Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown's 40-point plan for constitutional renewal fails to properly address concerns about federalism and funding issues.

The perennial complaint from the SNP is that Scotland is starved of resources by parsimonious and neoliberal UK governments ‘for which Scotland never voted’. Yet it persists in the background even as the Scottish parliament has acquired extensive income tax raising powers of its own. Until this anomaly is ended and Scotland is required, in time, to live more within its means, the SNP has a fiscal win-win. Yet the reality is that the Scottish government is better funded than the rest of the UK. There is mention of ‘consultation’ on raising the ceiling on Scotland’s existing borrowing powers to over £500 million a year. And Scotland is equally suspicious of constitutional ‘revolutions’ that go nowhere, with many believing that Brown’s promises of federalism in the past have come to nought. The former Labour prime minister’s new Assembly of Nations and Regions would entrench the sovereignty of Holyrood in the heart of the UK parliament. English voters loathe the idea of Scots meddling in Westminster, which is why the Tories will no doubt seek to spin the Brown plan as providing a new platform for separatism. The SNP has dismissed the plan as the ‘same old same old’, rejecting Brown’s new tax and borrowing powers as worthless. Nor, as the report points out, has it used powers to set new national taxes, preferring to blame Westminster for everything from the crisis in the NHS to Scotland’s drug death scandal. ‘Less is more’ is not a principle with which the former Prime Minister is familiar. It looks very much like an exercise in strengthening the Scottish parliament’s powers vis-à-vis Westminster.

Gordon Brown joined Labour leaders in Edinburgh to set out their vision for Scotland in the UK. Now the party must show it means business.

Elsewhere, the House of Lords would be abolished. Labour politicians know this is as vital to them at the next general election as it was at the independence referendum. But the challenge for them is as acute as it was This is about Labour trying to position itself front and centre of the gap Mr Brown identifies in politics. It is all about Labour muscling back into the currently narrow gap between the SNP and Conservatives. At its heart, this is an exercise in appealing to everyone unhappy with the polarised nature of our constitutionally obsessed governments in Edinburgh and London.

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown made the claim on LBC on Monday after he unveiled sweeping plans to reform the British constitutional settlement, ...

Its powers to block new laws have been significantly curtailed.Labour has long been in favour of replacing the Lords. Appointment to the Lords is sometimes seen as a way of prime ministers rewarding politicians who have been loyal to them, or for donors that have handed their party money. "You know, Lloyd George, obviously was criticised for selling honours and that led to the Sale of Honours Act in 1925. Its past manifestos have featured a proposal to replace it with a senate representing the nations and regions of the UK. It is a weaker chamber than the House of Commons, and its main role has largely evolved to be a scrutinising or revising body. "So we want to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected chamber that has really strong mission."