Federation won’t work for nations

LABOUR’S call for a federal Britain shows London Labour fails to recognise Scotland’s distinctive claims of nationhood (John McDonnell calls for ‘radical federal UK’ as Labour shifts ground on union, News, January 8). Scottish Labour’s Kezia Dugdale supports a federal solution and falls into the same trap.

There was pressure for unification following the Reformation, with John Knox’s view of a “confederacy” based on the analogy of the Jewish Commonwealth of Judah and Israel, with autonomous kingdoms. Knox wrote in 1559 of “a confederacy, amity and league” between Scotland and England, preserving Scotland’s independence. This tension was exacerbated after the 1603 Union of the Crowns. But what happened in 1707 was not confederation but an “incorporating union”, with Scotland’s parliament abolished. Less than 100 years later, Ireland’s independent parliament was abolished to complete the new British Union.

Now, Britain is detaching itself from a European form of federation. Brexit is about re-establishing full national sovereignty. Federation doesn’t work for nations, neither in Europe nor in Britain. National parliaments cannot be subservient to power centres elsewhere, whether Brussels or London.

Brexit offers a golden opportunity to reconfigure the constitution of the British Isles. Kezia Dugdale should be looking beyond “home rule” and restoring full national sovereignty to Scotland’s parliament. She has an excellent example to follow in the policies of the old Independent Labour Party (the ILP) in Scotland, which wanted exactly this. Scottish Labour desperately needs a Keir Hardie to remind it of its democratic and socialist principles and to support the independence cause in this time of momentous constitutional change. Randolph Murray Rannoch