Category Archives: Anglophobia

IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA GUILTY OF ANGLOPHOBIA?


IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA GUILTY OF ANGLOPHOBIA?


One of the things that has been interesting about the General Election is that the British media’s reaction to any discussion of English interests and rights has been often hysterically anti-English In article after article David Cameron and the Tories have been accused of “whipping up”, “stoking” or some other pejorative verb with regard to raising the question of English national interests.

This reaction is when, to any sensible observer, Dave “I’m a Cameron and there is quite a lot of Scottish blood flowing in these veins” is a ludicrously unlikely candidate to be described as an English nationalist or even in any way personally interested in raising English nationalism.

We know from all his remarks about “fighting the little Englanders wherever he finds them” and his hostility to an English Parliament, etc., etc., that he is by no means an English nationalist. In fact he is an outright enemy of English nationalism, yet the mainstream media’s hatred of England, the English and English nationalism is such that however mild and minimalistic a proposal is made to correct the blatant unfairness of the current devolution arrangements, nevertheless many mainstream British media commentators can be found rushing forward to howl their disapproval!

Over the years we have heard enough about homophobia and Islamophobia and various other alleged “phobias” which the politically correct wish to make utterly unacceptable. I propose an addition to this list, since it is a hopeless task to get rid of it altogether, and that is:- ‘Anglophobia’. I accuse the mainstream British Establishment Media of persistent and blatant Anglophobia!

The response of our people to Anglophobia needs to change radically if we are to make any serious headway as a Cause.

Any expression of Anglophobia should be treated as a “Hate Crime” and should be reported to the police.

If the police refuse to accept the report or decline to take action, then those of us who do the reporting should make sure that we have obtained the relevant police officer’s name and number and a complaint to their force’s police complaints department should be made against that police officer (or officers) alleging that they have failed to act or have acted in the way that they have out of Anglophobia, which is of course a branch of racism and is a “hate crime”.

Over the years I have heard people say that you cannot be racist against the English. Anyone who says this simply doesn’t know the law, as legally speaking racism isn’t only about race. It does include national identity, national origin and nationality. It is on this basis that any Anglophobic comments or actions, or inactions, should be challenged in a way that brings it home to journalists, police officers, officials and political opponents that Anglophobia will no longer be tolerated and that instead will be “sanctioned”.

I suggest that, as a first step, we make contact with whichever police officer in our local areas is charged with dealing with political and electoral crimes and let them know what is intended.

Every time a complaint is made we need to issue a press release, not only for the purposes of putting journalists on notice that they will be sanctioned, but also with a view to getting it reported.

Even if it is reported in a hostile way, which is, of course, very likely, we should remember that politics is a zone of conflict and therefore any actions involving conflict and taking the fight to our enemy will in the long run be well worth it.

I suggest that our mottos, adapting the anti-racism sloganizing, should be “Unite against Anglophobia!”, “Say no to Anglophobia!”, “No to Anglophobic racism!”.

Cameron is unwittingly preparing the way for Scotland to become independent

Robert Henderson

All the signs are that the incoming Tory government is  going to pander incontinently  to the Scottish National Party (SNP)  and grant ever greater devolved  powers to Scotland, viz Cameron saying  post-election  “In Scotland our plans are to create the strongest devolved government anywhere in the world, with important powers over taxation”, while  the newly appointed  Scottish Secretary  David  Mundell  speaks of the possibility of  powers for Scotland  greater than those recommended by the Smith Commission  after the NO vote in the Scottish independence referendum. There are even hints that full fiscal autonomy – the ability to set and collect all taxes in Scotland and decide how to spend the money raised – might be on the cards with Nicola Sturgeon saying the SNP would vote for it if it was offered and  the  Tory ex-Scottish Secretary Lord Forsyth has advocated a White Paper on the subject.

The problem with appeasement is that it can never be a strategy only a tactic to buy time.  This is because any concession is viewed as a sign of weakness and  encourages the appeased to demand more and more. What Cameron and his fellow  supposedly  pro-union appeasers of Scotland do not  give any sign of understanding is that each granting of extra powers to the Scotland is preparing the country for eventual independence, because the more power a devolved government has the greater confidence  the politicians in the devolved region will have that they can go it alone.  As things are going,  there will quite soon  come  a point where  the SNP will be able to say to  fainthearted voters , look, we are virtually independent now so  there is nothing to fear from independence.

The reasoning of those  unionists who support   new tax raising  powers for Scotland is that if the Scottish parliament  has to raise much of the money their government spends it will  cause  the attitude of  both politicians and the public in Scotland to change, with the politicians behaving prudently or facing the wrath of the electors, who would cease blaming the UK government and become disenchanted with the SNP.

This is pie-in-the-sky. If the SNP get anything short of full fiscal autonomy they will continue to blame the UK government for underfunding  Scotland. The massive preferential Treasury funding which Scotland receives compared with England (currently worth around £9 billion pa) will show this to be a lie,  but SNP supporters and Scots more widely will eagerly swallow the lie.   Moreover, it will be easy for the SNP to fudge the matter  in public debate,  because if Scotland gets  substantial powers to  raise taxes , the  Barnett Formula (which creates the higher per capita Treasury payments to Scotland) will be adjusted to reduce the amount of UK Treasury  funding  that Scotland receives.  The SNP will inevitably  claim any reduction is unfair.  They will also dispute how much taxpayers’ money  goes on  what might be termed UK spending, things such as defence and foreign policy.

If full fiscal autonomy is given to Scotland the same general problem would  arise, but in an even more extreme form because the Barnet Formula would be scrapped.  This would result in a considerable revenue shortfall  for the Scottish government. Not only would there be arguments between Scotland and Westminster about what would then  be  de facto federal measures – defence, foreign policy, the financing of the national UK debt, the management of the Pound  and so on –  but disputes over Oil and Gas revenues and  things such as the distribution of public money to pay for the administration of the domestic UK national civil service.

The dangers of devolved public debt

Devolving serious  tax and spending powers to Scotland would carry grave risks for the rest of the UK.  A Scottish government might well be reckless in its spending and run up large debts.  This could happen even if no formal further borrowing powers were given to Scotland because policies for Scotland would be based on estimates of future tax revenue.  These estimates could be seriously wrong if the SNP’s absurdly optimistic  predictions  over North Sea Oil and Gas tax revenue  are anything to go by. If serious  formal borrowing powers are  given to Scotland  the risk of overspending and large Scottish debts would be even greater .

These are not fanciful fears.  Spain stands as a salutary  example of what can happen when devolved power allows regional governments to run up debts. A significant part of  Spain’s present economic problems stem from the huge debts the 17 regional governments in Spain ran up prior to the present Eurozone crisis.

The Smith Commission proposals for further devolution to Scotland  (see p 23 onwards)  provide for a good deal of Scottish control over  fiscal matters . These proposals  have been broadly accepted by Cameron’s government. They include the following borrowing  proposals:

(5) Borrowing Powers: to reflect the additional economic risks, including volatility of tax revenues, that the Scottish Government will have to manage when further financial responsibilities are devolved, Scotland’s fiscal framework should provide sufficient, additional borrowing powers to ensure budgetary stability and  provide safeguards to smooth Scottish public spending in the event of economic shocks, consistent with a sustainable overall UK fiscal framework. The Scottish Government should also have sufficient borrowing powers to support capital investment, consistent with a sustainable overall UK fiscal framework. The Scottish and UK Governments should consider the merits of undertaking such capital borrowing via a prudential borrowing regime consistent with a sustainable overall UK framework.

