country.
So what do you need to do to resolve this?
Well, you need to do a number of things.
Firstly you need to determine whether or not in order to.
Like I, I don't know what the word would be John in terms of academic sense, but you need to make the UK less asymmetric in terms of devolution and the way you make it more equal in terms of devolution is to resolve the England problem and it's an England problem and an English problem and with.
Andy Burnham in Manchester and others, et cetera, et cetera.
That problem has started to be semi resolved and the questions are starting to be asked, but the solutions haven't yet come to what happens to the rest of.
England and what happens to the rest of England in that donut of the Southeast when you remove London, which is over 20.
2 million people.
How do you resolve what people have described as a Blackpool problem?
It's OK for Greater Manchester, but how do you resolve the problem in Blackpool?
How do you resolve the Yorkshire problem?
How do you dissolve the geographical identity?
Problem as well as the social and cultural identity problem and.
Is this just another?
Way of having more politicians of and more layers of government that the public don't really want.
Or is it a real attempt?
I think to get powers from work, Whitehall, which isn't just about moving brass plates, but powers out and into the hands of the lowest possible place that they can be determined in terms of subsidiarity.
So that's what I think is.
Scotland is really leading this debate.
But it's leading this.
Debate about where does Scotland go next?
If you want if you believe in keeping the United Kingdom today.
And England is now well and truly in this debate, because particularly post pandemic people are going to start to say, well, we want decisions made at the local level and not at a national central level, regardless of whether or not it's a Conservative government.
Run by Boris Johnson, even although that Conservative government run by Boris Johnson.
Has been the catalyst for this debate because it's shown that asymmetric devolution doesn't really work because a lot of parts of the country want more powers.
Want the responsibility?
Want the account of money, accountability and more importantly, most importantly want the money that goes with it.
So I haven't really stuck to my slides there, but I'll conclude there is a little introduction John that the the asymmetric devolution across the United Kingdom if I conclude, has been the catalyst for trying to get a much more equal share of the pot for everyone, and that equal share of the pot, in my view, is about.
Getting powers out of holiday into Scottish local communities out of the Senate and Cardiff into local communities and out of Whitehall and into whatever English regions see themselves as and whatever Englishness determines itself as it wants to be.
And I'll stop there.
Ian, thank you very much.
That's a great start to the seminar already low trades raises lots and lots of issues.
I'm going to move on now straightaway to our next speaker at cash pawn for the Institute of Government.
But I suspect may tell us that asymmetric views of the Union have been around a lot longer than the last.
20 years but OK.
John, thank you and good afternoon everyone.
Thank you for the invitation to join this discussion.
So yeah, John, when you invited me to take part in this event, you asked me to address the subject of how historically the Union has been seen from within its different nations.
And that is of course quite a big subject to do any sort of justice to in eight minutes.
But what I intend to do is to give a short presentation painting, inevitably in very broad brush strokes.
And which draws upon a book chapter I wrote a couple of years ago as part of a project I worked on with John and others at the British Academy.
The project led to the publication of this book.
In fact, it's called Governing England, which is now available for free on the British Academy.
Websites if anyone is interested to look it up because the actual hardcopy version is rather overpriced and.
The argument I.
Made in my contribution to that and and that I want to kind of expand upon today.
Is that the territorial constitution of the UK contains within it and has always contained within it a profound ambiguity about its central principles, and that this ambiguity reflects the different ways in which each of the nations.
Was integrated at different points into the Union and that that led to the emergence of parallel.
And ultimately incompatible views of where power lies within Union State.
Because on the one hand, the Union has retained at its core the ancient English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which is rooted in the idea of the nation as as a unitary entity with a a single locus of authority.
The at Westminster.
James Mitchell, who's
A writer on the history of the Union has described England as the prototypical unitary state in which power was centralized very early in its history, and following the unification of competing Saxon kingdoms before the Norman conquest.
So indeed, John, as.
John said I will be talking a bit bit before the the past 20 years.
And then what we saw is that the the the modern English Constitution emerged through what's been described as I quote an incremental process in which the principle of parliamentary sovereignty was continued with the older principle of monarchical sovereignty.
Then, as England first absorbed Wales and then united with Scotland and Ireland between the 16th and the the early 19th centuries.
From the Orthodox English constitutional perspective, what this process represented was essentially the integration of the other nations into the existing English constitutional order.
But the unitary state narrative that that that represents.
Has long been challenged as giving an accurate depiction of the the constitutional history of the UK as a whole as Professor Arthur Aki has written on this point.
There's no doubting the Anglo centricity of this perspective.
Scotland in particular has a longstanding alternative constitutional discourse centered on the idea or the principle of of popular sovereignty, the the sovereignty of of the Scottish people within the Union state, and from that perspective the the Union.
Of 1707 did not represent the assimilation of Scotland into a greater English state, but rather it was a voluntary union of two sovereign nations whose right to self-determination was not extinguished by that process.
And that it can be argued was reflected in the provisions of the of the 1707 Treaty of Union, which retained intact many of the core institutions of the Scottish state, its legal system, its church, it's educational institutions.
By the late 19th century, a separate Scottish office had been established too, which carved out a growing separate sphere of Scottish public administration. And when political devolution finally took place in 1999.
It built upon those existing institutional foundations of of what was called the separate Scottish System of Government, as well as upon the the discursive foundations of the Scottish Doctrine of popular sovereignty and and that was clear in the uh, as the central claim.
Of the central assertion. If you like of the claim of rights for Scotland, which was published in 1989 and which I quote, acknowledges the sovereign rights of the Scottish people to determine the form of government.
Best suited to their needs and that was the the start of the process that did eventually lead to devolution after 1997.
Skipping very quickly over complex histories of other parts of the UK, and I would just note that in the case of Northern Ireland.
An an appeal to an alternative conception of sovereignty also lay at the heart of of of of the obviously very different devolution settlement that came into being there in in the late 1990s. Specifically, we saw the Good Friday Agreement that entrenched.
The the principle of consent which.
Just to read out the section that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent.
So again, we see this idea of self-determination, which runs counter to the to to the to the idea of of a unitary nation and parliamentary sovereign.
See the Welsh story again is obviously quite different.
Wales was more extensively assimilated into England to the extent that it did come to be spoken of and considered in law as just another region of England.
For for, for, for a long period, but as described by the historian Kenneth Morgan, there was then a gradual rebirth of the Welsh nation as a political entity beginning in the late 19th century, with the expansion of of the franchise and the Great.
The formats and so on but so.
Welsh devolution, when it took place in 1999, was clearly a weaker shadow of its Scottish counterparts. Didn't have such widespread support and so on, but once established it advanced rapidly. Wales now does have a Parliament, not a glorified County Council.
As people used to say about the assembly and devolution clearly represents the settled will of the Welsh people.
I would argue so.
