Devolved assemblies are ‘problem children’

Sir, – John Ridley (A question of the right balance, Courier, July 14) makes a frequently expressed point, asking why can’t the UK become a federation like America, Australia, Germany and other democracies, rather than seeking independence as many of us do now.

For a federal system to work effectively, all parts of the current United Kingdom would need to want to look after their own budgets as they do in Germany etcetera.

England do not have a devolved government, and by all accounts don’t want one.

Quite the contrary they have dabbled a little and seem to have evolved back to the City State model the Italians used back in the 15th Century, with a Mayor of London and another in Manchester.

If the UK Government had taken their ‘loss’ in the 1997 Scottish referendum and realised that winds of change were blowing, it would have been possible to create regional assemblies within England by now, akin to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies as Mr Ridley proposes, and maybe many folks in Scotland would not be seeking independence.

UK governments since then have had their collective ‘heads in the sand’ and denied there is a democratic deficit within the Westminster system, where the existing nation states that make up the union are not treated as equals, as they would be in a federalist arrangement.

The current proposal for a UK internal market, is a clear example of this, where an undemocratic committee of ministers in Westminster will decide if Welsh legislation can be passed into law in Wales, after the Welsh assembly voted for it.

That is nothing less than undemocratic.

Currently, they treat the devolved assemblies as ‘problem children’ and not capable of looking after themselves.

There are, however, many countries not far from here that are of a similar size to Scotland with fewer resources that manage to do a better than average job of running their country.

For these reasons federalism is not a horse you want to back, as it won’t even get to the starting gate.

Independence is the only way forward for Scotland to look after its peoples reasonably, fairly and with equity.

Alistair Ballantyne. Birkhill, Angus.