THE recent report of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales presents a major challenge to those of us advocating a federal structure for Britain.  

The report recognises federalism as a viable option alongside strengthened devolution and independence options. However, it also describes federalism as “…generally the least attractive option for citizens across all the strands of our engagement.”

We need to consider the reasons given for this outcome, by the report authors. Can they be rebuffed? What work do we need to do to remedy this?

One of the first points made in the report is that “levels of understanding of the UK’s constitutional set-up are low, and most people do not feel informed enough to contribute to the debate about changing it.”

It is vital that we ensure that discussion about the constitutional future connect with people’s current experience and everyday lives. The Welsh working class has participated in the strike wave and in campaigns against austerity and the cost of living crisis. We are currently engaged in campaigns around public service cuts encompassing local authority services, education, healthcare and fire and rescue services. The current need for the Welsh people is to gain more control over the economy and public spending.  

In advocating change in we need to draw attention to the flaws in the current system and also to those examples where conflict has arisen between the policy aspirations of the devolved nations and UK government.

We need to move the debate into one of concrete examples, rather than of abstract notions of “independence” and “unionism.” By focusing on the issues we can build a coalition of forces (drawing allies from both sides of the independence debate) for a series of proposals to extend the power of the people of Wales over the policy areas that affect them most. 

Welsh government has clashed with the UK government over the allocation of powers following Brexit, the Levelling-Up and Shared Prosperity Funds, Westminster’s anti-trade union laws, the agricultural wages board and Barnett funding formula.  

The themes are the same, the need for the Welsh people is to gain more control over the economy and public spending. Such an increase in power and control is possible in various constitutional models but there is no current consensus, even within the left, around a single constitutional model.

There is however, agreement that the Barnett formula has failed, there is agreement that public services in Wales need to be better funded and there is agreement that the Tories’ anti-trade union laws should be opposed.  

A united campaign to replace the Barnett formula with a redistributional funding settlement based on need is a plausible immediate step for the left in Wales.

Welsh participation in the campaigns of the labour movement across Britain for trade union rights and fair pay is essential today.  The left in Wales can work together on the demand that the powers released from Europe by Brexit, and the finance that has replaced EU structural funds, should come to Wales. 

None of these potentially game-changing campaigns resolve the constitutional questions posed by the commission. It is not necessary that they should. They don’t close down our future options. What they do do is go some way to addressing our immediate need. 

So what of federalism? The commission’s work presents two major challenges. First, it states that “the structure of the UK was often seen as a barrier, particularly the risk of domination by England due to its population size in relation to the other nations.”

We have stressed the principle of equality of rights for all nations within federalism but we cannot expect support for federalism from those who are seeking to extend national and regional rights without providing assurance that those rights would be protected from the simple majoritarianism that would see federal policy dictated by the unit with the largest population.

Whatever detailed federal structures emerge, national and regional rights need to be clarified and the principle of self-determination of nations embedded. It is clear that these structures need to be fit for the purpose the people of Wales and Britain give them. 

The question arises as to how a more detailed model can, or should, emerge. 

One option is for the left’s best academics to lock themselves in a room for a week or two in an attempt to crack the conundrum. A far more attractive option is that the details of what powers should rest where be worked out organically by the Welsh (and British) working class through its practical struggles.

What the report fundamentally misses is in fact the basis of the argument for a federal approach. The UK state has developed as the servant of British capitalism. As such it is a state of exploitation, in class terms, that has manifested in geographical disparities and a history of uneven development. 

The concentration of capital and its leadership and decision-making functions in London and the south-east has, since the state’s inception, regressively pulled wealth and power away from the rest of these islands including the English north, Midlands and south-west as well as Cornwall, Scotland and Wales, to mention nothing of its wider overseas empire.

The argument for federalism is simply that we need to reverse this process. We need to redistribute wealth and power and the united efforts of Britain’s trade union and labour movement, in concert with community campaigners and political activists from across the left, offer the most realistic mechanism for achieving this.

Dai Morgan is Wales secretary of the Communist Party.