Introduction: four more years of path-dependent devolution

Devolution to Scotland and Wales was already a ‘done deal’ at the start of Tony Blair's second term in June 2001. On the face of things, little had changed in Scotland and Wales at the start of his third in May 2005, while change in Northern Ireland was for the worse. However, there are subtle and important changes below the surface. This chapter describes these changes, and evaluates the Blair effect on them.

Karl Marx wisely said, ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.’ The men and women who ran devolution in the UK between 2001 and 2005 did so under electoral and financial systems directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. On these circumstances depended the path of devolution in the second Blair term.

In 1994 John Smith, then Labour leader, sonorously proclaimed devolution to be ‘the settled will of the Scottish people’. The Scottish referendum of 1997 validated the constitutional settlement proposed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention that sat between 1989 and 1995. In a dual vote with a 60% turnout, 74.3% of those who voted approved the Scottish Parliament, and 63.5% of those who voted agreed that it would have a power to tax, although to date it has not used that power, nor does it look likely to in the near future.