In making this narrative, the authors have carried out extensive interviews with key figures in Welsh political life and have drawn on a wide range of published and unpublished materials on the making of the Welsh Assembly. Redesigning Democracy weaves together two important political stories, the long and often derisive campaign for a Welsh Assembly, and the previously untold story of the devolution battle inside the Labour Party, from the 1997 referendum through to the fall of Alum Michael. The book is also about twenty-first century British politics, as seen through the prism of Wales, showing the value of viewing the whole from the periphery. In the new era of democratic devolution, the UK needs to step beyond the metropolitan provincialism which infects Westminster's world view.