Can Gordon Brown save the UK? Amid mounting support for Scottish independence and rising alarm about corruption and cronyism at Westminster, the former prime minister last week released the report of the Commission on the UK’s Future. In this week’s NLJ, Cambridge University professor Marc Weller assesses the 150-page contents of the report.
Does it promise major constitutional change, or simply more of the same ‘in disguise’ as change? Proposals include abolishing the House of Lords and creating an English Grand Committee of Parliament, but the report also emphasises ‘economic regeneration and a better spread of economic opportunity and growth across the UK’.
Weller writes: ‘The strategy of the report seems to be to try and build enthusiasm for a renaissance of Britain as a whole—a new cool Britannia, as it were—while addressing the national question for Scotland in a more incidental way; the premise being that a successful UK will be enough to dissuade anyone from leaving it.’
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