I am not sure that a return to New Labour is the response to
the defeat last Thursday. Will a turn to the centre restore the faith of voters
who have chosen nationalist parties such as UKIP and the SNP in working class
districts? In centre left parties there are always more moderate and more
radical components, and in modern societies the most logical outcome is a
permanently negotiated balance between the different factions. I don’t think
that will substantially change in the UK. But what Labour needs desperately is
to openly discuss an institutional project that gives coherence to the internal
arrangements between nations in the UK and to its relationship with the
European Union. Chuka Umunna, perhaps the British Obama, seems to agree. So do
intellectuals and journalists of the calibre of Timothy Garton Ash (as well as Will Hutton or Phil Stephens), who has made a number of
proposals towards a “Federal Kingdom” to conclude that “All this is inseparable
from the matter of Europe. After all, the essential British argument over the
EU is about who does what at what level. That’s what people will be looking at
in the probably paltry results of Cameron’s self-styled renegotiation with
Brussels. But another word for such multi-layered arrangements is, precisely,
federalism.”
No hi ha res més pragmàtic que la idea federal
5 hours ago
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