As I say, that's a very a brief summary of a lot of complex history, but I think what I would argue is that devolution since 1999, at one level did appear to signal the acceptance by Westminster of this principle of self-determination, for each of the nations.
Of of these islands, however, the legal form devolution took made clear that the ultimate sovereignty of the UK Parliament remained intact.
This was a form of.
What I would describe as deliberate constructive ambiguity in the principles of the Union state and it's reflected in a number of aspects of devolution, including the Sewell Convention, as people will know consent is sought.
Normally for any legislation.
That affects devolved matters, or amends the devolution settlement prior to Brexit.
Westminster had never knowingly breached the Sewell Convention, but it's now done so on 2 occasions relating to Brexit.
It appears quite likely that the UK internal market bill will also be enacted without consent, although that bill, if passed as drafted, may substantially impinge upon devolved autonomy in in by the operation of the the market access.
Principles and how that will constrain what can be done to to to Reg.
Waste products and Food Standards and so on.
The bill also empowers UK ministers to spend money in devolved areas such as infrastructure, culture and education, a move that's also seen as a direct encroachment.
On devolved autonomy.
So those I think are the the the most stark examples of what seems to have been a shift in how Westminster approaches devolution and how Brexit has destabilized the settlement.
Because just to just to tie things up, the stability of the Union and the UK Constitution I think has long rested upon what Sir Bernard Crick once described as the astonishing restraint in the exercise of the Parliament of parliamentary sovereignty.
Towards Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I think he wrote that in in the early 1980s before sort of deterioration in in territorial relations and since 2016 I believe we may have seen the beginning of the end of that historic restraint.
And and that has led many to the conclusion that I think Ian Murray has as obviously reached and and others will describe that the status quo perhaps cannot hold.
And that's something different.
Perhaps the federal constitution.
Perhaps something else will need to be put in its place.
If the UK is to survive.
OK, thank you very much indeed, and that's a really great overview of the history in a very short period of time, and it's interesting how the sense of an unresolved process or an unresolved journey has come up in both of the opening contributions.
I'm going to move on now to Elsa.
Because what are the obvious questions that comes up in all of these discussions is.
Who are we?
Are we English?
Are we British?
What does it mean to say you're British in different places and so also going to talk about the language we use to talk about ourselves in different parts of the Union Elsa?
Yeah thanks, thanks very much. So so I've been asked to speak about about national identity in in eight minutes and and a lot of my thinking on this has been informed by obviously by running the Scottish Election Survey, but also by Co directing since 2011 the the Future of England.
Survey, which conducts annual surveys of public opinion in England on identity and governance and attitudes to the EU, and has also since 2011, collected parallel data in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a in a kind of state of the Union survey.
And the England specific arguments are in a book that is finally seeing the light of day in March and the Union related side of things are things we're working on now.
So the the four territory data has kind of prompted us to think about the extent to which the United Kingdom might be described as a Union of the mine.
So if we think of all states, regardless of their constitutional architecture, as as unions of constituent communities, that might exist at different territorial scales.
A different meaning for us, different levels of salience with different types of.
Bull autonomism, on the other hand, we can use that scale to try and understand where the United Kingdom is.
At the moment and the answer.
Is that it's a it's?
A disunited Kingdom in many ways, if we speak about different dimensions of this Union of the mind, we can think of the UK as a Union of social solidarity as a Union of economic solidarity.
As a Union of legitimacy or fairness.
But also as as an identity union and we can see the consequences of asymmetric devolution arrangements in each of these different dimensions.
I'm going to talk mostly about identity, but very briefly on the others in terms of a Union of economic solidarity or a sense that we want to share resources across the state.
If we ask abstractly about the principle of economic solidarity, so just in an abstract sense about whether people think that resources should be shared across a state.
Then there is.
There is majority support and if we make the question a bit more precise and we ask about sharing across the whole of the UK, then support drops a little bit, but there's still majority support across the UK for that principle.
But in England if we start to ask not just about sharing and.
In principle or sharing across the whole of the UK.
But if we start to mention specific parts of the UK, So what about sharing with Northern Ireland?
You want to do that?
What about sharing with Wales?
We see that support plummets by depending on where you're asking about by either you know from 7 to 20 points.
Uh, nowhere prompt support default more than when you mentioned Scotland.
And this relates also to this Union of fairness.
So there's a clear sense of grievance in England and.
The particular object of that of.
That grievance is Scotland.
So in terms of economic solidarity, it appears that economic solidarity is conditional on who you're sharing with, which isn't really.
Social solid or economic solidarity, as we might really understand it.
It shouldn't be conditional or should.
In terms of social solidarity, we look at whether people feel that they should have similar access to various policy entitlements and support for this is quite high.
It's between 70 and 80% in England who think that policies should be the same across the UK on, for example, prescription charges.
Tuition fees, unemployment sentencing access.
To care for the for the elderly.
Support for uniformity policy being the same across the UK is higher than in Scotland, markedly so, but it's not much higher than what we see in Wales, but there are inconsistent attitudes here, so people want their regions to have a strong influence and a strong say, but they want the outcomes of the decisions.
Of those regional legislatures to be identical.
So there's what we're calling what we've been calling a devolution paradox.
Here, people want devolution.
They want strong regions, but they want the regions not to make different decisions.
They want those regions to make identical decisions across the state, so the freedom to make identical decisions.
Is another way of looking at it and we can see this as John mentioned at the start, we can see this in the reaction to COVID and the handling of kovid, not just from the English electorate, but from from politicians and from journalists who appear not to have noticed that the devolution might lead to policy variation.
In devolved areas of competence, and they've been aided in that sense.
By a UK.
Government that is not.
Always very specific about the territorial reach.
Of its policies.
But let's talk about identity.
I think there are three things.
That are that.
Are helpful to understand about identity and how this relates to asymmetric devolution.
The first is that this state identity, so a British identity is not the preferred identity in any of the three parts of Britain at the moment.
If we ask which identity suits you.
Best in England around 40% would say a British identity and also 40% would say.
An English identity in Scotland, it's about 24% who would say a British identity and 64% who would say Scottish in Wales?
It's about a third who say British who say well so the first finding about national identity in terms of asymmetric devolution is that it appears to have had certain consequences.
And the first of these is that within Britain a British identity is not a strong dominant identity in any part of mainland Britain.
The second thing we know is that people who hold a British identity think different things and have different political preferences depending on where in Britain they live now, there's always been I'm deliberately saying Britain rather than the UK here.
There's always been a gap in terms.
Of the content of a British.
Identity in Northern Ireland versus the content of a British identity in Britain, but previously the illusion of a British and an English identity meant that we didn't see what we do.
See now.
Which is that?
The attitudes of those who hold an English identity, so A substate identity in England are the same attitudes.
As those who hold a.
British identity in Scotland and Wales.
And the opposite is also true, so the attitudes of those who are British who feel British in England are most similar to those who say they feel Scottish.
