Oh no. Gordon Brown is having another go at fixing the constitution

‎No show without Punch. Into the post-EU referendum maelstrom steps former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with his latest plan to fix the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements. By my reckoning this must be his seventeenth attempt in a career of constitutional vandalism in the guise of “reform” stretching back more than 30 years. When Blair, quite rightly, was a bit cold on Scottish devolution in the mid-1990s, it was largely at Brown’s urging that he pressed ahead. The introduction of a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh would, Brown explained, secure the UK and see off the Scottish National Party. How is that working out?

Since then Brown has had many more goes, not least during the Scottish referendum, always advocating just a bit more power for devolved Scotland, which naturally never, ever satisfies the SNP. In his latest scheme, England’s regions and cities are to get more power whether they want it or not. He demands a “People’s Convention” to endorse and develop his proposals. To which one can only say: good grief…

The problem with the Brown approach – which has been endorsed by the Mayor of London and Labour’s leaders in Scotland and Wales, which rather proves my point – has always been that he simply cannot acknowledge or accept England as an entity, or perhaps he fears it and for that reason wants to diminish it. Even after the EU referendum, and England’s decisive clear majority for Brexit, which constituted a powerful expression of identity and a majority worldview in terms of self-government, he is still trying to subdivide the place and prevent it within the UK having the political expression that Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales have been given.

In a speech to the Fabian Society today Brown said that the UK needed to be “reimagined” for new times. There are quite a few things from Brown’s time as Chancellor that the UK, as a country, could do with “reimagining.” He said:

“We need wholesale reform because today the United Kingdom appears united in name only. Politically, the strains of Brexit are already showing, as different nations, regions, sectors and companies desperately seek their own opt-outs from a hard Brexit and call for their own a la carte version of Brexit. Economically, the vote on June 23 revealed that Britain is becoming two nations divided – a highly-prosperous south east and a permanently struggling north – with London effectively decoupling from the economy of the rest of the UK.”

Again, his solution is all about fragmenting England. Rather than honestly finding a way for Englishness to find expression, which could be combined with boosting local government, he sees England as a mere collection of often convenient regions to be forced into artificial regional governing structures because Labour cannot deal with the idea of England.

Brown went on:

“When Brussels repatriates its powers to Westminster and Whitehall, Britain will become an even more centralised country. Instead of repatriating powers over regional policy, agriculture, fisheries and social funds to London, we should instead devolve them to the regions and nations of the UK.”

On some specifics he is right, but that’s hardly the point when he can never, ever be properly reflective on his own leading role in the events of recent decades. And he has had attempt after attempt, always couched in pious terms, at reinventing the Union or the UK.

He does say the House of Lords should be replaced with a Senate, a UK second chamber. That’s potentially a good idea considering what is being done to the Lords. But as usual, as one commentator put it on social media, it is as though Brown almost wants to Balkanise England. He never got England as a country, which is another reason he did not win a general election in his own right.