By Pauline Bryan

It is six months since Gordon Brown launched the report from his handpicked Commission “A Stronger Scotland, A Better Britain”. During the launch Keir Starmer made a commitment to include the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement with an Assembly of the Nations and Regions in the next Labour manifesto. A year or so before the election you may have thought that the commitment had been dumped.

Perhaps with that in mind, Gordon Brown has established the Alliance for Radical Democratic Change, bringing together First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin and Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar. They joined forces at a well attended rally in Edinburgh on 1^st June to make their case for greater devolution and ensuring greater rights for the nations and regions.

The meeting was preceded by the release of a survey conducted by Brown’s think tank Our Scottish Future. The poll showed deep attachment by people in Scotland for people in the North of England and Wales.  However, when it came to “English people in general” those Scots polled were less enthusiastic.  For London in particular, only 17 per cent thought they shared a common bond. Unfortunately, the polling questions did not seem to make a distinction between Whitehall, Westminster and the City of London and the millions of working people, many of whom are originally from Scotland, Wales and the North of England and who live precariously in the city.

Mark Drakeford, who has been at the forefront of building the case for a federal UK called for a ‘Solidarity Union’. He explained that it would be a Union based on commitments to rebuilding a UK-wide social security net to safeguard all our citizens. It would also guarantee minimum standards across the UK covering human rights, employment rights, consumer protection, environmental protection. It would also ensure that lifeline services would always be in public hands and run in the interests of the public.

The two mayors, Tracy Brabin and Andy Burnham called for an end to making regions compete with each other for resources. Brabin’s experience of dealing with advisors coming from Westminster was they thought ‘locals’ were to be managed rather than involved.

Burnham continued his campaign for a ‘re-wired Britain’. He has been converted to seeing ‘place’ as the means of fighting back rather than ‘class’. There may be an overlap, but Greater Manchester includes extremes of wealth and poverty, perhaps even more so than many other areas. A similar argument is made by those who argue that there is a thing called the ‘Scottish interest’, when in fact there are competing interests in Scotland based primarily, but not exclusively, on class.

Neither of them questioned whether the position of Metro Mayor was democratic and representative. Instead they thought it useful to extend the system to Scotland and Wales. Burnham’s bid for a change to a proportional voting system received the audience’s applause. However, it is sometimes forgotten that, even though we have forms of PR in Scotland both at the Scottish Parliament and local government level, it has not prevented single party domination of the Parliament, nor has any ‘radical alliance’ emerged.

Anas Sarwar was the final speaker. He is always in danger of being overshadowed by Brown who can sometimes appear to be speaking on behalf of Scottish Labour. Sarwar may feel he in on a roll due to the problems in both the Tory party and the SNP. Labour has not yet become the most popular party, but he has confidence that Labour will return a large group of MPs to Westminster.

The event was encouraging, particularly to see so many people attend a meeting on constitutional issues. A question from the floor raised the most telling issue. It is not enough to change our democratic institutions; rather, it is  whether we can constitutionally entrench our social and economic rights. That will be a powerful protection.

Pauline Bryan is Convener of the Red Paper Collective redpapercollective.net

Image: Gordon Brown. Source: http://www.casarosada.gov.ar/images/rsgallery/display/conbrown2.jpg.jpg. Author: Presidencia de la Nación Argentina,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.