Or Welsh in Scotland and Wales.
And when they say attitudes, what am I?
What am I talking about?
We're talking about what we see, what we call Devo anxiety so dis quiet about the impact of devolution and the.
Way it affects.
The running of the UK but also a sense of euroskepticism, so English identifiers are Devo anxious and they are euroskeptic while it's.
British identifiers in Scotland and in Wales who feel.
So British identity is not the dominant identity in any part of Britain and people.
Who hold the.
British identity hold different constitutional preferences at times.
Polar opposite constitutional preferences depending on where they live in Britain and.
The third part is that.
There's actually more nuance to this because.
English identity is unlike Scottish and Welsh identity on issues of devolution and on euro scepticism.
However, those who feel English also want self-determination for themselves.
And I don't mean by this I don't mean independence.
I mean some form of self.
Governance, so in this they are like those who have a strong sense of Scottish and Welsh identity.
Now what kind of self government do they want?
We can typically distinguish between two different solutions.
For the English problem or the English.
Question those that treat England as a single unit and those that seek to carve up or divide England in general, the English electorate and particularly.
English identifiers tend to prefer a whole England solution, so support has always been highest for English votes for it.
Laws, but there's also support for an English parliament, and these are typically greater than support for enhanced city regions or regional government.
Indeed, these options often fare these regionalized solutions often fare less well than support for the status quo, which itself is not particularly.
And so there we have the chief challenge in terms of how you solve the English question to cope with the Democrat demographic dominance of England, various parties have suggested dividing it up.
But the only proposals for English governance that people do not want are the ones that are proposing to carve up England.
They want an England wide solution to address address the lack of an English voice.
And related to this world of support dependence.
For England, well that.
Would be a more radical option.
There is limited.
Support for independence.
But we would say the.
English are what we might call ambivalent unionists.
They are not seeking radical change for England itself as independence.
But they are fairly content to see different parts.
Of the state.
Go their own way and we know from the polling that the parts they are most content to see go their own way.
Are first Northern Ireland?
Shortly followed by.
By Scotland so we, for example, have a question where we ask people to say which option suits them best.
The Union between Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales is a priority for me and I want it to stay the.
Same I want independence from my part or 1/3 option. I don't want independence from my part, but if one or more other parts of the UK want to declare independence.
Then so be it, and this third group.
People who choose this third option.
These are the people that we would term as ambivalent unionists, so they they want the Union.
But they're they're not necessarily seeking to have it frozen in an aspect.
What we see in England right now is that around 10% population, 1 independence and around 40% might be characterized as as ambivalent unionists.
Of the.
So that's about.
Half the electorate actually quite content for fairly radical change.
If we look at.
English identifiers people who describe themselves as English, not British. Then 30% of those want English independence, and a third are ambivalent unionists.
So almost 2/3 of those who describe themselves as English, not British, support this radical approach or radical change.
Now you might say, well, hang on a minute, English not British that occupies what 10% of the population in England? And that's absolutely true.
But if you look.
At the different identity categories of that that question, the question we call the Marino question.
If you look at people who describe themselves as more English than British.
We, English and British. More than 1/3 of any of them.
Are in that ambivalent unionist category. For each of them until you get to the category British, not English, and even in this group the group that is the most British in England, you have more than 1/4 who are content for one or more parts of the United Kingdom to go their own.
So the English.
As a whole might not want independence for England, although English identifiers are certainly happier for that.
To be the case.
But they don't appear to mind if other parts of the Union leave them, and in so doing leave the British state to them alone.
And I'll end there.
Elsa, thank you very much indeed, and that's a lot to think about if we want to find some sort of common language to use, I'm going to move on now straightaway, to Stephen Cushman from Cardiff University.
Picking up the issue of the media and how.
That has covered recent events and what it tells us about asymmetric devolution.
Stephen oh, by the way, before you come in Steven, could I just say to the audience, please?
Do put questions in the Q and.
A if you.
Would or support questions that are already there?
It'll help me when we I come to posing some questions to the panel at the end, Steven.
OK thanks, thanks John for the invitation and so John gave me the the title to talk about the culture and practice of media in London and Wales and I thought probably the most interesting way to kind of explore that topic was to draw on some some new research we produced over the last year that's looked at news coverage.
And and public understanding of the lockdown measures across the UK during a pandemic, specifically more in kind of March to to May, 2020, which of course, as other panelists have already mentioned, these were these were devolved matters. But the way the media presented that as I'll explore, they didn't always clarify the devolved relevance.
Of these lockdown measures, and I think this is a kind of interesting case.
Study to explore the broader themes we're talking about today, which is that these journalistic practice of the media do reflect the kind of dominant culture of Westminster and England that permeates a lot of political journalism in the UK, and.
Now living in.
Wales for the last 20 years and although being English, I've you know I've heard a lot about the kind of.
London centric media.
You know it's a long standing issue.
It's associated with this.
This concept of the democratic deficit in Wales.
The idea that.
People in in Wales are kind of starved.
The information that they need to be informed critical citizens and you know, there's polling evidence that supports this about people.
Lack of knowledge around the assembly and it's the Paula few years ago when it was an assembly rather than the Senate. You know, 434043 percent of people thought that health was actually.
UK Government responsibility and over 4 in 10 believed that police was actually devolved wrongly.
So, and of course it's always difficult to isolate what's the cause of that in terms of media effects, but.
You know, a lot of people have associated that with a fairly limited political public sphere in Wales, and you know BBC Wales is widely watched and listened to and and and read online and the opt outs are very important on BBC and ITV, but there's not a huge amount of newspapers and that are sold in Wales that are nationally produced.
News about Wales or even online.
There's a huge reliance still on English produced newspapers and online services like the Daily Mail and the Sun.
And of course.
If you look at those, there's very little about.
Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
And it's principally about England and Westminster politics.
Or of course, there's a huge reliance.
Still, even 20 years after devolution on UK wide network news that you know the 6:00 o'clock evening bulletins on BBC or or ITV and Channel 4 later in the evening.
And of course that's quite significant 'cause these broadcasters are public service broadcasters.
And they have a duty to be impartial and accurate.
And over the years over the last decade or or so I've been involved in in in various kind of media monitoring exercises with with regulators like the BBC Trust or will recently.
Off gone where.
We've looked at how UK network news reports the nations and devolutions and these.
Be summarized quite quickly in three headlines, which is that devolution occupies?
A tiny part.
Of the network agenda generally around 1%, I think it was 3% in one year because of.
The Scottish referendum, but usually outside of that, it represents a very small proportion.
England and Westminster are the overwhelming focus and most reporters are based.
In England, and perhaps most critically though.
A lot of.
The coverage often assumes that social policy stories are relevant to the UK when in actual fact they only apply to England only.
A good example there is the junior doctors strike.
A few a few years ago.
So given this kind of informational climate, it's kind of understandable that people are confused, but but I think during the pandemic this was brought into.