There is untold opportunity for reckless behaviour there.  The danger is that Scotland will run up debts they cannot service let alone pay off and in those circumstances as happened in Spain, the central UK government (effectively the English taxpayer) t would have to bail Scotland out.

Nor would the dangers for England stop there. The effect of  less UK control of  taxation and Scottish borrowing would have a depressive  effect on the international credit worthiness of the UK as a whole  because the rest of the world would see that an element of new potential risk and uncertainty  had been introduced to the UK economy..

Leave the SNP to twist in the wind

The comprehensive  way to deal with the SNP threat would be to set up an English Parliament. That would immediately dissolve  SNP influence over the rest of the UK  both for  now and the future. However, there is no realistic prospect of an English Parliament  in the near future.  (The Conservative proposal for English votes for  English laws is no substitute for an English Parliament although  it is a stepping stone to one).  Short of an English Parliament  what could be done to nullify  SNP  influence?  The answer is ignore them because  the great enemy of the SNP is  time.

There is a kind of collective madness amongst the Scots at present. Not all Scots by any means, but at least half of the adult Scots population. From England it may seem that Scotland is a land of milk and honey because of the incessant reports of the Scots getting heaps of public goodies denied to England ,  such as no university tuition fees and  free  personal care for the elderly.  But the truth is that the SNP is struggling to fund such things even with the £9 billion or so extra they get from the Treasury each year. Look at any of the Scottish national papers and you will find every day a litany of complaint about poor public service or the  incontinent waste of money on projects such as the Edinburgh tram system fiasco.  Importantly, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that the SNP manifesto  contained larger spending cuts than Labour. If true, those are rather nasty pigeons coming home  to roost in the next year.

The way to tackle the SNP  is to give them nothing  and plenty of it for the next few years so that there is time to allow the economic mess that the SNP is creating in Scotland to come to its full fruition, time to  allow the many disturbingly authoritarian measures they have put in place  such as the centralisation of Scottish Police in a single national police force, the creation of a state guardian for every child in Scotland  and the banning of Auld Firm chants and songs to begin to  seriously worry people.    Sooner or later the Scots will start  blaming the SNP for their policy failures and misrepresentations  and begin chaffing against the growing restrictions on their  liberty. That will be the beginning of the end of  the SNP as a hugely dominant political force in Scotland.

The really angering thing about the dangerous course the Cameron government seems set on taking is that it is completely unnecessary because the SNP are powerless in the present House of Commons.  It smacks of political masochism.

Who will  speak for England?

Robert Henderson

It is a singular thing that the question of English votes for English laws let alone  an English Parliament  has gone almost unmentioned during the 2015 general  election. There has been a great deal of noise made by the Tories about the threat offered to England  by the SNP in coalition with Labour ,  but precious little if anything has been said about how the SNP threat could be neutralised entirely by  establishing  a federal system for the UK.  This would require an English Parliament, something which could be created  quickly and with little extra expense by simply allowing  MPs for English seats to sit as the English Parliament.   The few UK federal policies such as defence, management of the Pound and foreign affairs could be dealt  with by  representatives from the four home countries  sitting as a federal Parliament in the House of Lords.

Such an arrangement would remove the SNP’s ability to operate as Irish MPs under leaders such as  Charles Stewart Parnell and  John Redmond  operated  before the Great War when Irish MPs sitting at Westminster supported liberal governments  and in return pressured the Liberal Party top grant   Home Rule for Ireland.

Stripped of their ability to interfere with English affairs the SNP would lose  any meaningful power over English politicians. They could of course continue to seek independence or at least more and more powers until they were on the brink of becoming independent, but there would be a great difference in the way such ambitions were treated by English politicians.  There would no longer  be an  incentive for English politicians to pander to the Scots, as they  now do in the most craven fashion, because  the great  prizes  in UK politics would be to become the  Prime Minister of England (or whatever  the position might be called) and take part in the government of England.  As the government of England  would be decided only by the English electorate, there would be no need to make compromises with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which would affect English interest adversely.

There would also be a general change in mentality amongst English MPs because they would have  an English Parliament with an English electorate to satisfy.   English politicians of necessity  would have to look to English interests before the domestic interests of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland .  Most importantly, the Barnett Formula that determines Treasury disbursements  (which favours not only  Scotland but Wales and Northern Ireland over England)  would be unsustainable.

The extent  to which  England is disadvantaged by the formula is startling.   In 2013 the Treasury funding for each home country was as follows:

  1. Ireland £10,876 per head  (£2,347 more than England)

Scotland    £10,152 per head (£1,623 more than England)

Wales          £9,709 per head    (£1,180 more than England)

England      £8,529 per head

The ONS estimates of each home country’s population for  mid-2014  are:

England 53.9 million

Scotland   5.3 million

Wales       3.1 million

  1. Ireland 1.8 million

If  the per capita Treasury payments to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2013 had been  reduced to those received by England, the money paid to these three home countries would have been reduced by:

Scotland    £8.6 billion

Wales         £3.6 billion

  1. Ireland £ 4.2 billion

Grand total of reduced payments £16.4 billion.

Such a reduction would be a very sharp wake up call for those wishing to break up the United Kingdom. It would give them a taste of what independence would mean.

If there was such a reduction, the SNP would doubtless keep chanting their mantra about the oil and gas extracted in British waters  being Scotland’s oil and gas. But  even if  all the oil and gas in the North Sea was in Scottish waters, which it is not,  it would be a poor argument because while Scotland is part of a nation state called the United Kingdom, the oil  and gas around British waters is not Scottish oil and gas but the United Kingdom’s oil and gas.  They also need to bear in mind that oil and gas revenues have only flowed since 1980, so there is the previous 273 years since 1707 to be accounted for, much of which time Scotland  was Churchmouse  poor and produced little by way of tax revenue.   Moreover, oil and gas extraction from Scottish waters is expensive compared with much of the oil and gas being extracted elsewhere  and consequently very vulnerable if the price of oil drops below $100 a barrel. If the price remains as low as it is now, hovering around  the $50-60 dollar a barrel mark, even the most naïve Scot would begin to worry about basing Scottish independence on oil and gas revenues as heavily as the  SNP do now.

Apart from the Barnett Formula abolition, the Scots might well find that with an English Parliament the English did such things as taking the SNP at its word about wanting rid of the Trident nuclear submarine base in Scotland and removed the base  to England with the thousands of jobs which go with it and decide to repatriate English public sector jobs administering  services  such as English welfare payments and taxation  which have been sent to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Faced with an English Parliament looking after English interests first,  the prospect of Scottish independence could  fade rapidly. The problem is no party in this election which is likely to win seats is proposing an English Parliament and only two -UKIP  (see the Political Reform section) and the Tories –  support the idea of  English votes for English laws. Even there the Tories are ambiguous about exactly how far their proposal would go in stopping non-English seat MPs voting on English only laws, not least because while the Barnett formula exists  – which it would continue to do while there was no English Parliament to cut the Gordian knot of a misshapen devolution settlement – – there would be few bills of any significance which did not have direct implications for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland because their funding is linked to English funding.: England gets more money for something; the other three home countries get a proportional increase. Even the strictest possible interpretation of what was an English only measure was adopted,  the problem with non-English seat MPs pressuring a party without an overall majority in the Commons  to grant favours to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would remain.  Moreover, under English votes for English laws, it would not be the English seat MPs  only who initiated English-only legislation.

