Devolution in the UK

Referendums in Scotland and Wales in September 1997 signalled fundamental changes in the government and politics of the United Kingdom. At the start of the third millennium a Parliament in Scotland, an Assembly in Wales and a new London authority with a directly elected mayor will be established each with wide powers and responsibilties. These developments will provide an added impetus to establishing elected government in the English regions. This book sets the territorial politics of the UK into historical and political context. It challenges traditional notions of the UK as a unitary state and considers the implications for the whole of the UK its changes in its component parts. The debates leading up to constitutional change are discussed and the opportunities and challenges they will face are considered. What all of this means for the United of Disunited Kingdom is analysed. The lessons of the UK's limited experience of devolution, the Stormont Parliament in Northern Ireland which existed for 50 years until 1972, are considere taking account of both the constitutional and socio-political dimensions. Based on extensive research using primary and secondary material, the new territoral politics of the United Kingdom are discussed alongside a reassessment of old orthodoxies.