To sharper focus and.
As part of a much bigger project and a project that was around misinformation and disinformation, we decided to explore that and as part of a news diary study that we were conducting over a period of six weeks in April and May.
And this was the 200 respondents right across the UK and we were asking them general questions about their changing news consumption.
Trust and critically, if of interest to this panel is is their knowledge about news and policies, including the lockdown measures, and just as a general statement, is that we found.
A lot of confusion about the develop powers you know just to give one headline, you know half the respondents incorrectly said that it was the UK government that was responsible for the all the UK lockdown measures and and we got into the specifics of that a little bit more in in another diary entry we found that you know Wild West measures in England allow people to use their car to exercise.
Six in 10 of the respondents didn't know that in Scotland and Wales they had to remain in their local area and that.
That comes with you know, pretty big consequences.
I don't know if you can see some of the some headlines that I've taken from various news outlets where there was there was one woman.
Who took her child?
From from Birmingham to a beach in Wales during the lockdown and didn't realize that she wasn't allowed to be there.
She was escorted from the police.
She was protesting a lot.
But she didn't realize that Wales was a different country or another one.
Perhaps more worrying is a man drove from Devon to go and feed his dog in Wales, and again, he didn't quite know that that wasn't allowed.
I think the quote there you can see from my TV world is don't we control Wales?
And so there is a lot of confusion out there.
We just ask the general qualitative question.
Do they?
The respondents feel confident about getting the correct?
You know local information and you know there's a lot of comments that related to unclear UK government messaging, but a lot also related to devolution and devolved powers.
I'll create one respondent.
He said distinguishing between rules for different parts of the UK has been difficult.
With reporters sometimes omitting rules which apply where these rules should be stated explicitly as to who they apply to.
So as part of the project we decided to look at that.
You know, a bit more systematically, and we.
Chose specific dates where there was major.
UK government lockdown announcements.
I wouldn't read out all the dates there, but they were quite significant and we looked at all the major broadcast.
Just and we isolated, you know, certain parts of news reporting in terms of the headlines, they're they're kind of anchor introductions and the items themselves.
So this is still an ongoing project that we're doing, but at the moment it's it's well over 200 units of analysis that we're looking at and just to give you a flavor of some of this, if we go back to 23rd of March, which was when at that big announcement.
Around the lock down from the UK that this was a an agreement between the Four Nations that it was obviously announced from Downing St Fire.
By the by the Prime Minister, and it was very much framed by all broadcasters as a UK Government decision.
You know there wasn't any references to the nation, so the BBC News for example, would say said on on the day, the Prime Minister clearly felt he had no other option.
Tonight we'll take some time to absorb the scale of what the government have announced here, or a Sky News live two way that said.
The PM didn't want to do this.
He clearly felt he had no other option and spurred government interaction, so it's that singularly Sev of government.
Now there you know devolution of powers.
The administrations are kind of invisible in this decision making power, and that's quite an important process.
'cause I'll go on to explain in a moment.
And you know, I think coverage has changed.
It has become more accurate.
It has reflected the devolved administrations more, but at that point in time in March in April.
And you know, as the Oxford Reuters surveys have shown, people were really unusually attentive to the news.
You know, BBC News bulletins are reaching something like 20 million viewers a you know, a night, and so that that attention fell into the summer when people weren't as a 10.
When the lockdown was extended by three weeks on the 16th of April, a similar story happened.
It was a four nation agreement, but again, the broadcasters didn't acknowledge this and it was framed as a UK government and decision and we looked at this statement as well because it's something at least it just referred to a moment about how that the UK Government.
Isn't always particularly.
Accurate or inclusive when they make announcements which are clearly relevant to to the devolved nations, so they didn't mention the nations or or devolution within that statement.
So you get coverage that's framed like travel forward.
Again, I wouldn't read out the quote, but again, it's about the government making these decisions.
They're they're under pressure to explain.
Or BBC News?
Report that was quite interesting in that on that day they gave a really informative summary of how different nations across Europe were easing their lockdown measures.
But bizarrely, they ended the report where they say here in the UK we don't know how the government is planning to handle this.
So again, devolution is kind of invisible in this process.
Now things did check out, let me just refer quickly to the to the newspapers as well, that we we briefly looked at two.
You know, just a quick scan of the headlines and even inside the newspapers there's very rough.
Very few references to England, certainly to other nations, and none of the devolved responsibilities.
If we Fast forward in time to to may the end of May.
When the UK government announcement.
The UK Government made an announcement on the the rule of six of people meeting up in public.
This was our point now where there were, you know, a fragmentation.
If you like of lockdown measures across the nations and broadcasters started to reflect this a bit more, they were using phrases like across the UK.
And if you look at coverage more closely like we did, you know most of the broadcast.
Isn't all of them used in England to kind of pre fixed it to introduce some of these items?
But there were still emissions?
You could, again, if you look closely at it.
There was a.
Channel 5 Live two way.
There was no mention of England or the other nations.
It was, uh, you know.
No mention of Northern Ireland and the headlines on the BBC that day.
So there were in at this point in time in May, there were more references to England, but there were very limited explicit references to the.
Nations, or to devolved bodies?
You know, I'll give you a.
Rare example of.
Something of a news report that did this. This was on ITV News at 10 on the 28th of May.
I won't read it all out, but ultimately it it.
It begins by saying the, you know stating the relevance.
Of the announcement in England and then it goes to Scotland and then it goes to Wales and then it explains Northern Ireland in a relatively concise way.
I think there was a little visual as well that went with that particular news report, so it is possible to.
Do again if you look at the.
Newspapers the following day you know, and just on the front pages or on the following day.
Again, it's not always clear where the relevance lies for this rule of six, whether it relates to the whole of the UK or specifically England and very few explicit references to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
And so, just as a kind of brief flavor of that, you know we've gone from March to May, and it's been framed from a UK thing to to an English active, but very limited references.
To devolution and what can we kind of learn?
From that, and it does.
Open up the question how explicit should network news be when they're reporting on some UK political events and issues.
You know, if they don't have any geographical relevance or reference, it could be potentially misleading if they're saying the UK generally.
Again, that's potentially inaccurate, and it makes devolution invisible.
As it did at the beginning of the pandemic, if you say in implicitly in England, this is the case, which is what kind of where we are broadly at the moment and happened in the past.
Is this enough?
I'd perhaps say that it probably isn't because it's not always clear to viewers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that that means.
It's not relevant.
To them.
So probably the the most the clearest way of communicating the relevance I think, is an explicit reference where you Namecheck Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
So it's it's abundantly clear to viewers.
I'm not sure if you can see that the Daily Express headline that I that I put there this is from last week, but this was just to say actually, I do think during the pandemic things have changed a bit, not just on broadcast news, but also news.