Labour and the Lib Dems are resolutely opposed to  any form of devolved power for England as a nation and are attempting to fudge the question of the imbalance in the present devolution settlement which leaves England out on a limb by Balkanising England by giving power to local and regional bodies in England with the Lib Dems having the particularly fatuous idea  ”devolution on demand” whereby local  areas ask for devolved powers with the consequence of this being a superfluity of differences between parts of England.

Patently, England’s interests are being wilfully neglected in this election. Is there really no one in British politics who will call for an English Parliament,  no one who will  speak for England?

Devolution and the House of Lords

Robert Henderson

There is one important aspect of the devolution mess created since 1997 which receives little or no attention in the mainstream media or from mainstream politicians, namely, the role of the House of Lords.  As things stand  all legislation which affects England goes through the Lords,  while ever increasing swathes of legislation affecting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland avoid such scrutiny  because the legislation is initiated, debated, amended and either passed or not at the will of the three devolved assemblies. Yet another instance of how England is grossly disadvantaged by the unbalanced devolution in Britain.

Many will shrug their shoulders and say what does it matter, isn’t the Lords just a talking shop with no power?  The answer is an emphatic no. Government ministers sit in the Lords, the House  can initiate their own Bills, amend   or strike down completely  Bills  sent to them by the House of Commons ,ask  questions orally and in writing, including questions of ministers,  sit on  their own select committees and on  joint committees of the Lords and Commons . Members also have the great privilege of a national political platform to get their views to the public.

The power of the Lords to delay

The sharpest power  the Lords has is to delay.  This can be achieved   by being tardy over  their examination of Bills sent to them by the Commons, by heavily amending Bills sent to them by the Commons (this means they have to go back to the Commons for re-consideration) and  by refusing outright to pass Bills. (There is one important exception to the power of the Lords to amend or refuse outright to pass  Bills from the Commons and that is what are called money Bills, legislation  which involves   the collection or spending of money by the government. Such Bills have to be signed off as Money Bills by the Speaker. )

If the Lords does refuse to pass a Bill from the Commons in its entirety or in part, the 1949 Parliament Act allows the Commons to force through a Bill regardless of the wishes of the Lords in the  session of  Parliament in which the Bill was originally introduced into the Common. This procedure    typically  results in  a delay of  around a year.  When the Bill is reintroduced it is passed without the Lords having any opportunity to delay it further. This is a very rare procedure with only seven Acts have been passed in this way either under the 1949 Parliament Act or its 1911 predecessor.

Being able to delay Bills sent from the Commons is a  powerful weapon  because  government legislation may be lost for want of Parliamentary time if an election is looming or a session of Parliament (which normally lasts a year)  is coming to an end and other government business takes priority in the new session.   Even if time is not absolutely pressing, governments are generally anxious to get their legislation through quickly and will often accept a Lords’ amendment to Bills sent from the Commons simply to get the legislation passed quickly.

The political composition of the House of Lords

“As at 16 December 2014, the total membership of the House of Lords was 847. However, excluding those currently ineligible to sit (such as members on leave of absence or those holding particular posts), the ‘actual’ membership was 791. The average attendance of the House of Lords in the 2013–14 session was 497.”

The  791 Members eligible to sit in the House of  consisted of 679 Life Peers, 86 ‘excepted hereditary’ Peers and 26 Bishops.  Their political allegiances, where declared, were:

Conservative  230

Labour  216

Liberal Democrat  105

Crossbench  180

Bishops  26

Even on the declared allegiances  the House is heavily tilted toward the liberal left who are instinctively anti-English.  Not only do Labour and the Libdems  have a majority together over the Conservatives, those  who take the Tory whip  will more often than not have much the same politics  as the Labour and LibDem peers .  As for the officially politically  non-aligned, it is reasonable to assume that  most  of  the Bishops will also be of liberal left  because  the upper reaches of the Anglican Church has long shown themselves to be consistently  left of centre with their unwavering support for political correctness .  The crossbenchers   will also have a healthy component from  the liberal left  simply because  they are selected by those who generally subscribe to political correctness  with  the consequence that they  will do the very human thing of selecting those who resemble themselves.

The geographical spread and size of the  of the Lords is very  important. Peers can come from any part of the United Kingdom and there is no limit to their number.   This means that the Lords could easily become imbalanced, if it  is not already so, by the creation of disproportionately large  numbers of peers who were not English. Moreover, because peers are not elected , in principle,  a government could create any number of new peers to push through  legislation which is damaging to English interests, for example, to Balkanise England with regional assemblies regardless of the wishes of the English.

Less dramatically, because of the power to delay and force compromise from a government, it is easy to see how a House of Lords which was  against England controlling its own affairs could cause considerable difficulties if  the Commons voted , for example, to  end the Barnett formula or to set up an English Parliament  simply by delaying matters, for example, if General Election was due in less than a year’s time and sufficient numbers in the Lords thought there was a fair bet that the election would result in a change of government.

If England had English votes for English Laws

Would English votes for English laws solve the constitutional imbalance?  The idea  raises many problems such as how to define what is English only legislation while the Barnett Formula is in place because the Formula  determines what Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland gets from the UK Treasury  because it is linked to government  spending in England.  But the  Lords adds another complication because the proposal  as it has been suggested to date makes no mention of removing from the Lords’  the power of  scrutiny of any House of Commons Bills which are deemed English only Bills. If that were the case then there would still be the anomaly   that the Lords  could interfere with English only legislation while having no power to intervene over the equivalent legislation for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland .

The difficulty could be surmounted by giving English only laws the same status as money Bills but in reality, only an English Parliament and a truly federal constitution for each of the four home countries will permanently solve the problem of the imbalance of the present devolution settlement.

Why a Labour/SNP coalition could spell the end of Labour as a major party

Robert Henderson

There is a better than sporting chance that Labour and the SNP could form a coalition after the coming General Election.  Polls suggest that Labour will lose the vast majority of the 41 seats they currently hold in Scotland with the SNP having between 30-40+ seats.  In addition, despite Labour’s dire present leadership,  the national UK polls persistently show the Tories with at best  a lead of  only a few points and now and then  behind Labour by the same margin, this at a time when the Tories  need a substantial lead  to gain a bare majority in the Commons because of the wide differences in constituency sizes, differences which favour Labour, viz:

“ if you leave the Liberal Democrat share of the vote unchanged then the Conservatives need a lead of 11 percentage points over Labour to win an overall majority, while the Labour party can achieve an overall majority with a lead of about 3 percentage points. Equally illustrative are the last two general election results – in 2005 Labour had a lead of 3 points over the Conservatives, and got a majority of over 60 seats; in 2010 the Conservatives had a lead of 7 points over Labour, but did not have an overall majority at all.” UK Polling Report Anthony Wells of YouGov

To this disadvantage can be added  the evidence that ballot rigging on a large scale is taking place in constituencies with large populations of Asians whose ancestry lies in the Indian subscontinent.  As these  Asian voters  are  much more likely to vote  Labour than for the Tories, this also  buttresses  Labour’s likely  2015 electoral performance.

