In the small hours of Friday morning, when no one was sure whether the UK still existed, a tempest broke over the capital. Drum rolls of thunder and flashes of angry lightning distracted us from the proportion of yeses and nos in Clackmannanshire and the Western Isles. The celestial timing was apt. An ancient in Macbeth mulls that he has seen “hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night hath trifled former knowings”. On this occasion, the kingdom remained whole and, by 5am, a form of order had regained its place. But what a mess we are living with after the storm.
David Cameron emerged, full of relief that the result was not an outright defeat, which would have cost him his job (whatever the loyalists say, prime ministers who get on the wrong side of yes or no referendums are toast). A narrower margin of victory would have left the nationalists less subdued. But this is not a victory, just an avoidance of disaster for the main parties at Westminster. The planning was threadbare, campaign chaotic and consequences unpredictable. Those who consider the British establishment to be a smooth, relentless, ruthlessly self-perpetuating machine should consider how random and unfinished is the present state of affairs.
The academic gourmet of governance, Peter Hennessy, has ventured that the manner of the referendum and pledges made to win it have left “a constitutional building site, devoid of a construction plan”. The party leaders must now find one among the rubble, having first broken the cardinal rule of political negotiation: namely to control the timing and framework of what is being decided. For while Cameron can now seize the initiative on the reform of British governance, everyone but the Downing Street cat knows that he has been forced into hitching the English issue to a timetable driven by Scotland.
That has exacted a heavy toll on a man who stands accused of blundering into a vote that will remake the political landscape of Britain. He has looked like a chancer and must now show that he can stay lucky. It is true, elected politicians outside the nerdy tendency tend not to enjoy constitutional matters and often farm their management out to trusted allies, as John Smith and later Tony Blair did with Donald Dewar when it came to the 1998 devolutionary settlement. But Cameron had looked disengaged by the Scottish question until poll panic motivated him to declare that independence would have left him “heartbroken”. Or, as one recently ousted minister put it to me, “job-broken, which for Dave is a lot worse”.
The last-minute guarantee of expansion of Scottish powers, offering greater control of tax, welfare and spending to Holyrood, has irked not only his backbenchers, but many cabinet ministers who were astonished to find the deal slapped on the table without consultation or quid pro quo for England (or Wales, or anywhere else).
These feathers must be smoothed before the pathos about democratic deficit turns into an English revolt in the party. The best way to do this, the prime minister reckons, is to turn attention sharply away from Scotland and towards the next general election. To put it bluntly, the party that gets most bogged down in the Scotland aftermath, or looks like it has less clue about the best form of English redress, is the one least likely to win in May. Even more bluntly, the battle is to secure as much say for English MPs over laws in England and to push the mainly Scottish MPs to the margins of law-making at Westminster. For this reason, Ed Miliband also has no choice but to oppose it, while struggling to find an alternative that satisfies emotion as well as proportionality.
Cameron, we should remember, has form on the English question. He was initially attracted to an “English laws” answer to the asymmetric problem posed by Donald Dewar’s devolution package. I remember a more earnest, chubbier, youthful Dave embracing such an idea when his then boss, Michael Howard, was contesting the 2005 election. In the end, he preferred to define himself as an all-British figure, a positioning that suited his modernising agenda better. Now is the hour of the “reverse ferret” manoeuvre. William Hague, one of the first figures on the mainstream Tory right to come up with an “English laws” formula in 1999, gets to dust off the file and seek to nail an English solution to see the Tories through the election.
This brings us to the mixed blessing of Gordon Brown, who deserves a political Oscar for a late, but starry, role in the no campaign. Alas, Gordon, the Sequel, has also left a perilous legacy for both Tories and Labour by offering a devolution package with a dizzily accelerated timetable. By pledging “nothing less than a modern form of Scottish home rule”, with an agreement published by St Andrew’s Day on 30 November and the full works in plan by Burns Night (of course) in January, he has guaranteed a frenzy of activity.
However exhilarating this is for Westminster, for many voters the main consideration will be the new light in which it casts the party leaders. That is just as important as the credibility (or otherwise) of various proposals being hastily poured into the political Magimix. Cameron, to judge by his previous tergiversations, does not much care what form a solution takes as long as it sounds reassuringly English, helps him hold off Nigel Farage’s battalions and gets through parliament (by no means guaranteed).
Nick Clegg has perhaps a harder task. He has used the recent dramas to emphasise that he is an experienced leader who understands the trade-offs of power and thus a potential coalition partner again next year. But his solution of more power to England’s regions will annoy local activists, who fear power being sucked to the big cities. Further trouble is brewing from Danny Alexander, whose resistance to such an approach sounds implacable.
As Ed Miliband warms up for his conference speech, he faces the not-unfamiliar problem of his leadership style and public presence. On his Scotland tour, Brown comprehensively outshone his former protege who, like Cameron, engaged late and listlessly with the gathering threat of a Scottish yes. His outing north of the border looked more like the walkabout of a fast-tracked trainee than the CEO of Labour Inc.
Mr Miliband badly needs to use his platform in the next few days to regain personal momentum. Having narrowly avoided losing Scottish MPs altogether, he now looks like he might well lose their votes in England. Note that Chuka Umunna was whippet-quick off the mark by calling for devolution for “cities and regions”. Well, after the half-baked mayoral debacle and the north-east’s rejection of a regional debating chamber, good luck with that one. (And Labour policy, as it stands, is still opposed to more regional devolution, which did not deter Umunna.) But you can also read it as a bold, decisive response from a figure with leadership ambitions, seizing the moment to define himself. Miliband has meanwhile called for “a debate”, which is what people call for when there is already an argument going on, but they don’t know what to say about it.
In fairness, the Labour leader is likely to move into gear this week and respond to rallying cries like that of the northern newspaper groups, which have issued a joint cry for greater devolution beyond the nations. Miliband’s worst outcome, though, would be a conference bogged down in thinktanky arguments about devo plus versus devo max and who gets which precepts. If he is to survive at all beyond next May, he needs votes in the south and the Midlands, not just in aggrieved heartlands, where his pathos often seems to be directed.
So, for all the excitements of Britain’s higgledy-piggledy governance, expect Labour to try to move attention back to its main electoral themes of the NHS (more money), accompanied by multiple reassurances that such largesse has been properly costed. The aim, says a Labour strategist, is enhanced “believability” to combat a nagging view that Labour wills many good things and understands the grinding pressures of modern economies on many families, but does not really know what to do about them or can’t afford the solution if it does.
In a Tory context, Cameron knows very well how this culture of doubt feels and the challenge it poses. One result of the recent shock to the body politic is that voters have sensed the vulnerability of the powerful. The single most important message the PM must put across after the late summer upheavals is that he is in charge, not hostage to the whims of his party, rambunctious campaigners or proto-Faragistes. Beyond the stormy September, a constitutional Narnia awaits: uncharted and full of threats, traps and wonders.
The leaders with the best chance of being in post to see it come to fruition are those who can exude a sense of control and sovereignty over a situation in which they have so very little.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Anne McElvoy is public policy editor of the Economist.