In in that on that front page and the very bottom of the of the page, there's actually references to how Downing Street are currently negotiating with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
And as someone that kind of monitors this and has been for a while, it's very rare to have tabloid English produced tabloid newspapers referencing devolved.
Ours, so I think something is happening here.
And so just to kind of sum this up, I think you could kind of say that these these news practices that I've identified reflect that dominant culture of Westminster in England, that we've referred to, and other panelists refer to already.
But I guess what interests me is is not just about these observations as fascinating as they are.
It's more a case of what can we do to actually change?
This culture to enhance informed citizenship across the UK. You know one of the things I've been doing is to engage regulators so it's been engaged. A lot of this material isn't as informed. Ofcom's latest.
Annual review haven't looked systematically at press coverage, so there's there's clearly an opportunity here to engage more with IPSO and impress them from a kind of press perspective.
But what I've also been doing is engaging a lot with broadcasters, so I've been producing videos, not necessarily in real time, but but quite soon after events have been reported, producing videos with some analysis.
With some eclipse and sending it to senior editors to to kind of reflect on and to have a discussion in The Newsroom.
And if I can conclude by just blowing my own trumpet a little bit or our projects trumpet a little bit, this is a quote from Channel 5.
Who wrote back to us after we produced the research and this research that produced which I'm referring to this afternoon provided us with invaluable, you know, research this Birds Eye view of this output was essentially a shortcut to focus on exactly what we needed to do better and.
I think.
Since May into June, and certainly into September.
Which is we're currently looking at.
Network coverage has improved and I think if you watch it now compared to how it was in May, they're far more inclusive.
I think the knowledge of journalists has increased in terms of our understanding of devolution, so this pandemic actually might mark a kind of change.
Change in how devolution is reported across the UK?
That's my kind of optimistic take on that.
But that was a very quick whirlwind.
Perspective on our research.
If anyone interested in that passed on the slides and you can visit our website which has lots of.
Blogs and material.
That relate to this project and other research.
That we're doing too.
Thank you.
Stephen, thank you very much indeed and nice to have a a touch of optimism.
Towards the end of of your contribution.
I'm gonna move on now straightaway to our final speaker before we go to questions.
Jack Sheldon from University of Cambridge looking at really how the machinery of government between the devolved nations.
And the Union government has or has not developed since devolution Jack.
And thanks, John.
So yes, I've I've been asked particularly to reflect on how the machinery of government has adapted to the reality of devolution over the last 20 years, and to discuss some of the state of current policy debates within this area.
And I'll focus.
Particularly on two related areas that were raised in the publicity that was sent out for this event.
Central government relationship with the three of both governments and the governance of England within that context.
Uhm, my starting point is that the introduction of devolution clearly had an important knock on effect for the role of the centre in key policy areas.
The UK Government became effectively the English administration rather than the executive body for the whole of the Union as it had been before.
And given that many of the decisions made by each government inevitably had knock on effects for the others, it required it to build a set of new entry UK relationships too.
During Devolutions early years attempts at setting up institutions to manage relationships between the three governments were perhaps rather half hearted with labor leading the UK government at the time and also the senior coalition partner in the initial Scottish and Welsh Governments.
It didn't seem to be too much of a priority.
Informal party networks could be used.
When contentious issues arose, and in fact often tended to be preferred to more formal machinery, such as the Joint Ministerial Committee, which had been established in 1999.
And this arguably bred a sense of complacency about intergovernmental relations, and so when a more testing set of circumstances started to present themselves during devolution second decade with now different parties leading each government and issues such as Scottish independence and.
Relations with the EU starting to rise up the agenda.
Uhm, the Joint Ministerial committee system and proved not to to be found badly wanting.
It's for those that aren't familiar with it and the Joint ministerial Committee system of meetings are meetings are convened by the UK Government.
There isn't a fixed schedule for them and that create and there are a whole number of other reasons why they're generally considered to be insufficient in the context of Brexit.
For example, meetings didn't always take place even at key moments, and when they did, participants often complained that they didn't enable enable meaningful discussion or the constructive airing of differences.
Many of the rows that have broken out in recent years between the governments have, I think, been as much a result of poor communication and the sense and within the developed from the devolved perspective that the UK government doesn't prioritize or even fully understand devolved sensibilities as much as they've been about the substance of policy.
Now back to that crisis over Scottish independence, Brexit and coronavirus would of course have challenged any set of institutions, so I don't think Inter government better intergovernmental relations can be the silver bullet solution for the Union by any means.
But the absence of agreed rules or procedures for the governments to engage with each other and make decisions together has certainly only exacerbated tensions.
The four governments in the UK have in fact all acknowledged for some time that there is a need for an overhaul of intergovernmental relations.
A joint review was commissioned by the Joint Ministerial Committee in 2018.
And and after several delays, there have been some recent signs of renewed interest in this from the UK Government, and particularly from Michael Gove at the Cabinet Office.
And and some of this territory also falls within the remits of a separate official review which Theresa May commissioned as one of her last acts as Prime Minister conducted by the former Scotland Office minister, Lord Dunlop, which has been completed but not yet published.
And proposals in this area have been made over the past few years by the Welsh Government by various parliamentary committees across the UK by Aakash and his colleagues at the Institute for Government and by academics including a team that I was part of within the Centre on Constitutional Change.
Among other things, relatively simple improvements could include agreeing regular schedules of ministerial meetings in advance, routinely rotating the chairs and locations of meetings between the governments to help overcome the sense of hierarchy felt by the devolved administrations when participating in intergovernmental meetings.
And establishing more sectoral intergovernmental forums.
Uhm, that means forums that aren't talking in general, but are focused on specific policy areas.
And this might be particularly useful in some of those areas returning from the EU where devolved and reserved responsibilities intersect.
Uhm, these changes are increasingly urgent as we now come towards the end of the Brexit implementation period and the return of powers relating to agriculture, fisheries and environmental standards, for example.
To the UK 4 parliaments will uncertainly, if we're to avoid a period of deep deep strain between the UK Government.
We'll necessitate an unprecedented level of sustained, meaningful engagement as common frameworks are negotiated and managed, and this is a form of shared, cooperative government that perhaps over the past 20 years, hasn't become a regular habit for governments around the UK.
Although there are have been some occasions where this this type of work has been done successfully.
So this brings me to the second part of my remarks which focus on England place within this context.
In practice, central government UK wide and English roles have remained deeply entangled and that's clearly demonstrated by how intergovernmental relations works at the moment where there's no separate representation for England.
In Quorums like the Joint Ministerial Committee beyond the presence.
Of the UK government.
This hasn't always been too problematic, but it becomes more so if intergovernmental relations takes on a more important role in policymaking in the future.
From the devolved perspective, it's feared that the UK government will prioritize England interests over working out solutions that work for all of the UK parts, while people in England may very justifiably ask who is representing them in a meeting of the UK, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland governments, that's discussing some aspects.
Of public policy and perhaps sensitive issues like fisheries or agriculture in the future.
