That’s not federalism!

So Kezia Dugdale has been talking about introducing federalism again. I must admit that I stopped reading as soon as I got to this bit:

[A] federal solution where “every nation and the regions of England could take more responsibility for what happens in their communities”.

Most instances of federalism are quite symmetric, which means that specific powers belong to specific levels of government, and that the same levels exist everywhere. (There are some instances of asymmetric federalism, but they’re much rarer.) What that means is that if Scotland is responsible for criminal law, health, education and agriculture, one would expect the same powers to be devolved to the other constituent parts of the UK. That’s fine with Wales and Northern Ireland, but what about England?

Does Kezia want to devolve criminal law, health, education and agriculture to the English regions (completely removing these areas from Westminster), or does she want to create an English Parliament to devolve them to?

I rather suspect she doesn’t want to do either of these things, and she really wants to keep a system where Westminster is the parliament for both the UK and for England, devolving only a couple of insignificant areas to the English regions in order to look like she doing something.

That’s not federalism!