In Beyond Brexit the constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor wrote that ‘if the United Kingdom is to survive, devolution has to be understood in terms of the needs of the country as a whole, not just its component parts’. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to have made it through to the devolved governments themselves, judging from their latest run-in […]
In The Ashdown Diaries shortly after passage of the devolution legislation Tony Blair is quoted as saying (while laughing) ‘Yes, that is a problem. I am beginning to see the defects of all this devolution stuff’. Two decades on the problems unlocked by his absent-minded reforms are ever more pronounced as we leave lockdown. Last weekend […]
Back in 1946 Aneurin Bevan legislated for a National Health Service organised on the principle that when a “bedpan is dropped in a hospital corridor in Tredegar, the reverberations should echo around Whitehall”. Central government would deliver universal healthcare on the basis of need, not geography. This is what the Welshman meant when he pledged […]
The 1888 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica included a famously mirthless entry for Wales – “see England”. Labour’s hegemony since 1924 has led pundits to treat Welsh politics as a similarly predictable affair. For Welsh politics, see Welsh Labour. Out-shouted by Scotland, less troubled than Ulster, it has become the province of the Cardiff-centric Welsh media. […]