And as Steven has already touched on in his remarks, the English response to coronavirus has brought to wider attention some of the problems that can arise as a result of the UK Government's what I call its dual hatted role.
The distinction between decisions that apply across the UK and those applying only in England is not always made clear, not only in the media but by ministers.
Says themselves when they make announcements often actually switching between their UK wide and English hats in the course of a single press conference without any acknowledgement of this distinction.
To be fair, this has got better as the as the pandemic has gone on.
Perhaps there some of the criticisms leveled at them, particularly by the Welsh Government, have been taken on board.
But this still has the potential to sow confusion in the devolved areas.
Given that UK ministerial statements as Stephen has has talked about are typically covered in news coverage seen across the whole UK.
Now, this failure to acknowledge the English focus of much governmental decision making is arguably an inherent and even deliberate feature of the asymmetrical model of devolution.
Ministers in every UK government since devolution, whether the labour governments, the coalition or or the recent Conservative majority governments have had political incentives to downplay the implications of devolution for the Union, and indeed for England.
And especially in the context of a major national crisis, such as what we've experienced over the past few months.
Ministers feel a great sense of unease about publicly acknowledging that the centre does not, in fact, have authority over the whole.
Of the UK.
Now untangling these UK and English modes is a bit like the Schleswig Holstein question of UK territorial politics.
Most people who've looked at it soon come to the conclusion that it would be better not to have asked.
And and indeed, satisfactory institutional solutions are very hard to come by, while asymmetry persists, as I strongly suspected is in fact.
Will do.
For at least the next few years.
But after 20 years of devolution there is a strong case that the time has come to at least be more upfront about the two hats.
Why shouldn't, for instance, a UK minister announcing policies would apply only to England do so next to a St.
Georges Cross rather than a Union Jack?
Just as a Scottish Government minister would announce Scottish policy next to the Saltire.
And why shouldn't government departments be more clearly labeled as English on their websites and in other communications when their remit is in reality England only, as with the departments of Education and health, the politics of this may seem difficult for supporters of the Union in both main parties.
But it would be more in keeping with the reality of central government's dual hatted role would make it easier for the public, the media and perhaps even politicians themselves to appreciate the distinction between their devolved and reserved responsibilities under asymmetric devolution.
And it might even make a contribution to improving intergovernmental relations.
With devolved elections that could open up a much deeper crisis of territorial politics just around the corner.
The time has come, I think, for politicians in both of the main UK wide parties to start engaging more seriously with these sorts of questions.
If there is to be any hope of sustaining the Union in the medium long to long longer term, the centre learning how to perform its essential role within the devolved Union.
More effectively and sensitively would seem to be a prerequisite, and I'll leave it there.
Thank you very much indeed and and that sets us up very nicely for the questions I I'm going to take some of the questions that have been asked.
I might add a few additional strands to the questions to get it as much as I can in, and I won't necessarily bring everybody in on every question for obvious reasons.
Uh, let's see how many we can get through.
I I'm gonna start with one from Richard Corbett.
Uh, but.
Also, perhaps take us back to the point that Jack was making at the end.
Richard makes a small symbolic point about England having its own national anthem rather than having God save the Queen at rugby matches and and and the rest of it, and whether that wouldn't help undermine the idea that England dominates rather than shares the Union.
But can I take?
That one out there, but take it a bit further forward and ask really about.
England's role in all.
Of this, because I think we've.
Heard two things, intention so far one.
Historically and in recent discussions, England being seen as too big and that being a major problem in the way in which the Union functions, and particularly if England, has become more assertive within the Union as archestra.
Saying, on the other hand, many of the issues that we've been talking about appear to require.
England to be more clearly delineated from what is happening in the in the devolved administrations, and I'm wondering how whether that's an irreconcilable tension, or whether in fact, if England.
Had a clearer profile within the Union that would help rather than hinder, and I wonder if I could go first to Steven on that and then that's ask Ian Murray if he could follow up and please do address the national anthem points if you wish to do so, but I'd be interested in a Welsh and Scottish perspective on England having a a more clearly.
Deliminated profile
Well, I'm going to dodge some of those questions 'cause I think.
Other panelists are.
Way more have way more authority and expertise than I have.
But I I think in terms of the communication of devolution and so I think you're right in saying that England clearly is dominant.
But I guess what interests me is.
Is if you if you do have a network service and new network news service, particularly public service broadcasters, that you know that have license agreements to be on obligations to be accurate to be impartial, and the BBC obviously has public purposes and and.
You know, if you read the BBC annual report that came out yesterday and another reports that come out over the last year, they take it very seriously to reflect the Four Nations and and and it is started to fragment there is.
People and Ian will probably know this better than I do in Scotland, and there's.
There's a lot of kind of.
Of any criticism about the extent of coverage, the nature of coverage.
So I hear that and see that a lot in Wales myself, to a lesser degree in Northern Ireland say that there clearly is an issue there, but there's also a reality that he was alluding to that England is.
Far bigger so.
So if you're a.
Journalist and you've got a 25 minute news bulletin to report what's happening in the world and and you've got to reflect the UK. You have to make various news, judgments and and how you go about communicating.
That is, is very complex, and the things that we've suggested in the past and recommended to broadcasters to regulators.
But the trust and and Ofcom it is to use devolution as an opportunity.
So even if England is at.
The forefront of.
Some of that conversation of that political coverage.
It is to provide context to provide, you know, to explore different policy options.
You know that the example I always give is tuition fees.
A lot of people that simply don't know that tuition fees are different across the nations, and they are obviously political choices and judgments.
So a journalist giving that context.
Explaining the differences. Actually, you know might start to open up people's minds in the way that Alisa was.
Explaining might give a slightly more different, you know, create a different citizenry, created different attitudes towards identity and public opinion about these things.
So that would be that would be my.
Kind of contribution to that question.
Thank you Ian.
Stephen didn't answer the question about the national anthem, so I'll give it a go.
And I mean it.
But it's an interesting thing, because these kind of iconic pieces of cultural appropriation, if you like, are part of that populism and that identity politics that is really driving most of these issues and.
You know Scotland, Wales and England have their own national anthems.
I suppose when they're going through this process and you know well, and we're we're very proud of those, and I think there's a danger here.
And I think Justin Trudeau said this very clearly during his election.
Is there's a danger of mixing populism?
Nationalism with patriotism and they're not the same thing.
And we're all we're all patriots in that sense.
And and we're all what we were.
All stand up for the national anthem of our own individual nations when we're playing each other and other people.
So should England have its own national anthem?
I think it's they almost do, don't.
Me another in in.
In terms of it, yes, the official one is God save the Queen, but there's Jerusalem and other things that will be signing it.
Will be matches that I've seen is particularly sort of quintessentially English anthems.
If you like and that's all part of identity and John you you put a question about size and somebody said and I don't know if it was a Cuneo on the chats, but it's not the case that England is too big.
