Published on Liberal Democrat Voice By NewsHound | Wed 17th September 2014 – 12:38 pm

The Guardian posted an article by Shirley Williams yesterday, in which she writes:

The referendum decision will come at the culmination of a long period of disillusionment with politicians. The SNP, like the other mainstream parties, has attracted its own share of public frustration about centralisation and the excessive rule of Edinburgh over other regions of Scotland. Nationally, the disillusionment began with the poll tax, the decline of manufacturing in Scotland, Wales, the Midlands and the north of England during the Thatcher years, the failure of our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis in 2008 which loaded on taxpayers the huge costs of bailing out the banks.

Her solution is:

It demands a radical response, not only devolution of more powers, including in areas of taxation and public expenditure, to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, but also a willingness to devolve power within each country to the great cities as well as to local communities – in short, acting on the principle that decisions should be made at the level of those affected by them. The digital revolution makes that easier than ever before.

She refers to the West Lothian question, and also discusses the need to build infrastructure in Scotland.

Finally she mentions:

… the kind of intense open public discussion that characterised the Scottish constitutional convention in the early 90s. That convention produced a blueprint for devolution and a new Scottish parliament.

Scotland gave us a model then. These are steps on the way towards a federal United Kingdom. We should be grateful to the Scottish people for opening the way to a democratic destiny grown from local roots. That can only be realised if we work together.

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