Your handy guide to post-referendum jargon
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Version 0 of 1. Devo max This is the proposition that the Scottish parliament at Holyrood should have the power to set its own course on the widest possible range of policies, stopping just short of independent statehood. So tax and spending would all be devolved but foreign policy and defence would still be decided at UK level. Home rule A version of increased devolution of powers to Scotland, probably involving control over tax, spending and welfare, that Gordon Brown proposed in the last weeks of the campaign when the no campaign realised they should have put devo max on the ballot in the first place. ‘The vow’ A signed pledge by David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, published on the front page of the Daily Record in the last days of the campaign, promising “extensive new powers” for Holyrood, a bit like devo max, a bit like home rule, that sort of thing, details tbc. Barnett formula The calculation (named after Joel Barnett, the Labour treasury secretary who devised it in the 1970s) that is used to allocate budgets from central revenues to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Vital to the argument about what constitutes a fair distribution of resources; incomprehensible to most people involved in that argument. West Lothian question First asked in 1977 by Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for West Lothian, raising the problem with devolution whereby MPs representing Scottish seats at Westminster get to vote on matters that don’t affect their own constituents but do have an impact on the English. English votes for English Laws (EV4EL) A proposed answer to the West Lothian question that would allow only MPs from English seats to vote on legislation affecting only England. Popular among Conservatives, not least because it would make it hard for a Labour administration full of Scottish MPs to get anything done. MacKay report Published in March 2013, the product of an independent commission set up to look at West Lothian-related questions. It concluded, among other things, that legislation affecting predominantly England really ought to enjoy the majority support of English MPs but that letting only English MPs vote on such things might be getting a bit carried away. English parliament Another possible answer to the West Lothian question but one that would mean a move to … Federalism The idea of carving the UK into constituent assemblies, perhaps with the old parliament refashioned as a kind of senate on top. Popular with constitutional purists and Germans. Regions Parts of the UK that might fancy a bit of devolution, or even become states in a federal system but that no one thinks of as nations, eg Yorkshire, Humberside, London. Status quo Always declared not to be an option. Usually an option. Constitutional convention A grand exercise to draft a settlement for the constituent parts of the UK. Set up by politicians to prove that the status quo cannot be an option while prolonging the status quo as long as possible. Fag packet On the back of which one party declares the other side has concocted new constitutional arrangements. (Also: envelopes – on the back of which non-smokers concoct new constitutional arrangements.) Long grass Where difficult constitutional questions that don’t fit on the back of a fag packet end up. |