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DELEGATES at the Scottish Labour conference voted yesterday for a “radical” federal solution to heal deep political and economic rifts in British society following the referendums over Scottish independence and EU membership.
People all over Britain have been feeling “disenfranchised and detached” from the political process, whose powers have been “concentrated in the hands of a few,” said Scottish Labour’s Westminster spokesman Ian Murray.
He said that the Brexit vote had lifted the lid on feelings of alienation and disillusion that were created in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the MPs’ expenses scandal and the Scottish independence campaign.
Scottish Labour is calling for a new “people’s constitutional convention” to democratically empower citizens and communities as well as a new Act of union to prevent Scotland from breaking away from the rest of Britain.
The motion calls for the legislative powers of the Scottish Parliament to be enhanced by “repatriating powers in devolved areas that will return from Brussels in the coming years.”
Mr Murray also proposed a transfer of powers over workers’ rights and the minimum wage to Holyrood.
However, he warned against the full fiscal autonomy that he said the SNP and right-wing Tories have advocated, arguing that it would be “financially disastrous” for Scotland and would expose a £15 billion budget deficit.
Maintaining the fiscal union and the Barnett formula allows for the “pooling and sharing of resources, based on need, not nationality,” Mr Murray added.
Glasgow Kelvin delegate Pauline Bryan welcomed the motion but urged caution over calls for a new Act of union.
She said: “We don’t want a union of the crowns, but the union of people, people who have been excluded from power.”
She called on the Labour Party to campaign for “political change which can’t be legislated for and must be built from the ground upwards.”
Ms Bryan added: “We need to take economic power from the British Establishment and I support this first step to a new and lasting settlement in the fight for a new socialist commonwealth.”
MSP Lesley Brennan called for Labour to “reject the binary choice” between SNP nationalism and Tory unionism and instead to choose socialism, which she said was the only approach that could break up the power of Westminster and hand control to communities.
This meant, she added, to “rebuild a socially just economy [and] promote co-operation and solidarity between regions and nations to ensure the pooling of resources.”
