Brexit and devolution

« I will now describe to you the relations between Brexit and devolution as well as the impact of the changes that have resulted from Brexit on the devolution process. First and foremost, we can say that Brexit has exposed the underdeveloped and fragile aspects of devolution in the UK.

Why? Because devolved governments’ relationships with London are very strained today.

Moreover, the arrangements that seemed to be in place to manage those relationships are buckling.

If the sheer fact of leaving the EU made internal UK changes to devolution unavoidable, the form of Brexit being pursued makes for larger scale domestic change. However, as a system, decentralization has always been deeply flawed and this long before Brexit.

As new forms of democratic governance, some parts have worked pretty well.

Of course, the institutions in Northern Ireland face their own distinctive challenges.

Although those in Scotland and Wales have both faced their own limits and problems, each now seems strongly established and wellgrounded in general public support within the devolved nations.

In fact, it can be explained because first Ministers Drakeford and Sturgeon have much stronger public backing and trust for their management of the Covid-19 pandemic than does Johnson. To some extent, UK devolution’s systematic flaws concern the relationships among its parts: the governments, legislatures and bundles of policy competences.

In this respect, the flaws reflect the pragmatic, piecemeal approach taken to the construction of devolution in Scotland and Wales from the start.

They represent a continuing failure of the UK state to think through devolution and domestic governance in general constitutional terms. Essentially, we can easily say that political devolution added a democratic element to prior patterns of administrative devolution in Great Britain.

From one perspective, pragmatism is easy to defend.

As a matter of fact, devolution was set up in a benign context, as one of the first acts of Tony Blair’s new Labour administration after 1997.

Labour First Ministers – Donald Dewar and Alun Michael – led the new administrations after the first devolved elections in 1999. As well as being written through devolution, EU membership also provided a kind of external scaffolding that helped to hold the UK together.

So generally, devolution was potentially deeply disruptive, but favourable circumstances allowed it to settle down remarkably smoothly. Of course, flexibility also allowed devolution to breathe and grow, especially in Wales.

In fact, Welsh devolution began on a local government model.

Thereby, no distinct Welsh Government existed and instead, the National Assembly was a single ‘Body Corporate’.

Informally at first, the ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ was separated from the legislature.

The Government of Wales Act (2006) gave these arrangements a statutory foundation.

Then, the Secretary of State Peter Hain envisaged that referendum might come some twenty years later, crowning a slow process of building up primary powers.

In fact, the referendum was held in 2011, and the Wales Act (2014) then conferred ‘full’ primary powers on the National Assembly.

Three years later, a further Wales Act (2017) moved to a. »