All of this points to a hung House of Commons after 2015. The chances of the Tory Party forming another  coalition even if they are the largest party is much less than it was after the 2010 election.  There are 650 seats in the Commons.   After the 2010  election the Tories had 306, Labour 258 and the LibDems 57 seats.  This provided a clear opportunity  for the Tories to take a coalition partner which would create a government with a  working majority. This situation is unlikely to be repeated. The LibDems, polling 6% in the latest IpsosMori  poll, will almost certainly be reduced to something approaching insignificance , perhaps 20 seats or less. Even if they were willing to form another coalition with the Tories,  on the present polling figures  they would be  unlikely to have sufficient seats to form another working  majority Tory/LibDem  coalition. Note I say working majority. A bare majority  for a Tory/LibDem coalition would not last long even assuming  both parties were willing to agree to it, something which is unlikely as the Tory Parliamentary Party, including backbenchers,  has been promised a say in whether another coalition is formed.  With the possible exception of the Northern Irish UDP, who will probably have less than ten seats after the 2015 election,   no other Party would either be likely to form a coalition with the Tories,  or if they were willing to do so, have sufficient seats to make much of an addition to whatever seats the Tories get.

That leaves either  a Labour/SNP coalition or a rainbow coalition of Labour with partners drawn from the SNP, LibDems,  the various Ulster parties, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Respect.   (Ukip have ruled out a coalition with any of the major parties.)

The temptation for Miliband  to make a coalition with the SNP  is great, but it would almost certainly deal the Labour a mortal blow and finish it as a major party within two Parliaments .   That is because Miliband would not only  have to deny  England English votes for English laws, but would be forced as a condition for SNP support  to give more and more powers to  all the devolved assemblies because it would be politically impossible to deny the Welsh and Northern Irish  extra powers if Scotland gets more. Such a coalition might also end up  increasing the gap between   the  Treasury pro-rata funding of  people in  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  and  the much lower figure in England.

As a consequence Labour would  rapidly be seen by the English as an anti-English party,  while the Tories would be forced to make a choice between tolerating the  injustice of the situation on the spurious grounds that they did not  want to have second class MPs in the Commons  (English MPs already are second class MPs because of  the devolved assemblies)  and becoming the Party of and for England.  In view of the growing English anger and the seeming impossibility of ever regaining  sufficient   representation in Scotland and Wales to be again a serious force there, the likelihood is that the Tories would become the de facto Party for England, even if they probably would  not openly  embrace the title.

In such a situation the Labour would find their vote in England diminishing.  At the General Election after the 2015 they would probably suffer significant losses in England. At the same time they would not get any credit in Scotland and Wales for giving more devolved powers to those home countries. Rather, the message  to Scots and Welsh electors would be elect even more SNP and Plaid Cymru MPs and you will get further  favours from the Westminster Government because  there will be more nationalist MPs to influence  Westminster Governments either by selling their support for a coalition with Labour or to deny the Tories office.    SNP support will be made even firmer and  Labour support in Wales is likely to suffer the fate the same fate as it has in  Scotland  and move en masse to the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru.

This would leave Labour almost entirely dependent on England for its representation, an England which they would be incensing throughout their period of coalition government by refusing English vote for English laws and pandering to Scotland, Wales and Northern  Ireland. The probable  consequence of that would  be much diminished Labour support in England at the  General Election after  the one in 2015 (2020 unless the fixed term for parliaments is abolished) . That  is likely to  be the end of Labour as a major party because the total  Commons seats outside England  are only 117. Even if all were willing to support a coalition government to keep the Tories out of office (a wildly improbable proposition),  Labour would need around 233 English seats to give such a coalition a working majority  and 209 seats for a majority of one.  A Labour Party which had  greatly antagonised the English, as a coalition dependent on non-English seat MPs would inevitably do, is unlikely to be able to muster anywhere near 200 English seats let alone enough for a working majority (In the 2010 election Labour only managed 191 English seats).

What applies to a Labour/SNP coalition would also generally apply to a rainbow coalition.  The only significant differences would be  (1) a larger  number of parties in a  coalition  makes for a less durable and coherent  government  and (2) more parties which put up candidates in English seats would become toxic for much of the English electorate.

On balance the result of  anti-English coalitions – let  us call them what they would be – should improve the chances for the devolution settlement being adjusted to give England  a mainstream political voice, through English votes for English laws at first , then  moving to the creation of an English Parliament.   But there is a fly in the ointment. The danger for England is that if Labour did form a coalition with the SNP  or a rainbow coalition,   they would do what they could to reduce the power and scope of the Westminster Parliament  in the next Parliament.  Labour and the LibDems  have already signalled that their solution to the constitutional imbalance between England and the rest of the UK  caused by devolution  is some form of ill-defined Heath-Robinson devolution to cities and regions in England. All of the likely members of a rainbow coalition would be happy to go along with that general type of policy.

Such a policy would be simply a ploy to Balkanise England and emasculate her  politically.  For example, suppose a Labour/SNP coalition forced regional assemblies onto England. Although the English have shown themselves to be averse to such assemblies by roundly voting down the proposal for such an assembly in the North East of England in 2004 with  78%  against  the proposal,  it would be perfectly possible and legal  for  a Labour/SNP   government to create regional assemblies by a vote in the Commons and the Lords. Once established such assemblies would not be easy to get rid of because new political classes would be created which had the democratic credibility of being elected.  Moreover, if  there has been several years before the 2020 General Election of the new structures functioning with less and less being done at Westminster, the importance in the public eye of a General Election may be substantially reduced.

A strong government with a good majority could abolish such devolved structures , but the sad truth is that the political elite in England is, regardless of party,  are opposed to an English Parliament and would, even while burbling on about English votes for English laws, be more than happy to see the devolution for England issue fudged.  Because of this it is essential that politicians of  whatever party who wish to see England treated equitably, whether from principle or simply because they can see the dangers for their own party in ignoring English interests, speak out against anything which will leave England politically emasculated.

The Scottish referendum and the accidental emergence of the English voice

Robert Henderson

The outcome of the Scottish independence referendum has  resulted in the breaking of a particularly effective omerta within the British political classes, namely, that there should be no acknowledgement of the wilful damage done to English interests by the devolution settlement of the late 1990s which has excluded her from having a national political voice while Scotland, Wales and Northern  Ireland were given such a voice and ever increasing devolved powers.

Having denied England her due for 16 years the Tory Party has suddenly embraced the idea constitutional equality with the rest of the UK with the necessary changes being made in tandem with the new powers so recklessly promised by Gordon Brown during the last days of the Referendum campaign.    No matter that the Tory Party has had this sudden conversion to being the upholder of English interests because it is a way of marginalising the Labour Party through both threatening to remove the influence of its many non-English seat MPs; no matter that so far all that is proposed is English votes for English laws rather than an English Parliament; no matter that the Labour and LibDem leaders have rejected the idea. What matters is that the English devolution train has started to move and once moving it will be very difficult to stop.

Cameron’s “solution” to the constitutional imbalance

The morning after the NO in the Scottish independence  referendum vote David  Cameron  proposed  this:

“Just as the people of Scotland will have more power over their affairs, so it follows that the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland must have a bigger say over theirs.

The rights of these voters need to be respected, preserved and enhanced as well.

It is absolutely right that a new and fair settlement for Scotland should be accompanied by a new and fair settlement that applies to all parts of our United Kingdom.

In Wales, there are proposals to give the Welsh Government and Assembly more powers.

And I want Wales to be at the heart of the debate on how to make our United Kingdom work for all our nations.

In Northern Ireland, we must work to ensure that the devolved institutions function effectively.

I have long believed that a crucial part missing from this national discussion is England.

We have heard the voice of Scotland – and now the millions of voices of England must also be heard.

The question of English votes for English laws – the so-called West Lothian question –requires a decisive answer.

So, just as Scotland will vote separately in the Scottish Parliament on their issues of tax, spending and welfare so too England, as well as Wales and Northern Ireland, should be able to vote on these issues and all this must take place in tandem with, and at the same pace as, the settlement for Scotland.”