It's the.
Case that the other component nations are too small.
But the problem is with that and that kind of response is that you can't make those component smaller parts larger.
The only thing you can do is make the larger parts smaller, and it's not necessarily a comparator issue.
It's an issue of individuals.
So is it the case in.
Elsa's presentation was fantastic on some of the inherent contradictions in this, but is it the case that people who live in Carlisle or Devon or Dorset or wherever, want components to be smaller?
In terms of managing their own lives and their own politics and their own social environment, or do they want to be an English Parliament?
If it can.
Be sort of brash is that I suspect.
That if there was an English parliament.
In a lot.
Of senses, there is an English parliament and.
English votes for English.
Lord, I think was a mistake because it was never needed in practice, but there isn't practice in terms of legislation in terms of votes in terms of government policy and English Parliament.
But that surely.
At this moment in time, in terms of the status will not satisfy most component parts of England.
Whatever those component parts are.
Our and therefore to satisfy those component parts.
What do they want?
We very much like the London mayor.
Whoever is in office.
They very much like a Greater Manchester and Merseyside mayors.
The Bristol Meyers and is that a way to go just to get people, not just that it's not just about politics and policy.
Which is incredibly important and the practical aspects of all this.
It's also about identity and also about fighting for your own corner, standing up for Scotland as the most powerful political slogan in history.
Because it's about standing up for the.
Identity and can I just very briefly just mention on in terms of the media, which is incredibly important in this.
If you sit yourself in.
The front room.
And in front of the television in Scotland.
Nearly 50% of.
People in Scotland get their daily digest of news from the BBC network.
From ITV network. From Sky News, which is obviously network and then it drops to about 1/4 for BBC Scotland and the more
And nationals that the Scottish national news streams.
That then feeds into two things.
One is, it's little wonder.
That there's very a very, very.
High proportion of Scots.
Don't know what's devolved and what's reserved, and also feeds into the fact that if you want to create geographical, social and cultural division in the country you claim credit for all the things that are done well and you pass the box for all the things that are bad.
And if you've got a confused.
Public because of that daily diet of news.
You then therefore are unable to resolve some of these big questions because people their starting position is from their own perspective.
Thank you and I'm.
I'm going to move on now.
I'm just gonna say start.
With having a working politician on the call as you need them to answer every question, but I'm actually going to let him come back in at the very end to pick up any threads that he hasn't been able to deal with.
So far.
I want to go to a question now by John Hartigan who.
Raises the question about whether decisions on the future of the Union should be taken by all the citizens of the UK rather than presumed as he had in the Scottish devolution by the people of Scotland.
But also I'd put a different question.
Ian has talked about England being run in smaller units, and whether that is the sort of thing that could be decided by the Union government for England, or whether that is isn't something that should lie within the sovereignty of people in England if they wish it to be broken up into smaller units.
Can I go to?
Aakash for thoughts, and where sovereignty lies at the next stage of any decisions in the Union, please and then Jack.
If you wanted to follow up at all.
Yeah, sure.
Well I I I.
I am a believer.
It was it was probably.
An implicit, at least in my talk before, in the principle of self-determination of each of the composite nations of the UK, so I suppose if the question is.
You know should.
Any further devolution to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or should independence for one of those countries be a matter for voters across the whole UK?
Uhm, my answer would be no.
I think I think the Union is best understood as a voluntary partnership of sovereign nations and I hope it holds together.
But it can only do so if the people of each part composite part of a.
Wish it too and you know we may run into this issue very soon.
We we have a Scottish election coming up next.
May SNP are currently polling very well may win a majority.
We'll be pushing for another independence referendum.
UK government as it stands is saying no, that's not going to happen.
So this question question of of self-determination is is going to loom very large and I think you know.
In the end, I don't think the Union can be held together by by force, so to speak, or or by the by the power of of.
Parliamentary sovereignty it has to be based on on consent of of all the parts, as I say, and the the the other part of your question relating to England.
Well, I think I would apply the same I I I would extend the logic of of what I've just said to England.
I I do think.
It is right that given the changes that have taken place to the Union constitution over the last couple of decades.
There should be more more formal, more visible recognition of England as a distinct nation within that which ultimately does have its own, uh, I think sovereignty and and and right to self-determination or or should be considered to do so and and and.
Part so part.
Of that, the answer to that may be, you know, symbolic things.
The flag, the anthem.
Say England when you mean England when you're making government announcements, and so on, those things are important in in terms of the Constitution.
Final question, how should England be governed I?
I think if if if there were evidence that there was a clear, uh, you know movement and and majority support to create an English Parliament and to transform the UK into a federation of Four Nations.
Or even for England to become independent I, I think England should have the right to make that decision.
I don't see that there is particularly strong support for that, and and I think in a federation of the Four Nations would be quite hard to make work because of.
The the size of England as has been mentioned, but I I don't think you can say England has to suppress its nationhood for the good of the UK as a whole.
It has to be a choice that that England makes, but equally we don't need to have a symmetrical constitution and there's no requirement for.
England to say.
We are a nation, therefore we need to have a Parliament like Scotland and if.
The people of England are broadly happy for Westminster to continue to be the double hatted Parliament.
It is at the moment, then I think that's also a legitimate choice.
Thank you Jack.
Uhm, so I mean, I agree with everything that Aakash has said, I would just add 2 quick points on that.
I mean, on the first point on the referendum question was kind of, I think, getting at this question of.
Should should Scotland be allowed to allowed to vote for independence without England having a say?
Uhm, I mean, I think that that would be fine.
I think where there is a dividing line is when we then go towards reforms that are about.
If you're talking about turning the whole of the UK into a federation, then that would be a reform.
But that's not just about Scotland and Wales, but any any sort of federalism.
I think has to is fundamentally going to be about changing the territorial constitution of the UK as a whole, and in fact in particular for England, because England is the part that currently lacks those institutions for the UK as a whole, and I think that's just that is an important point to throw in because.
The nature of how these debates play out politically is that calls for federalism often tend to come from politicians in Scotland and Wales because they're the most engaged in these debates about the territorial territorial future of the UK.
But these these are big questions that England would need to be.
Would need to be engaged in engaged in as well.
Well, thank you very much indeed.
Also, could I put a?
Couple of different questions to you if that's OK.
One is from Martin McCluskey who says given your findings, is it increasingly difficult for a political party to succeed without appealing to the dominant national identity in each nation. And it is, I think, 2005.
His book, The last time that a political party in the UK won an election in in three parts of the three parts of mainland Britain and generally the elections are won by different parties in each nation at the moment.
So where where does this go for the idea of a politics that that's union wide?
Or at least Britain?
Right and then secondly a question rather different one from Jan C#, which is also important about people whose heritage is outside the EU and the implications or the evidence.
Of the the.
The likelihood that somebody who's run ethnic minority in Scotland is much more likely to identify as Scottish than somebody who's for an ethnic.
