An idea that goes right back to Gladstone and "devolution all round". Unfortunately the FPTP nature of British politics led to the Ulster Unionists and Irish Nationalists both pushing their maximal position as the Liberal vs Conservative divide led to an atmosphere of confrontation rather than a seeking of consensus both sides could have lived with and a Bosnian Serb called Princip assassinated an Austrian archduke to precipitate WW1 at almost the worst possible moment in terms of internal British politics. The major problem with a fully federalised UK then and now IMO is that England is just too big to sit easily within a Canadian or Australian style federal system and its component regional identities are not strong enough to chop it up into little pieces. Anyone else remember the Wessex Regionalists? I think what is happening between Montenegro and Serbia is quite interesting as the relative size of Montenegro and Scotland within the larger state is roughly comparable. The Montengrin government under Djukanovic is proposing that both republics should have full international recognition as separate sovereign entities and then negotiate and ratify the terms of the union between them as equal partners with even things like a joint armed forces being on the agenda. I think that's the sort of model that should be followed between Scotland and the rump UK as who really wants to have separate Scottish airforce and army? The other major problem of course is that the EU is making a federal UK superfluous in many ways but the argument that the SNP always seems to fail to explain to people is that where British interests coincide having multiple British EU member states would result in a stronger voice in Europe while OTOH where they don't Scotland would have a voice where it currently has none. The SNP focusses too much on the latter scenario without making enough mention of the former IMO.

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