Hansard

I accept that point and that is why I made the point about the fiscal framework. However, my wider point is about the powers that this Parliament can gain, which other members have talked to in the context of the debate.

I want to enter into the constitutional spirit of the debate, in this week of all weeks. After all, Labour has a new leader—a genuine socialist. Politics is black and white again, and it is certainly not Blair. Neil Findlay is now the most influential Labour politician in Scotland, with the ear of the leader.

I want to make a constitutional suggestion to team Corbyn, although team Corbyn may be a concept that takes Labour unity a little far, judging by what we have been watching. However, Labour should go back to the future, as it did in the past, and embrace devolution within England. I believe that that is important for Scotland as well.

I fear that that will not happen because command and control socialism does not sit easily with decentralisation, so I doubt that there will be a Labour policy shift towards the obvious and only alternative to the constitutional morass of the UK—a federal country where the nations of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland figure out a coherent way of working together. That is why I believe that the work of the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee on intergovernmental relations is arguably the most important part of the work that is taking place at the moment.

A federal system creates a positive, unifying future for Scotland and the rest of the UK. Such a system is completely normal around the world for modern, complex democracies such as ours. It would be good for Scotland, and it is a pity that we cannot ask Parliament to support such a move with a vote this afternoon on the amendment that I lodged.

I doubt that nationalist friends in the chamber will embrace the progressive approach of a federal UK—not in Scotland, anyway. In Wales and Northern Ireland, nationalist parties recognise—and openly articulate—that future because they see the interdependence of their nations and the benefits that would flow.

The cabinet secretary mentioned last year’s referendum; it would have been a surprise were that not to have been raised this afternoon. I now read that Angela Constance and Richard Lochhead are leading lights of the campaign for a second referendum: “Yes 2”. I gently say to my friends on the SNP benches that most of us genuinely thought that when people said, “Once in a lifetime” they absolutely meant it. For many Scots, suggesting that we should go down the same route that we went down last year will be a considerable ask indeed.

The politics of today will be about the SNP’s short-term political positioning in making a judgment on how left wing to be. Jeremy Corbyn’s success in becoming Labour leader, and his socialism, can bring lost voters back to Labour. I suspect that Ms Sturgeon will not want to lose west central Scotland to the auld enemy, so Scotland can expect a battle on who is more left wing.

That matters in terms of what we are to look at in terms of the constitution and the future. It also leaves empty the centre and the right of British and Scottish politics. The Tories move ever more to the right, bringing to the UK Parliament a vindictive Trade Union Bill that not even Mrs Thatcher would have introduced. The bill is also bad politics: far from dividing Labour, it seems to have completely united the party, so it has not worked.

The issue that is every bit as important for our constitution in Scotland as for our future in Europe. We are about to witness, as we have all seen in the past, a Tory civil war. I heard Bill Cash on the radio the other morning, and I thought that we are indeed going back to the future.

That matters because the European question is an SNP condition for a second referendum on Scottish independence. The SNP has said that it would not work with other pro-European parties to face down the arguments for leaving Europe. That is disappointing, but hardly surprising. After all, just as the First Minister wanted David Cameron to win in May, so she wants England to vote to leave the EU because that helps the SNP and the case for Scottish independence.

All that makes the liberal, radical, progressive centre of politics essential. It is the gaping political hole, and there is a great opportunity not just in the UK but in Scotland. As I say openly to my party, that is why the Liberal Democrats will recover from the trauma of the past five years.

It is increasingly clear that there are only two future courses for Scotland—independence or federalism—and that federalism is the only viable future for the UK. Scotland is well placed to provide the drive and the route map towards a new future: a federal UK with a stable and lasting written constitution that honours the democratic decision of the people of Scotland last year.

Now is the time for that new start. It is time for a federal UK, and it is time to find people who want a lasting, progressive settlement for our nation amidst other nations.