(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Scotland's "No" to independence may have saved British Prime Minister David Cameron his job, but sweeping pledges of a constitutional shake-up could undermine his re-election drive and trigger more political instability.
Responding to what he called a "clear" rejection of Scottish independence yesterday, Cameron, who is up for re-election in May 2015, promised to begin a process that would see Scotland granted further powers. He also said he wanted to see more powers devolved to Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as changes for England, starting with new voting arrangements in the British parliament.
Some, including in his own party, feel he promised too much.
"This result presents both opportunities and challenges for Cameron," said Matthew Ashton, a politics lecturer at Nottingham Trent University.
"On the one hand he can make claim to the title of 'the man who saved the union'. On the other, he'll now have to deliver on his extraordinary ambitious promises of a new constitutional settlement."
In the closing phase of the referendum campaign, Cameron and other party leaders made detailed promises to Scotland, about future funding and new tax and spending powers - a move some of his own lawmakers described as a "panicky" response to opinion polls which suggested the vote was too close to call.
It will be difficult for him to renege. "The genie of a more devolved UK can't be put back in the bottle," a senior source in the Liberal Democrats, Cameron's coalition partner, said after Cameron set out his plans. "The world has changed."
With Scotland being given more say over its own affairs, Cameron says lawmakers from England - which comprises 83 percent of the British population - should also have a way to decide issues for themselves.
That might mean setting up a system to keep Scottish members of the British parliament from voting on UK policies that do not apply to self-ruling Scots.
It is hard to see a quick consensus emerging within months among major parties about a reform that could cost a future Labour government the power to pass laws through an English caucus potentially controlled by the Conservatives.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said plans for change needed to be put to members of the public through a constitutional convention, rather than be "fixed solely by politicians or prime ministers trying to shore up their position in their own party". Labour proposed the constitutional convention for autumn 2015 - after the next general election - which Cameron's Conservatives said amounted to kicking the issue "into the long grass".
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