Whether Cameron could deliver much of this in the seven months before the General Election is highly dubious, both on the  grounds of time and the difficulty of getting agreement with the other major Westminster parties . Labour leader Ed Miliband has already refused to back the idea of linking English constitutional reform to the granting of extra powers to Scotland. This is for a crude political interest   reason: without Labour MPs from outside of England the Labour Party would have no chance of forming a government in England for the foreseeable future.  LibDem leader Nick Clegg has also refused to back Cameron’s proposal,  but has said he would support the formation of an English Grand Committee to scrutinise and amend English-only legislation. However,  this would still leave the UK parliament as it is present constructed with the final say which would include MPs for seats outside of England.

But  even if  Cameron  could  do it in the time and the other major Westminster Parties agreed to his proposal, it is difficult to see how Cameron could achieve what he wants – an equality of control over  national affairs in the four Home Countries – because he is determined not to have an English Parliament.  English votes for English laws suggests he wants to have only  MPs for English seats voting  on issues  which affect only England. (It is not clear at  present whether Cameron would exclude Welsh and Northern  Irish MPs . If  they were not excluded the problem of non-English MPs voting on English issues would remain.  But there is a difficulty in doing this insofar as Welsh and Northern Irish devolved powers are less than those already in Scotland and even more inferior to a Scotland with the proposed new powers.  The solution to this is to give all four Home Nations equal devolved powers.)

But excluding non-English seat MPs from voting on English issues would not  entirely  solve the problem.  There would still be the question of who makes the policy on which the MPs vote.  It is easy to see how a situation could arise where a Labour government  or a coalition  government with MPs drawn  from non-English seats  could have an overall majority in the Commons  but be in the minority amongst English MPs.   If that was the case it would not be for such a government to make laws for England because it would be non-English MPs making English policy.  English laws would have to be formulated and developed  by an executive drawn only from English-seat MPs. That would  mean   two executives in the Commons, one dealing with English affairs and one with all other affairs.  It would be unworkable.    If there was both an English Parliament and a Federal government the problem would not exists because the two executives would be clearly delineated and their areas of responsibility  obvious.

Consider also the position at a UK wide general election.  How would those standing for seats outside of England campaign? If such MPs were allowed to be   part of the policy making process  for English-only legislation but were not allowed to vote,  what exactly would they put in their election manifestoes about such a  situation? Similarly what would the parties they represent put in the Party manifesto?  If MPs outside of England were excluded from both voting and  policy making on English-only matters  would the Party manifestoes for seats outside of England  have to exclude any mention of what the Party manifesto for England said on English-only issues?

There is also a serious procedural  problem with English votes for English laws, namely, who would decide what is an English only issue. It has been suggested the Speaker would make the decision. That would place a dangerously large  amount of political power and influence in the hands of one man. (Imagine the present speaker John Bercow making such a decision  when faced with a Tory government).  But whatever the arrangements for making such a decision  there would be immense opportunity for dissension and many seemingly English-only issues could end up classified as not qualifying as English-only.  Indeed, while the Barnet Formula remains any English legislation with spending implications could be argued  to not be English-only because what England gets to spend is linked to what Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive: England gets more for the NHS, the other home nations gets a proportionate boost to their spending . That difficulty could be removed by abolishing the Barnett Formula but that would cause a great uproar amongst the Celtic Fringe.  There would also be the a problem if the Welsh and  Northern Irish assemblies were not given the same powers as the  Scottish parliament because  that would also cause great confusion and argument.

But the question of English representation goes beyond mere numbers. Even if  a Westminster government  is formed with a majority of English MPs, the fact that MPs from outside of  England would still be able to both vote on and help frame  English-only legislation  and policy would colour that legislation and policy  because personal relationships between politicians of the governing party would compromise  the desire of the government to act in England’s interests. (The smaller the government majority  amongst English MPs  the more influence non-English seat MPs would be able to exert because their voice would be louder and the Government would  always be afraid of a general rebellion by the non-English seat MPs if non-English  interests were  not being pandered to. With a government with a tiny majority of English seats this could well result in defeat for the government.)

If the Westminster government with a majority English-seat MPs  was formed by a party with strong representation in one or more of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish, the temptation not to act solely in English interests would be strong because of the fear that what was done at Westminster could damage their standing in the other Home Countries.   A coalition with an English-seat majority  which excluded the Tory  Party would be particularly difficult  for England because it would have non-English seat MPs  from different parties pulling in different directions.

The plain truth is that the only practical  and honest solution to the constitutional mess  is an English Parliament. It would allow an exact equality of powers and national focus to be granted to each of the Home Nations. The Parliament  could be created very simply at little or no additional cost: only MPs for English seats would be elected to the  House of Commons which would become what it was originally, an English institution.

An English Parliament would remove not only the practical difficulties of  deciding who should make policy to put before  the Commons and  what legislation was to be dealt with only by English seat MPs, it would force England’s representatives to concentrate on England’s interests first, second and last.

The UK federal Parliament could be created simply by forming it of the MPs of the four Home Country national Parliaments.    With federal matters restricted to a handful of important issues – defence, macro fiscal policy, foreign affairs, homeland security and suchlike – the federal parliament would not have that much to do. This would allow it to  meet at Westminster if a physical gathering is required or it could be conducted through linking the four national parliaments via the Web  The federal government would be formed as the UK government is now, on a majority drawn from the four Home Country parliaments.

The attempts to fudge the English constitutional question

There are  already frantic elite  attempts to fudge the English question  in play. As soon as the NO vote was certain the mainstream media and Libdem and Labour politicians started pushing the idea of devolving the powers Scotland had to either English regions or councils. The BBC was particularly assiduous in this respect with Radio 5 who started their propagandising for devolution which would deny England a Parliament as soon as it became clear in the early hours of the morning  that the NO vote would win.

Devolving to English regions or even councils  the powers enjoyed by the Scottish Parliament after the new powers are added  manifestly cannot achieve  what Cameron wants, namely, equality of treatment for England.  For example, Scotland is to have new tax raising powers over income tax. If  such powers were given to English regions or large conurbations , this would simply result in a hideously complex post-code lottery which would set one area against another.   But it would not simply be  a matter of setting one area against another which would be an ill consequence of such devolution. Imagine what would happen if  one area suffered a severe shortfall in revenue under such a tax regime?  This could happen because they set the rates too low to make up for any new taxpaying businesses or individuals they attracted or because there was a flight from higher  tax areas. Would what remained of central government in the UK  be willing to stand idly by and allow vital public services in the afflicted area  to fall into disuse? Most probably not, but that would raise a problem: if much of the revenue raising had  been devolved where exactly would the money come from to bail the at risk region or council out?   But even if central government did have the funds,  it would be politically toxic for them to be handing out money to a region or city which could not fund its public services because it had set its local tax rates too low. Solvent regions or cities would be up in arms. There would be plenty of issues such as this. The whole thing would be an administrative mess of heroic proportions.

Regional assemblies would not work  even if their remit was restricted to genuinely local matters and their taxation powers remained small. . This is because there are no English regions which have anything approaching  as strong an identity as any of the home  nations. Most  of England has no strong regional identity.  Even the North East and Cornwall – the two English areas most commonly touted as having a strong regional identity – would be unsuitable.  The North East is comprised of Northumberland and  Durham but that has strong antipathies within it, for example, the rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland.   Cornwall is too small to stand on its own – with much of its population not being Cornish but incomers  – and  a South West Region comprising Cornwall, Devon and Somerset  would have no natural unity. The Northwest would include Manchester and Liverpool, two major  cities with little love for one another.

