The state of the Union is “pretty fragile at the moment” according to the UK’s leading constitutional expert - and Boris Johnson’s “muscular Unionism” is not helping.
Professor Iain McLean, Professor of Politics at Oxford University, warned Tory Ministers to meddle less in the affairs of devolved nations in the United Kingdom.
He said: “I think what many people have described this as the muscular Unionism of the current government is not, in my view, helping the cause of the Union.”
MacLean, a constitutional and elections expert, said: “I’m not being politically partisan here, but I observed that at least in Scotland and Wales the Scottish Government and Welsh Government are considerably more popular than the UK Government, ditto, their ministers.”
“Therefore for UK ministers to take a more active part in the politics of those countries may not achieve the ends that they hope is it will.”
Giving evidence to the House of Lords investigation into the governing the UK, the Nuffield College professor predicted that despite tensions reform of the UK constitution would be a slow affair.
He told peers: “The big bang is not going to happen. we’re not in a position to start from scratch, reforms will have to incrimental and work with one another.”
McLean said issues like English Votes for English Laws and the Barnett Funding formula needed to be addressed but that the financial distribution should have regard to relative needs of different nations.
He said: “There’s plenty of evidence that whatever Barnett is it is not sensitive to respective needs. It continues because it’s very convenient for the UK government of the day to avoid arguments and to avoid detailed salami slicing with the representatives from the territorial governments.”
“But it is still unsatisfactory. They include its unilateral control by HM Treasury, they included non-responsiveness to needs and the historical anomaly that spending per head in Scotland appears to be higher than in some senses it ought to be historically spending per head in Wales is a bit lower. That has always seemed mysterious.”
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