ON MY MIND
DOWN at the Barking Dog they were discussing a constitution for the darts club following a rumour that it was about to be bought up by the UAE in a cunning ‘sportwashing’ strategy. However, current champion Dai Double Bull thought it was ‘tough darts’ and said he fancied himself in one of those ‘keffiyehs’ with his new shades. Buckshot Bryn, unfazed by the possibility of a global sporting event at the Barking Dog, pointed out that even the UK didn’t have a constitution, so let sleeping dogs lie.
Bryn was right. Unlike most countries, Britain has no written constitution, unless the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Bill of Rights of 1689 will do. After all, we are used to chaos in leadership as Members of Parliament have always almost sat on one another’s laps, shouted unsolicited comments from the benches and brayed confrontationally from different sides of the House. Why change the habits of the lifetime of Parliament with sober detail and reasoned argument?
So when the Welsh Government announced last week the establishment of an independent commission to consider the constitutional future of Wales the Scots response was rumoured to be ‘Lang mae yer lum reek‘ (i.e. ‘long may your chimney smoke’) while secretly wishing they had thought of it first. Dr Rowan Williams and Professor Laura Mcallister will chair the commission and promote a national debate of the options for fundamental reform of the constitutional structures of the UK in relation to Wales. Independence will be on the menu but it won’t be the main meal.
Most people I think will swallow a stronger devolution of justice and policing followed by the Crown estate as a tasty dessert. Certainly a more challenging, but achievable, strategy for decentralisation and the devolution of power and resources in the whole of the UK is a federal system. Nationalism is divisive, conservative, exclusive and has been disastrous in Europe. Federalism is radical, inclusive and collaborative while ensuring local autonomy. Add to that a democratically elected President and you have the ‘perfect finish’, as they say down the Barking Dog.