At the level of devolution to towns and cities, this would raise the problem of what to do with the considerable stretches of England without large cities or substantial towns.  That would rule out extending the powers of large cities and towns to the surrounding countryside in much of England..

What needs to be done now?

Although English votes for English laws on policies developed by MPs from England and put forward by an English executive  would be very messy and ultimately impractical, the adoption of the scheme   could be used as a springboard to an English parliament. This would be partly because the public would see that it was not working efficiently or fairly and partly because the habit of publicly speaking about English interests and English constitutional circumstances would have been formed. That would embolden politicians and the mainstream media to advocate an English parliament.   If it was only English votes for English laws with MPs outside of  England still forming part of the policy determining  group for the legislation for England,  this clear evidence of  blatant inequality between England and the other Home Nations  would boost demand for  English votes for English laws to be scrapped and English Parliament put in its place.

The danger for England is that she will end up  without anything which goes anyway towards remedying the disadvantage she is presently under.  Nothing will be decided before the 2015 General Election and if Labour form a government, whether on their own or in coalition with the parties other than the Tories, the chances of English votes for English laws getting off the ground is remote. In such circumstances the issue of English devolution would be likely to be kicked into the long grass with things such as a constitutional convention and the devolution of some unimportant extra powers to the cities. I doubt whether regional assemblies would be attempted because of the resounding rejection  of an assembly in the North East in 2004. It would also look like treating England as a second class citizen.  The idea of devolving important powers such as those  granted to Scotland to cities  would be a non-starter .

If the Tories have a modicum of sense they will go to the country on a platform of  English rights. Ideally, this should  contain support for an English Parliament , but even English votes for English laws would have considerable traction with English electors because at long last there would be a major Party which appeared to be “speaking for England”.  Such a platform would place both Labour and the LibDems in an impossible electoral position because a refusal to allow the English to have the same powers as the Scots, Welsh and Irish would be self-evidently unreasonable.

Alex Salmond is a chancer in the mould of Paterson and Law

Alex Salmond is a chancer in the mould of Peterson and Law

Robert Henderson

William Paterson was the main mover of the Darien disaster which bankrupted Scotland in the 1690s through a mixture of ignorance, general incompetence and embezzlement; John Law was the Scot who ruined the currency and economy of Louis XV’s France through the use of paper money backed by land.  The men  had something in common with Salmond: they were both hideously reckless. This disastrous trait  was evident in spades during the first of the debates between  Salmond and Alastair Darling on 5 August 2014.

Overall the event was a truly depressing affair, being  little more than a shouting match.  Salmond  spent most of the time with a fixed condescending smile glued to his face while Darling,  thinking he had to be seen as assertive, frequently sounded and looked peevish as he adopted a behaviour  horrendously  at odds with his reticent and mild personality.

The discussion was  horribly  narrow, being concerned almost entirely with the material advantages and disadvantages of independence and even there much was either omitted or barely touched upon, for example, the  large numbers of  businessmen warning  of  a likely decamping from Scotland to England of many organisations if there is a YES vote or  the loss of UK government contracts if Scotland becomes a foreign country.   Other issues which had economic implications but a much wider significance, most notably  immigration,  remained unmolested by the debate.    To a significant degree the debate was limited in scope by the disproportionate amount of time taken up by  Salmond’s refusal to give a straight answer to the question of what currency Scotland would use  if the vote was for  independence . More of that later.

Completely lacking was any mention of   the consequences of a YES vote for the rest of the UK in general and  for  England in particular. The debate was  conducted entirely on the basis of what was to  the advantage of Scotland.  The fact that the programme  was only available on terrestrial television in Scotland on STV or streaming  through  the STV Player  (which crashed because it was unable to handle the demand)  made some unkind souls see this as  ironically symbolising both  the exclusion of the rest of the UK  from the debate and the many  warnings  from various quarters that Scotland would be a shambles if it goes  alone.

Darling had the better of  the debate simply because Salmond was so inept . Making cheap gibes about Westminster and repeatedly  telling the same old evasive lies on any topic which caused him problems  did not go down well even with the sizeable studio audience .  The polling after the programme confirmed it. The   YouGov poll taken after the debate  showed  those who have decided  which way to vote will  vote  61%  No  and  39%  YES. With the undecided included   there were 55% supporting a No vote and  35% backing independence,  with  9%  undecided.

Salmond was particularly weak on the question of the currency.   He started from the objectively false claim that the Pound belongs to Scotland as much as it does to England. Darling counter-argued that the Pound belonged to the entire UK.

Legally speaking they were both wrong. The Pound Sterling  is the English currency which Scotland was allowed to share when they signed the Act of Union in 1707, viz.

XVI  That, from and after the Union, the coin shall be of the same standard and value throughout the United Kingdom as now in England, and a Mint shall be continued in Scotland under the same rules as the Mint in England; and the present officers of the Mint continued, subject to such regulations and alterations as Her Majesty, her heirs or successors, or the Parliament of Great Britain, shall think fit.

The Scottish pound became defunct at the same time. If Scotland repudiate the Act of Union of 1707,  they lose the right to use the Pound Sterling in the sense that they no longer have a political right to share the Pound on an equal basis with the rest of the UK.

Scotland  could of course simply use the currency, but they would have no say over its  the management,  no printing or coining rights, and the Bank of England would not act as lender of the last resort to Scottish financial institutions.  Scotland would also have the problem of buying enough Sterling on the open currency market. To do that  she  would have to sell goods and services abroad to provide the wherewithal  to buy  Sterling.

During the time set aside for the Salmond and Darling to question one another,  Darling asked Salmond repeatedly what was his Plan B for the now that all three main Westminster Parties had stated categorically that there  would be no currency union between England and Scotland if there was a Yes vote in the referendum.  Salmond simply kept on repeating that if there was a Yes vote Westminster would cave in and accept a currency union. This so angered many of the studio audience that Salmond  was roundly booed as time and again he evaded the question of what would happen if there was no currency union.

Salmond has stuck to the same line on the currency since the debate  saying in an interview that “There is literally nothing anyone can do to stop an independent Scotland using sterling, which is an internationally tradeable currency.…the No campaign’s tactic of saying no to a currency union makes absolutely no economic sense. But it also makes no political sense, and is a tactic that is a deeply dangerous one for them.”

This is classic head-in-the-sand Salmon.   His position is built upon  two ideas: (1)  that anything he demands for Scotland must happen simply because he has demanded it and (2)  that any attempt by the English to point out dangers or look to their own interests is illegitimate and bullying.  At one point Salmond made the incredible claim that if Westminster did not grant Scotland whatever they demanded Westminster would be denying the democratic will of Scotland.  This piece of Lilliputian arrogance was sharply knocked down by Darling, who pointed out that all a YES vote would do would be to empower Salmond  to negotiate terms with the rest of the UK.

At another point Salmond claimed that if there was no currency union , Scotland would not take a proportionate share of the UK national debt. Incredibly Darling did not challenge him on this issue, most probably because he would have had to say that if they did not take  their share,  Westminster would have to veto Scottish independence which is, legally speaking, ultimately dependent on the UK government agreeing terms.

