Review: The Federal-Confederal Letters

When I was a kid I was fascinated by politics. 

There was something fundamentally exciting about the idea that people could come together and make decisions to improve the lives of everyone and make the country run better.

When you are young, you believe that this is how politics should work. People may disagree on how to make things better, but ultimately, they all have the same goal.

Once adulthood arrived, the rather depressing reality hit me that this isn’t always (or indeed often) the case. After a decade working in political journalism, this reality has punched me in the face so many times it is hard to become enthused. There is something hopeless knowing that there is a long list of issues that need to be tackled by those leading us, but not only is action not taken, they often don’t even acknowledge that the issues exist. 

There is something hopeless knowing that there is a long list of issues that need to be tackled by those leading us, but not only is action not taken, they often don’t even acknowledge that the issues exist.

Whatever your political outlook, inherent biases, or where you live in the UK, it is obvious that the current constitutional framework we have in this country doesn’t work. It clearly doesn’t work for Wales or Scotland, but I think you can make a pretty strong argument that people in parts of England may be the worst served by it.

With that in mind, I have to say that the series of letters from both David Melding and Glyndwr Cennydd Jones to each other was immensely uplifting and helped reawaken that early love I had for politics.

Though the pair are unified in the view that the current system needs to change, their proposed solutions are not, with some fundamental (and perhaps irreconcilable) differences. Add to this their contrasting party allegiances and political outlooks, and, given the nature of modern political discourse, you would expect an adversarial and confrontational exchange. 

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Yet, instead, what you end up with is a series of correspondence from two clearly thoughtful and interesting men who are earnestly seeking to explore the other’s point of view in order to solve a serious problem. It was so refreshing!

At a time when most of us spend a depressing amount of our days on “social” media, it was wonderful to see a back and forth where people sought answers as opposed to “likes” and “clicks.”

This doesn’t mean that you are left with an anaemic or stymied debate, far from it. Both were keen to fight their corner but with respect and without ego. It was a delight. 

For those who are interested in how one of the oldest democratic systems in the world can run better it was a fascinating exchange. Within the space of a few paragraphs they moved from broad philosophical points on the nature of sovereignty to hyper specific investigations into bureaucratic practicalities such as who would be the “successor state” and take the UK’s UN Security Council seat in the event of a confederal model. 

At a time when most of us spend a depressing amount of our days on “social” media, it was wonderful to see a back and forth where people sought answers as opposed to “likes” and “clicks.”

What I really enjoyed was how you could really get a sense of the individual writer through the letters. Perhaps one of the hardest skills a writer can have is to make potentially dry discussions on constitutional theory accessible and interesting, but they have done it. This is, in my view, because the letters are unequivocally in the voices of the respective writers. It brought a passion and authenticity that really helps the reader engage with the texts.

The nature of an exchange of letters was also a refreshing way to access the topic. Instead of feeling preached at (which so often is the case when reading political books), the reader feels taken along for the ride. This is somewhere we are going together and both writers are excellent guides.

Perhaps the biggest endorsement I can give is that throughout the letters, Wales is treated with respect. Depressingly, this is so often not the case in many conversations about the UK. I had no doubt that this time, things would be different. I have been lucky enough to interview both men in my work as a journalist and perhaps their most overlapping trait (except a love of constitutional chats) is a passion for creating the conditions for Wales to be the best that it can be. 

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As someone immersed in politics every day, I am so grateful to be given the opportunity to write the foreword to this work. It was great to stretch my brain to understand concepts, rather than try and uncover the hidden agenda of the people involved. I sincerely hope that many of our elected representatives and decision-makers, both in London and Cardiff, take the time to read these letters. Not only for the content, but for the manner in which they were conducted.

The Federal-Confederal Letters is available here as an e-book and here as an easily printable pdf version.

The Letters were the subject of an IWA podcast, which can be listened to here.

David Melding CBE is author of Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020? (2009) and The Reformed Union: The UK as a Federation (2013). He is working on his third book Wales in an Age of Disunion.

Glyndwr Cennydd Jones is author of A League-Union of the Isles (2022). He is currently working on the book Confederal-Federalism.

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