Editorial

When this newspaper reported some weeks ago that Gordon Brown had intervened to undermine Wendy Alexander's plans for a constitutional commission there was the expected flurry of denials from Downing Street.

The prime minister, insisted his aides, was wholly supportive of the Scottish Labour leader's big idea to examine the future direction of devolution. We later learned that Brown was comfortable even with the idea of more tax-raising powers for Holyrood.

Our story elsewhere in this section today underlines the accuracy of our first report. A document leaked to the Sunday Herald proves that the prime minister was indeed against calling Alexander's initiative a constitutional commission'' for fear of giving it a status he does not believe it deserves.

Furthermore, we report that Brown's conversion to entering the debate on Holyrood's ability to raise its own finance was simply a response to Jack Straw's belief that the present arrangements are unfair to England.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe anything other than there is a serious and growing schism between Labour in Scotland and in Westminster over how much power should be invested in Holyrood and how the UK should operate in the near future.

We already have two initiatives to discuss the constitutional arrangements within the UK - the SNP government's national conversation, which has been boycotted by the unionist parties, and Scottish Labour's commission/review, which was designed to exclude the Nationalists. To those we may have to add a third - a reconstituted Steel Commission under the aegis of the Liberal Democrats.

The only reason for this plethora of initiatives is that our mainstream political parties are not adult enough to agree parameters of the discussion in a manner that would allow them all to take part.

Over the past few weeks the Sunday Herald has been holding informal discussions with interested parties on how to break the deadlock and encourage ALL parties to take part in the same debate, and how to encourage the public to connect with an issue of such crucial importance for the future of our country.

We will report soon on that initiative ... meanwhile, we can only urge Scottish politicians of all hues to acknowledge that the present initiatives serve only to confuse the issue and dilute essential efforts to forge a way ahead. It is all too apparent that Westminster has little real appetite for any serious development of devolution in Scotland. Petty bickering and fractured discussions north of the Border will hardly produce the pressure needed to change their minds.