No opinion poll over in the independence  campaign has shown the YES camp ahead. The odds are heavily on the  referendum will producing  a NO result.  If the ballot produces a seriously bad result  along the lines of the YouGov poll cited above,  Salmond  and the SNP could be in a very difficult position because it would put another vote on independence  out of the question for a long time, perhaps a generation.   There would it is true be new powers given to the Scottish Parliament,  but the ones likely to be on offer are likely to be things such as Scottish control over income tax rates and the collection of the tax by the Scottish government.  Such developments would mean the Scottish government having to take the blame for tax rises or public service cuts if taxes are not raised. That would make  the Scottish government and Parliament much more prone to unpopularity than they are now. If that happens,  those living in Scotland would probably become less and less enamoured of the idea of independence because they would have had a taste of what both sides of government – taxing and spending – were under a Scottish government.

Even if there is a NO vote with a small majority, much of the difficulty which would occur with a heavy defeat for the YES side would still exist, for it would still be improbable that another vote on independence . would be held for at least ten years.  During that time those is Scotland would have plenty of time to become disenchanted with their government having to make  the type of hard decisions on taxing and spending  which are the common  political currency of a fully fledged state.  Indeed, things might even be more awkward if the referendum is close rather than heavily against independence.  That is  because the closer the vote the more powers Westminster are likely to grant Scotland. The more powers given to Scotland, the greater the opportunity for those in Scotland to blame the Holyrood government rather than Westminster.

There is also the unresolved question of England’s place in a devolved UK. In the event of a NO vote and the granting of greater powers to Scotland (and Wales and Northern  Ireland) there will be pressure for the number of Scottish MPs to be reduced, for an English Parliament or English votes on English laws.  This will eventually produce circumstances which reduce or even completely exclude Scots from English domestic affairs.

Both the increased powers for Scotland and the reduced participation of Scottish MPs  at Westminster will make it more and more difficult for  the Scottish devolved government to blame Westminster for so much of the decision making will occur in Scotland.  In addition,  if the Commons becomes  increasingly an English chamber through English votes for English laws or a completely English chamber if it is used as the English Parliament, that will produce   English politicians who will not be able to neglect English interests as they are now more or less completely neglected.

What does Salmon really want? He certainly does not want true independence because he wishes to have a currency union with the rest of the UK, to keep the Queen as head of state and to join the EU,   which would be a much harder and intrusive taskmaster than ever England would. I suspect that he does not want a YES vote but rather narrowly won NO vote. That would allow him to get the most potent form of DEVOMAX.

What will be the consequences if, against all the polling  evidence, there is a YES vote?  Salmond will rapidly find himself in the mire. His fantasy world is one in which there  a currency union,   England acts as lender of the last resort  if Scottish financial institutions fail, Scotland is allowed to join the EU on the terms they now  enjoy as part of the UK, England continues to  push huge amounts of money by way of defence contracts and research grants to Scotland and  the revenues from North Sea oil and gas continue to flow like ambrosia from heaven.

There is not  one of the elements in Salmond’s fantasy world which will be realised. Even our Westminster politicians would not agree to a currency union which would involved England underwriting the Scottish financial system.  The EU will be less than delighted at the prospect of one of the major EU members losing part of its territory to an independence movement because of the precedent it set for places such as Catalonia and those parts of Italy which favour the Northern League.  It is likely that Scotland would have to apply for membership like any other applicant. This process would be both time consuming, perhaps several years, and Scotland would have to sign up to the requirements which any new EU applicant has to agree to, including membership of the Euro.  There is also the possibility that the remainder of the  UK could veto Scotland’s application to join the EU.

As for  contracts for defence work and  research grants,  Westminster would have every reason to keep those within the UK. At best, Scotland would have to compete for the contracts and research grants as just another  EU member.  At worst, the rest of the UK might vote to either leave the UK or  remain after obtain concessions which allowed preference to be shown to business and research institutions within England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Either way Scotland could easily find itself excluded.

That leaves the oil and gas dream.  Production of  the oil and gas in Scottish waters  and the tax collected has been steadily declining, viz.:

 Significant production decline and increasing costs have led to total revenues from UK oil and gas production dropping by 44% in 2012-13 and by 24% in 2013-14. In the last two years Corporation Tax revenues have declined by 60% from £8.8 billion in 2011-12 to £3.6 billion in 2013-14 and Petroleum Revenue Tax by 45%  from £2.0 billion to £1.1 billion in 2013-14. [These figures are for the entirety of UK oil and gas production, some of which is in English waters].

The decline is likely to continue, perhaps even speed up, as shale oil and gas deposits are increasingly being exploited.  Nor should the possibility of other energy advances such as cheaper and safer nuclear power be ignored.

But those are only part of the problem for Scotland If the vote is YES. There are many public sector jobs in Scotland which deal with English matters, for example, the administration of much of the English benefits system. All those jobs would leave Scotland.   Many Scottish businesses, especially those in the financial sector  are likely to move at least their head offices to England.  There would have to be border controls to stop immigrants using Scotland as a backdoor to England. More generally, the Scottish economy is dangerously dependent on public sector jobs.  These jobs  would almost certainly have to be severely culled.  The Scottish  economy is also very narrow  with drink,  food, financial services and the oil industry making up much of the private enterprise part of it. .

The danger for England would be a Scotland which got itself into a terrible economic mess  and Westminster politicians bailing the country out with English taxpayers’ money . However,  because the  politics of the rest of the UK would  of necessity become ever more centred on English interests, that would become a very difficult thing for the Westminster government to do.

Salmond’s attempt to  lead Scotland to independence on a wing and a prayer is horribly reminiscent of Paterson and Law’s behaviour   300 years ago, with the idea riding way ahead of reality.

BBC drama goes in to bat for Scottish independence

Robert Henderson

The BBC Radio 4 play  Dividing the Union was  a crude piece of propaganda for Scottish independence (Broadcast at 2.15pm 14 March  – available on IPlayer  for six days from the date of  uploading this blog post  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xgsly).

The actor playing Alex Salmond ( Greg Hemphill) sounded and behaved like Salmond, that is,  he was aggressive and wilfully  patronising. The actor playing David Cameron (Greg Wise) seriously  failed represent Cameron’s  voice and manner. He spoke  with a form of received pronunciation but  it did not sound like Cameron,  who has a much crisper delivery and somewhat posher voice. However,  that weakness in characterisation is dwarfed by the lack of dominant tone and energy in his persona. This Cameron  came across as dithering and uncertain, constantly fretting that Salmond will be too clever for him in conversations with his adviser Robert (David Jackson Young). These conversations include the fictional Cameron whining to Robert that  he  (Robert) should not have left him alone with Salmond when the Edinburgh Agreement was agreed.  All that is utterly unlike Cameron, who is naturally aggressive in debate and quick on his mental feet.

Then there is the deal they  come to. The play has Cameron agreeing to a currency union, a split of the national debt by population and a division of the oil and gas revenues on a geographical basis favourable to Scotland. What does he get in return? An extension of the period in which the nuclear submarines on the Clyde can be kept there before being  transferred to the rest of the UK.  That is precisely the type of deal that Salmond has been angling for and saying Westminster would agree to when faced with the fact of independence. Such a deal would be grossly  to England’s disadvantage.

Finally, why a play about  the YES camp winning this close to the referendum? Can we expect a balancing play in which the independence vote is lost?  If not, why not?

What happens if Scotland votes NO to independence?

Robert Henderson

The Scottish independence referendum is deeply flawed as a democratic process because (1) the terms of independence have not been agreed before the referendum is held so Scottish voters will be buying a pig in a poke; (2)  the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland have  been allowed no say in  whether Scotland should be allowed to secede from the union or, if they are to be allowed to leave,  the terms on which they may secede and (3) the political circumstances  of the UK if Scotland votes NO to independence have gone largely unexamined.

