Quantcast
Channel: The Logical Conclusion » The EU
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 8

The Case for a British Confederation

0
0

I was reading the Wonko's World post by the same title earlier, and found myself agreeing with much of the reasoning behind the suggestion. Now, the author of that blog and myself have some major differences: he is 'proud to be a Nationalist', where I am proud to be a globalist. Having said that, I think that confederalism is the only liberal mechanism by which to join countries.

If you accept that England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are sovereign nations which have the right to self determination, then it is only natural to assume that anything binding them to a union -- whether that is the British Union (UK), the European Union or the Commonwealth -- must be based on consent. No country should be forced against its will to be subservient to a union. The people of the country must have the right to determine their membership (or otherwise) of the union.

It irks me when EU-sceptics do not apply the same logic to Scotland's membership of the UK that they do to the UK's membership of the European Union. They accept, on one hand, that the British people have a right to be free of European rule, but not that the Scottish (or Welsh, or English) have a right to be free of British rule.

One argument they like to trot out is that we all have the same head of state, but this argument is invalidated already as Canada, Australia and many other countries share our head of state but are not members of the United Kingdom.

Already, we have devolved governments for Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom, which hold a lot of the powers of Westminster. What this leads to is a gross inequality whereby Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on issues which only affect England, but their English equivelants can not reply in turn and vote on Scottish and Welsh issues.

To this end, I am a supporter of the Campaign for an English Parliament, but I don't think that this goes far enough to address the issue. What we really need is to recognise that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are sovereign nationas, and should be members of the Union by choice, rather than by compulsion.

So, how could we have such a confederation? As suggested on the link earlier, we would have an elected senate to replace (or complement) the House of Lords, with the House of Commons becoming a new home to the English parliament. Powers would be pushed down to the national governments, with confederate issues (defence, intelligence, counter-terrorism) being dealt with by the new senate.

The senate would be funded by contributions from the National governments based upon factors which could be agreed between the nations (probably including but not limited to: population, nonfinancial contributions i.e. allowing nuclear subs in ports, assigning agents to intelligence), with those national governments taking over the powers needed to raise tax revenues on their own citizens.

This would also allow Scottish and Welsh policy to better represent their socialist leaning voters, and English policy to more accurately represent the English fiscally liberal leaning voters, leading to greater power for voters in determining the policies which affect them. The National parliaments would, in all effect, replace the United Kingdom parliament for most matters.

By using a confederate model, we could avoid ambiguity about whether Scotland have the right to leave the UK (how could that even be a real discussion?) without the UK's permission. We could also leave the same option open to Wales, Northern Ireland or England if they decide in future that they would rather pursue independence from the union.

The UK's seat on the UN council could be replaced by the confederation, and the seperate members could each control their own membership (or otherwise) of the European Union. Each nation would remain a member of the commonwealth.

On the balance, it feels like replacing the compulsary union of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland with a voluntary confederation would offer the most self-determination to those countries involved whilst maximising the ability for those who do want to be involved to work together.

Share


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 8

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images