Gordon Brown has called for Holyrood to be given sweeping new powers after Brexit as a “third way” to independence.
The former prime minister said the UK should become a federal state, with the Scottish parliament taking control over fisheries, farming, welfare and far more taxation after EU powers are repatriated to the UK.
Brown told an event in his home town of Kirkcaldy that federalism would be a patriotic Scottish solution to the conflict over independence between the Tories in London and the Scottish National party in Edinburgh.
“You can call it a more federalistic option, you can call it in the more traditional way Scottish home rule, you can call it federal home rule. I’m calling it the third option, a Scottish patriotic way forward,” he said.
“A new third option can unify our country and end the bitter and divisive yes-versus-no conflict that will continue to rip us apart. It is time to transcend the bitter division and extremism of an inflexible, die-hard conservatism at war with an intransigent and even more hardline nationalism.”
Brown’s speech was timed to coincide with Nicola Sturgeon’s address on Saturday to the SNP’s spring conference in Aberdeen, where she again challenged Theresa May to start talks on the timing of a second independence referendum.
Angus Robertson, the SNP’s deputy leader, dismissed his intervention as “Brown-hog day”. He told BBC Breakfast: “What we’re seeing yet again is Gordon Brown being wheeled out when the union is in trouble.”
Brown made similar promises before the 2014 independence referendum about “transformational change” and “near as possible federalism” if Scotland voted to say in the UK. “We are very, very far from that,” Robertson said. “I don’t take this seriously at all.”
Alex Salmond, the former first minister who led the SNP into the 2014 referendum and initially considered a quasi-federal option for the vote, said it was patently obvious Theresa May had no interest in Brown’s proposal.
The prime minister had already rejected Sturgeon’s request to repatriate £800m worth of EU farming, universities and social chapter funding to Scotland, he said. Brown’s proposal could only work if voters believed Labour was likely to be in power to deliver it.
Salmond investigated and proposed adding a third option for so-called “devo max” to the 2014 referendum, but dropped it after he was unable to win support for it. The UK government would never agree to adding it in this time, he said.
“It is patently obvious that May wants nothing whatsoever to do with it,” he said. “What I believe will happen is that the UK government will have no choice but to agree to an independence referendum, and that independence referendum will deliver a yes vote.”
Brown’s proposals support policies being pushed by Scottish Labour’s leader, Kezia Dugdale, as its alternative to independence. They argue federalism could strengthen and benefit all UK nations and regions by decentralising power and reducing the grip of Westminster.
Supported nearly unanimously at Scottish Labour’s annual conference last month, it has been backed by the UK Labour party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, and other senior party figures, but Dugdale has been struggling to get explicit support from Jeremy Corbyn.
Brown said a system of federal home rule would allow the Scottish parliament to control key policies under the UK’s umbrella, including industrial investment. That would allow it to pool and share spending and protect Scotland’s more fragile economy against shocks.
The Bank of England would be reorganised as a federal institution with Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish representation, while defence, foreign affairs, pensions and basis welfare powers would be controlled at the UK level.
Brown’s intervention suggests Labour could argue for a federal option to be included in a future independence referendum..
“The status quo has been overtaken by events, because unless powers, now with the European Union, are repatriated from Brussels to the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and the regions, Whitehall will have perpetrated one of the biggest power grabs by further centralising power,” he said.
“The separatist option has been overtaken by Brexit events, because under the SNP’s proposals, Scotland would not just be outside the fiscal union facing a huge deficit but outside the British single market on which 1 million jobs and £50bn worth of exports depend.”
Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, said some voters would support the proposal, but Labour was so divided and powerless it was incapable of implementing it.
“The Labour party is not in a position to deliver a pizza at the moment,” he said. “We have to understand what is going on is we have a government in Scotland elected with a mandate to hold a referendum in the circumstances of Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will. That is what is happening at the present time.”
He said Holyrood would vote next week by a majority to back Sturgeon’s call for the powers to stage a new referendum, and the prime minister should start talks with Sturgeon on its timing..
- This article was amended on 19 March 2017 to correct the spelling of Whitehall.
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