Minority in England, and whether that is an unchanging situation or is developing so else.
Could I put?
Both those to you.
If that's not unfair.
No, not not unfair.
I'll I'll I'll, I'll do the second one first so it in terms of.
Particularly with respect to Scotland, there are some really interesting findings, so we know that often when we're looking at the research on migrants and national identity, migrants to a state tend to be more likely to have a national identity that aligns with the state rather than the sub state unit.
And partly it's about the process.
Of of citizenship that we assume that that that partly explains that.
And sometimes when we go looking for measures of migrant integration, the point at which their national identity starts to look more like that of the dominant population or not.
The domestic born population.
So in other words, when you start to view the state through a sub state lens, that's a sign.
Of integration from migrants. So what we tend to see is that migrants subscribe more to the to a British identity or a Canadian identity or a Spanish identity. But there are exceptions to that and one nuance on that is what happened in the 2014.
Referendum, so if we compare the voting habits of the Scottish born population, those who were living in Scotland but had been born in the rest of the UK, or those who were born outside the UK, the Scottish born population was most likely to vote yes.
But it those who are most opposed to independence were actually not those who were out born outside the UK, but those who had been born in the rest of the UK.
So actually migrants to Scotland from outside the UK were closer to the Scottish born population than those who were born in England or Wales, or in or in Northern Ireland, so it's not a straightforward answer in terms of in terms of national identity and how national identity and constitutional preferences aligned.
It also depends where you're from and also your own.
Often your own country experience of British imperialism as well.
In terms of the.
The the question about whether a party can do well without without appealing to nationalist sentiment.
There's there's two ends, I think I'm kind of.
I'm maybe, I'm assuming certain motivations about the question and and I'll talk about labor in a second, but in in terms of.
I mean, we know that we know that in in Scotland.
Being able to claim to be the the party that best stands up for Scotland has done the SNP.
A lot of.
Good, I think that claim ignores the fact that actually when we ask which party is perceived to be most competent or most trustworthy across a range of policy issues, the SNP is ahead, was ahead on all of them in 2016 and remains ahead on all of them now. So it's.
Perceived to best stand up for Scotland, but it's also perceived to best manage the economy to best manage even education.
Best able to manage health and and so on.
And so I think we can overstate the notion that the only reason the SNP.
Deals is because it is perceived to best stand up for Scotland.
And and I think also, but related to that, I think what we've seen out of the Scottish Conservative Party lately is clearly an effort to portray itself as a Unionist Party that can best stand up for Scotland.
Now its its success in that has come.
They haven't been given an easy time by the Prime Minister in in that respect, but.
That's clearly what?
The positioning appears to be appears to be about.
That said, I mean it, it does.
It does mean that Labour has has been in a in a.
Labour has got itself in a kind of tricky situation almost.
I wouldn't say through no fault of its own, but you can see exactly what's happening.
No party has a has a particularly compelling answer for what the UK state is for, what the what, the first principles of a UK state are.
And and this, this absence of a kind of first principles answer to what the UK state is for bothers some, or is a challenge to some parties more than others.
And you can see that it has troubled labor more than the others, because Labor has clearly felt that it was inappropriate to propose a corner.
Permanent constitutional settlement for Scotland without having an equally compelling answer about what to do with Wales and what to do with Northern Ireland and what to do with England.
And because it has not.
Because it has not been able to find a compelling answer on.
What to do?
With England that has then caused it all kinds of problems in Scotland as well.
Now it's through no fault of its own that it can't really find a compelling answer, because, as we've outlined, no one has found a compelling answer.
There are some.
Kind of immutable facts that are really hard to navigate and find a compelling answer, but I think that does pose that poses a problem for labour, in part because it has set itself a bar that that no one has been able to to clear.
And so I think that that challenge.
Sitting alongside that, how do you navigate standing up, claiming to stand up for or having to to claim to stand up for a nation?
Those two challenges are are kind of hard to reconcile.
Thank you very much Elsa, and if I can abuse my position just to make a comment on the ethnic minorities issue.
1 observation is that what we call British multiculturalism, which has been quite successful at creating at least a version of Britishness that is inclusive, was an almost exclusively English process.
Yes, it hardly took place in that form anywhere else in the in the Union, and so neither the state nor Civic Society ever engaged with ideas of Englishness.
Whereas in Scotland for 40 years people have been engaging with the idea of an exclusive scottishness.
So one of the reasons Englishness is itself becoming more inclusive.
But it's a slower process because it's never had any sort of.
Political or governmental or civil society backing?
But anyway, I'm.
Sorry John, can I just jump in on on two very quick points about knowledge I.
Mean knowledge on.
Legislative competence in the devolved areas is actually not not all that bad.
What's interesting about knowledge is that we consistently get it wrong in different directions.
So when Scott's get it wrong, they consistently underestimate Hollywood's competence. And when English people get it wrong, they consistently overestimate Hollywood's competence.
So it's not just the levels of knowledge, but.
The the kinds.
Of errors we make that are quite interesting in the Union.
Interesting, thank you.
I'm going to turn to Ian to make a few closing thoughts.
We've only got a couple of minutes.
Can I just say to the audience?
Thank you for joining us 'cause I know you all leave when he finishes, but our next event is at 1:00 o'clock on the 9th of December when David Lammy
P and a number of highly qualified qualified experts are going to be looking at politics and identity in a great deal more detail, so we'll be sending out details of that very shortly.
But Ian could I turn to you see, if you've got any.
Closing remarks please.
Well, thank you John and thank you to everyone.
I think the presentations have been absolutely fascinating and.
And the great thing about one of these seminars is you.
You end the seminar with more thoughts and questions than when you started.
And I think in actual fact that is a symptom of how complicated this issue has become and how complicated it will continue to be.
And I suppose the only closing remark I have John, which is we need to find a solution to this.
Because it's clear that whilst there is no solution, whether it be better, intergovernmental relations on the one hand, whether it be independence for the Four Nations on the other, whether it be some kind of federalism that we have to find a solution because otherwise.
The asymmetric nature of devolution is going to continue to pull the status quo.
If I can use that.
Term apart so it's.
Wonderful that we have all of the.
Information going in.
It's wonderful that we were talking about this and and I just refill that. Refer back to Elsa's presentation. Even the public themselves don't know where to go with this.
And even the public themselves give contradictory answers to the same question when asked a different way, and therefore until we can get to the bottom of that, maybe the best way to conclude all of this is to say that the devolved parts of the United Kingdom have complete power to make the same decisions.
Which I think was they also said, and I think that shows you a the solution and be the problem.
So yes, thank you for us, giving no solutions and posing more questions, but that's part of this complicated debate.
This this is the.
This is the idea and thank you the wonderful panel and all the audience for this event by the Centers for English identity and politics and look forward to seeing you at future discussions.
Thank you very much indeed.