Permanent Devolution

Iain Macwhirter is on top form @ the Gruniad this morning. Is he near to an actual conversion a la Gerry Hassan? He's given an unusal top-billing. Watch the responses descend into rancour and casual anti-Scottish racism within a few exchanges...

"Gordon Brown's acknowledgment on Tuesday that 2008 will be "an important year for the union" was an understatement. It will be crucial. Who could have forecast 12 months ago that Britain would be starting 2008 with nationalist parties in power, or sharing it, in all three devolved administrations? Last year was supposed to have been a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union. In fact it was about dismantling it: the SNP is now running Holyrood; Plaid Cymru is in coalition with Labour in Cardiff; and the nationalist Sinn Féin shares power with the DUP in Stormont. It is the unionist nightmare come true: a separatist clean sweep.

The rise of provincial nationalism was by far the most significant political development in Britain in the last year - far more important than the election-that-never-was, or the change of personnel at No 10. Brown is intending to pursue largely the same political and social agenda as his predecessor, but he will soon discover that large parts of the UK are now resistant to it.

Already, Scotland has a range of distinctive social policies - free personal care, free higher education, free prescriptions - some of which have aroused resentment in the south. But this is only the start. In 2008 the nationalist first minister, Alex Salmond, intends to scrap the council tax and replace it with a local income tax - a move that will cause disquiet among English pensioners. Salmond has the powers and the votes to do it, and has already frozen council tax in Scotland.

The Scottish government has also served notice that it intends to repatriate powers to Holyrood over firearms - primarily in order to ban air weapons - and also over immigration and broadcasting. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has said no, but that is unlikely to stop Salmond, who also intends to challenge Brown's cherished policy of public private partnerships.

Salmond intends to step up demands for a share of North Sea oil revenues, while, to top it all, the Scottish government has made it emphatically clear that it will have nothing to do with a new generation of nuclear power stations, expected to be announced today.

The first minister is an inspired opportunist who has discovered that even a minority administration can achieve a great deal within and without the terms of the Scotland Act.

Westminster has yet to come to terms with it, but legislative dissonance is likely to become one of the defining features of UK politics. The pace of policy differentiation is increasing dramatically as the subordinate legislatures begin to feel their strength. They are now feeding off each other, and joining in tactical alliances. In 2007 the Scottish government joined with Stormont to call for powers to vary the rate of corporation tax. Northern Ireland wants to cut business taxes, to compete with the Irish Republic; Scotland is saying, "me too".

The Scottish parliament has borrowed the policy of free prescription charges from the Welsh assembly. Meanwhile Cardiff has used Holyrood as a template on which to model its own demands for primary legislative powers. This is a relentless process which will lead inexorably to power draining to the peripheral governments of the UK. "Permanent devolution", as Trotsky might have said.

Full article here.