David Mundell MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and was one of the speakers at yesterday's Reform seminar in Westminster on the future of the UK constitution.
Events like the Reform seminar held in London yesterday help expose Scottish politics to a wider audience. Parts of the national media, including ConservativeHome, are also good at this. It is something that is immensely important.
People elsewhere in the UK are interested to hear about developments in Scotland, as one would expect in a political, cultural and social Union. Equally, the Scottish political debate is better when it does not occur in a vacuum. There are constitutional lessons for Scotland to learn from the Welsh and Northern Irish experiences of devolution and policy lessons from the successes and failures of the reforms introduced by England-only Departments in Whitehall.
There needs also to be an appreciation that many issues being debated separately in Scotland and England are actually interdependent. Just like many Scots wanted a Scottish Parliament set up, many English want the West Lothian Question answered. Just like many Scots want the Barnett Formula reformed to allow the Scottish Parliament to have new, tax-raising powers, people in some parts of England and Wales think it needs to be reformed to meet the needs of their region.
Unfortunately, though, people elsewhere in the UK sometimes get the impression that, as was said of the Bourbons, Scottish politicians have “learned nothing and forgotten nothing”. The London media can see Scottish politicians having the same old arguments about national identity and “Scotland’s oil” and dismiss Scottish politics as being a bit like Fight Club. If “what happens in Fight Club stays in Fight Club”, they think that what happens in Scottish politics should stay in Scottish politics.
However, I believe that Scotland’s politicians have learned a lot in the decade since devolution and that the debate in Scotland is beginning to mature and change for the better. There are three major changes that have occurred and those affect how I view the work of the Calman review of devolution – the big issue in Scottish politics in recent months.
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