Labour report shows Scotland is too much trouble for Gordon Brown

It doesn’t exactly ring true, does it? Let’s take another shot: “I voted Yes, but now that Leeds is getting a directly elected ­mayor, I’m having second thoughts.” Nope.

A third go: “The big thing that made a ­difference for me was the idea that ­Holyrood should be consulted by the UK Government in relation to the minimum wage. That’s a game-changer.” Nope, nope, nope.

The launch was, needless to say, ­heavily spun. After what seems like 120 years of preparation – with episodic leaks and ­briefings along the way about how serial interventionist Gordon Brown proposes to intervene to save the Union once again – the long-promised report of Labour’s ­Commission on the future of the UK was published on Monday morning.

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For years, this review has been trailed to Scottish voters as a “safer” and “more ­radical” alternative to independence. Brown’s brief was to “settle the future of the Union” and devise what Starmer ­characterised as a “second phase” in the devolution of power from Westminster.

“Only Gordon Brown could come up with a 40-point plan” the former PM’s ­admirers in the Scottish media chuckled as Brown’s big clunking list landed. When he was ­chancellor of the exchequer, Brown became notorious for his preference for ­stealth-taxes. In this case, it must be the ­“enhanced devolution” which is deftly ­hidden between the lines of his report, ­because you won’t find it in the text.

Read the 40 recommendations with an unsentimental eye, and it becomes obvious that Brown’s proposals are padded out with double – and sometimes – triple-counting to create the illusion that a thunderous battery of changes to devolved powers in ­Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are being ­proposed. But that sound you’re ­hearing is the wet fizz of a damp squib.

Because when it comes to the new ­powers Brown thinks should be thrown Holyrood’s way, the report has barely any fizz at all. As the Institute for Government conclude, “the review does not propose the ­devolution of significant new powers to Scotland or Wales.”

Best I can see, the commission fully ­commits Labour to making only a single, solitary change to the Scotland Act. They recommend the reservation of foreign ­affairs to Westminster should be tweaked to allow Holyrood “to enter into international agreements and join international bodies in relation to devolved matters”.

Everything else Brown might have said about the contested borderline between reserved and devolved powers is either missing, hedged or “to be consulted on”. Two of the recommendations – on ­parliamentary privilege and support for elected mayors – are actually already within Holyrood’s legislative ­competence. Labour have every right to make ­suggestions about what the Scottish Parliament should do with its time, but when this is front and centre in a package you claim is partly designed to save the Union for the longue duree, then the bottom’s really fallen out of your bucket.

Undeterred by the complete absence of the promised “radical” new ­proposals for Scottish devolution, the Starmer stans who’re prepared to endure any ­intellectual indignity to prop up the ­possibility of a Labour government were content to hail this as a new vision for the United Kingdom and Scotland’s place in it. Perhaps I missed the secret annexe.

If nothing else, this is a striking ­failure in expectations management. Why ­Labour allowed the proposals to be built up in Scotland as their big, bold answer to demands for Scottish independence is beyond me. The painful collision ­between the rhetoric and the reality was always ­going to leave the proposals looking ­emaciated in the Scottish context.

Just think for a moment about the really-existing tensions about the limits of the devolution framework. There’s the overriding constitutional question: how can Scots exercise their right to self-determination? How do Unionists think democratic mandates for change should be recognised? But beyond that, there are a string of changes which Brown’s ­commission might have recommended – or at least demonstrated some evidence of contemplating.

Most aren’t even mentioned in the long and laboured 153 pages of A New Britain. Start with taxes. The Institute for Government reckon that central ­government taxes still constitute 69% of tax venue taken in Scotland. ­Holyrood can tinker with income tax, but the ­personal allowance and National Insurance are all ­retained by the Treasury. Capital gains tax too, ­corporation tax, VAT, excise ­duties. While decrying centralisation in general, scope for revisiting these issues is mutely passed over.

The report criticises the Tories for “eroding” devolution since Brexit, ­arguing that they have “systematically disregarded” the principle that devolved powers shouldn’t be changed without consent. Given this, you’d think Labour might make concrete proposals to take a scalpel to the Conservatives’ statute book and restore the lost powers to Edinburgh and Cardiff. But no, they have nothing of the sort in mind.

TAKE drug laws. Crime generally falls within Holyrood’s powers – but the Home Office is keeping an iron grip on the legislative framework of the Misuse of Drugs Act, unwilling even to countenance the idea of publicly-funded safer consumption facilities to help prevent overdoses in Scotland’s cities and towns. The same goes for immigration. ­Scottish politicians have been crying out for greater autonomy when it comes to ­attracting more people to come, live, work and stay here. They point to ­international ­examples of tailored visa regimes which have been introduced in countries like Australia. Again, the idea isn’t even ­mooted.

Why all these omissions? Two main ­factors. First, raw political cynicism. Starmer’s overriding concern is now to park the bus on Labour’s polling lead, and avoid giving Britain’s feral press any pretext to credibly brand his policies as “loony left”. Consistent with his reflexive defence of all manner of police crackdowns and longer sentences, Starmer is now a true ­believer on the war on drugs. The ­problem, it seems, is that we haven’t been waging it properly – just as he believes the main problems with Tory attitudes to ­immigration and asylum is that the Home Secretary has lost control over ­Britain’s borders. Because discussing either of these ideas might create ­short-term ­political turbulence for Captain ­Sensible and his Sensible Centrist platform, they’re off the table and devolution can’t be ­contemplated.

And second, this failure to engage with the real tensions in the existing ­devolution framework makes much more sense when you realise Brown’s ­proposals aren’t ­primarily aimed at the Scottish electorate at all. As the ­report itself recognises, “the ­single most ­transformative aspect of our ­recommendations is the distribution of power across England”.

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If Brown’s ­project began life with a goal of countering nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales – the final draft has mutated into something with ­remarkably little to say about the tensions which ­continue to fray the Union’s edges.

The report sings the same old songs about the plan giving “a new voice and new status, and new powers, for ­Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as valued parts of the United Kingdom” – but ­implicit in its analysis is that we’ve reached the end of the road in terms of the powers Labour at Westminster is ­prepared to part with. In its way, this should be just as much of a clarifying ­moment as the ­Supreme Court’s ­judgment.

If you’re pinning your hopes on ­Labour for a more powerful Scottish Parliament, then they have just confirmed they’ve no intention of making any substantive ­additions to Holyrood’s powers.

The real action, as they see it, is all in England’s cities and towns. This isn’t just timorous – it’s cowardly, cloaking the substance of the status quo under the language of change, frit of devolving any more powers to Holyrood, and feart of the political implications of saying so plainly.