Paul Tattam calls for a good-humoured national debate about the future of the union, and Iain Forbes says the problem is many English people don’t seem to care about it. Plus letters from John Skrine and Michael Cunningham
Simon Jenkins’ article (The United Kingdom is broken. It’s time for a new British federation, 5 July) could not be more relevant at this low point in UK governance. Only three of the UK’s four “nations” have devolved assemblies, and currently only two of these have a functioning administration.
His view that “a bespoke autonomy for each nation in a new British federation” is now critical would also, I think, be shared by members of the House of Lords select committee on the constitution. In 2014, it recommended that the UK government and political parties “devise and articulate a coherent vision for the shape and structure of the United Kingdom, without which there cannot be constitutional stability”. Paragraph 350 of its January 2022 report, however, would seem to dispel any idea that the government is even remotely interested in this matter: “Witnesses agreed that the lack of vision was undermining efforts to promote the union’s benefits.”
