In Scotland, there is a real sense of its politics and the constitutional debate moving into a new phase as the aftermath of the pro-independence SNP and Green parties’ success in the elections sinks in. Turnout, at 63%, was the highest it has been since the first elections to the [...]
by Professor Richard Rose FBA Professor Richard Rose is founder-director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde; Visiting Fellow at the European Union Institute in Florence; and a Fellow at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin This article was first published as a comment in [...]
ADMINISTRATION MATTERS? 19 May 2021 At this first event of our new series of webinars on "Federal Futures?" we discussed the changing structures and issues for governments and general public administration in, and between, England, Scotland and Wales. Speakers: ON WALES Dr Catherine Farrell, Cardiff University ON SCOTLAND Dr [...]
The Covid-19 crisis, the Government’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda and the SNPs desire for another Scottish independence referendum are together raising issues about the various tiers and responsibilities of UK governments. Professor Colin Talbot, Emeritus Professor of Government at the University of Manchester, will be organising a series of webinars for the Federal Trust on [...]
In this video, our Council member John Palmer and Senior Research Fellow Dr Andrew Blick discuss the threats to the internal cohesion of the United Kingdom arising from Brexit and Covid-19. They believe in particular that it will be difficult to avoid holding a second referendum on independence for Scotland. [...]
In this new video, our Chairman, John Stevens, and Director, Brendan Donnelly, discuss the post-Brexit state of UK/EU relations. They argue that the present British government will generally seek a confrontational relationship with the EU over the coming months. This confrontation will be a source of instability in Northern Ireland and encourage the forces [...]
This article was first published by the Scottish Centre on European Relations The UK government’s integrated defence and foreign policy review is about to see the light of day. Some of its likely approach is already clear. ‘Global Britain’ may be a mixture of post-Brexit ideology, imperial power nostalgia and [...]
In this video, our Chairman, John Stevens, and Director, Brendan Donnelly, discuss the likely future course of EU-UK relations and whether the two are on a collision course. They expect that friction will be the dominant feature of the relationship, and predict that a political force will emerge in the medium term [...]
In this video, Federal Trust Senior Research Fellow Dr Andrew Blick comments on the emerging debate about a more federalised United Kingdom. He argues that the nature of federalism has often been misunderstood in the UK because of the confused and confusing debate surrounding a European “federal superstate.” A growing [...]
Federalism is best defined as a system in which constitutional authority is divided between a ‘federal’ tier of government and a set of territorial ‘states’. It is a comprehensive and symmetrical model in which the entirety (or almost the entirety) of the country is covered by states, which have identical [...]
