The Scottish Executive has announced plans to introduce tighter gun laws, a move which has significant constitutional implications, as Hamish McDonell noted in tthe Scotsman today.
The implications of this are potentially massive. It could, theoretically, be used to give the Scottish Parliament the ability to change its own structure, to change its own voting system or to change its own tax system.
Up until now, the Executive has always been able to say: we cannot talk about that because it is reserved and there is nothing we can do about it.
Now, though, once the precedent of a "reverse Sewel" has been set, everything is open for debate. (Scotsman)
The move has been agreed with Westminster, but Gareth at the CEP Blog argues the precedent could lead to tensions in future.
This is all well and good when you have two parties cut from roughly the same cloth in charge of the UK and Scotland but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the precedent set by granting a reverse Sewel will have major ramifications down the line when the governing parties are pulling in totally opposite directions. (CEP)
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