Background

A 'new union'? Federal, confederal and home-rule proposals for the United Kingdom

Background · Published 2026-11-04

Every round of the Scottish constitutional debate produces calls for a third way: neither independence nor the Union as it stands, but a "new union" of the nations of Britain on different terms. The phrase covers several quite different ideas. This explainer sets out the main ones, where they come from and the obstacles they have met.

In short

An old idea

Proposals to reorganise the Union are as old as the modern Scottish question. The Liberal Party adopted "home rule all round" in the late nineteenth century, partly as a way of answering Irish demands within a reformed United Kingdom; a Scottish home rule bill passed its second reading in the Commons in 1913 before the First World War intervened. The Scottish Covenant of 1949, a petition for a Scottish parliament within the UK, gathered around two million signatures. Devolution itself was first legislated in 1978, but failed to meet the 40% threshold in the 1979 referendum, and was finally established after the 1997 referendum by the Scotland Act 1998.

Devolution and its limits

Under the 1998 settlement, the Scottish Parliament can legislate on anything not reserved to Westminster. The Calman Commission (2009) led to the Scotland Act 2012, and the Smith Commission (2014) to the Scotland Act 2016, each adding tax and welfare powers. Whatever the size of the transfer, the principle remains the same: Westminster is sovereign and can in law amend the settlement without Holyrood's consent. The 2016 Act states that Westminster will "not normally" legislate on devolved matters without consent, but the Supreme Court made clear in the Miller case of 2017 that this convention is political rather than legally enforceable.

Devo max and home rule

During the negotiations that led to the Edinburgh Agreement of October 2012, the Scottish Government floated a second question on the ballot paper offering maximum devolution. The UK government insisted on a single question, and the 2014 referendum offered only Yes or No to independence. Polls at the time often found devo max to be the most popular option, which is one reason it re-emerged in the final weeks of the campaign as "the Vow". Critics on both sides have argued that devo max is unstable: if Scotland raised and spent nearly all its own money, it would be hard to justify its MPs voting on English taxes, and hard to share risks such as recessions across the UK.

Federalism

A federal UK would divide powers by a constitution that Westminster could not change alone. Federal proposals have come from the Liberal Democrats for decades, from the Steel Commission of 2006 and from academics and Labour figures. The central difficulty is England, which has around 84% of the UK's population. A federation of four units with one so dominant has no close parallel elsewhere, while dividing England into regions has little public support: the only referendum on an elected English regional assembly, in North East England in 2004, was rejected by 78% of voters.

In December 2022 the Commission on the UK's Future, chaired by Gordon Brown for the Labour Party, proposed replacing the House of Lords with an elected Assembly of the Nations and Regions, entrenching the Sewel convention and giving more powers to English mayors and councils. Some of those ideas have since been discussed in government; others have not been taken forward.

Confederal ideas

At the other end of the spectrum, some supporters of independence describe their goal as a new partnership of sovereign states, sharing a monarch, a land border without controls through the Common Travel Area, and perhaps cooperation on defence or broadcasting. The Scottish Government's 2013 white paper described several of these "unions" that would remain after independence: the monarchy, the pound in a formal currency union, and the social union of family and culture. In legal terms this is independence, not a reformed UK, since each state would be sovereign and the arrangements would rest on treaties that either side could leave.

Why a middle way is hard

Why the idea keeps returning

Surveys of Scottish opinion have repeatedly found a large group of voters who prefer more powers for Holyrood to either independence or the present arrangements. As long as that group exists, politicians will keep trying to design a settlement that speaks to it. Whether it ever becomes a concrete option on a ballot paper is the open question at the heart of the debate. Our article on the aftermath of 2014 shows how the last attempt at a settlement unfolded.

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