I have dealt with the points (1) and (2) [1]elsewhere and a great deal of public attention is being paid to what will happen if Scotland votes for independence. Consequently, I shall not further labour those matters. But point (3) does require attention because next to no attention is being paid by politicians or  the mainstream media to what happens if  Scotland votes to remain within the UK.  The question has so far engendered little more than vague talk about DevoMax with unspecified additional powers being given to Scotland.  As the vote is likely to be NO, this is a matter which needs to be publicly discussed  now not after the referendum when Westminster politicians may  cook up any deal they want, a deal which is likely to be,  as all the other devolution deals have been, to England’s disadvantage.

The complication of the next General Election

There is a very  awkward fly in the post referendum ointment: the referendum will be held in 18 September 2014  and a General Election must be held by 7 May 2015 at the latest. That raises the question of who  will be making the post referendum decisions at Westminster. With a General Election so close to the referendum it is improbable that any agreement on what will happen after a NO vote could be reached before the election. The parties might produce their devolution agendas for their election manifestoes but that would be about it.  Consequently, it is anybody’s guess as to which  party or parties in a new coalition would be making the final decision on any further devolution of powers  to put before Parliament. Equally important would be our ignorance of the size of the various parties in the Commons after the General Election, for this is an issue which is fundamental enough to make quite a few MPs vote against the party whip. A government with a small majority could easily find itself outvoted.   These facts mean that all the variations of probable governments – Labour, Tory or the LibDems  in coalition with either major party –  and the effects of the size of the majority of the  government need to be considered when judging the likely shape of devolution after a NO vote.

The moral balance after a NO Vote 

On the face of it, the narrower the margin of rejection of independence the greater will be the moral bargaining power of the SNP to obtain further powers on favourable terms. However that does not automatically mean generous terms would be forthcoming, because once a vote on independence is lost the politics of the Union come into play.

To begin with it is unlikely that another vote on independence would be held  for at least ten years and more probably fifteen or twenty years, even if there was growing support for it in Scotland. Westminster politicians are very short-termist and might well think the subject has been kicked into the long grass sufficiently far to forget about it. The fact that none of the major parties have shown themselves willing to take action to redress  the imbalance created by the present devolutionary settlement (with England left out of the equation) suggests they may wish  to restrict further devolution concessions to minor matters. However, as there is further substantial devolution of powers to Scotland (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11863388) and quite possibly Wales (http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/wales-in-line-for-extra-powers-after-major-review-of-assembly.1393858063) in the pipeline this may not be a serious bar  to additional serious devolution.

Then there is the self-interest of the three major British parties.   A strong case can be made for both the Tories and Labour  not wanting serious amounts of new power given to  Scotland. The Tories have ideological reasons; Labour and the LibDems the reason of crude numbers in the Commons.

The Tories are still at heart a Unionist party  and want to retain the Union as a matter of policy. Substantial new powers would weaken the Union and new powers given now would inevitably be deemed insufficient in the future, probably  in  the near future, because devolution is a form of appeasement and the appeased always come back for more. Moreover, every increase in devolved powers acts in effect as preparation for independence. Eventually Scotland would reach the stage where independence would not seem such a frightening thing simply because they were doing so much themselves.

As for Labour and the LibDems, they have a direct vested interest. Greatly increased powers for Scotland would make it next to  impossible to justify the present Scottish representation in the House of Commons.  Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats  have a  substantial reliance on Scottish  MPs at Westminster. Thus both parties  would have a strong incentive to deny Scotland substantial new powers to ensure that Scottish MPs are not severely reduced.

All three major parties have a further reason: if substantial new powers were granted to Scotland it would be next to impossible to deny them to Wales and  Northern Ireland and make the denial of an English Parliament ever more outlandish.

If the NO vote was overwhelming,  on the face of it there would be no great pressure to devolve substantial new powers. An SNP which had failed to deliver either independence or  DevoMax might  be seen to have shot its bolt if it cannot deliver on its promises beyond a few superficial changes. At best the SNP would be severely diminished and  at worst would  so thoroughly discredited that they would be finished as a serious political force, doubtless remaining as an entity but restricted to an ever smaller and shriller cabal of true believers.

But even if the referendum was lost by an overwhelming vote it is unlikely that the demands for further devolved powers would diminish, especially from Scotland. As mentioned above further powers are already on the horizon.  Nor would the demands for even more powers than those already proposed necessarily go unsatisfied. Devolution has already created well established regional political establishments and the presence of nationalist MPs in the Commons not only provides a permanent platform for further demands,  but the existence of cabinet ministers to represent Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  and  Commons  committees to promote their national interests means that there are powerful administrative mechanisms to promote and develop further devolutionary powers. Unionist MPs may also continue the fatal game (from their point of view) of imagining that giving away more and more power is the way to maintain the Union. Nor should the House of Lords be overlooked because it  provides a very useful platform for both advocating further devolution and of influencing the Commons through committees of both houses and voting down and amending legislation

There is also the possibility of nationalist MPs  wielding disproportionate influence if there is a hung Parliament and their votes are needed to either help form a coalition or to support a minority government on an ad hoc basis.

The alternatives to an English Parliament

But regardless of whether or not a  NO vote was  won narrowly or by a large majority, the elephant in the room is an English Parliament. It might be thought that if  DevoMax becomes a reality,  an English Parliament will be seen as a  political necessity by all. That is far too sanguine.

There would  be politicians who would try to refloat the idea of the Balkanisation of  England  through regional English assemblies – an  attempt to revivify the project was made in 2012 by Labour MPs (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16932030). But after the Blair  government’s attempt to introduce regional assemblies met with a humiliating rejection (78% voted no) in the area deemed to have the strongest regional identity in England, the North East  (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/nov/05/regionalgovernment.politics), it  is an idea unlikely to fly.

There would also be the practical problem of producing regional devolution throughout England. If each region had a referendum to say whether or not they wanted a regional assembly,  it is wildly improbable that there would be a vote for assemblies in every referendum.  Indeed the referenda might well result in a universal rejection of such representation   The only way all of England could be devolved to regional assemblies would be by Parliamentary action to impose it on England.  That would be very unlikely to gain the support of a House of Commons, not least because any government likely to propose such devolution – it would have to be a Labour government or a Labour/LibDem coalition –  would almost certainly have to rely heavily on MPs from non-English seats to pass such a measure because of the  heavy Labour and LibDem reliance on MPs from the Celtic Fringe (it is rare for  a Labour government with  majority of landslide proportions to even hold a bare majority of English seats). To force such a change on England through the votes of non-English MPs should be politically impossible.

If there was a Tory majority government or a Tory\LibDem coalition , that would make   a majority for  the imposition of regional assemblies without referenda very unlikely because the Tory Party has officially opposed regional assemblies. In 2004, the Shadow Minister for the Regions  Bernard Jenkin pledged  that if Labour set up  regional assemblies the Tories would  ”l end Labour’s phoney regional agenda. Every power that Labour gives to regional assemblies, we’ll give back to local councils.” (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/oct/07/conservatives2004.conservatives2). Perhaps more importantly many Tory MPs are strongly opposed to regional assemblies on principle so even if the Party leadership wanted to change the policy it is unlikely they would be able to do so.  It is also worth noting that even in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats the Tories have managed to abolish unelected the Regional Development Agencies which could have been used as the skeleton for elected regional assemblies and the administration arising from them. (http://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2012/mar/31/localgovernment-regeneration-gordon-marsden-regional-development-agencies-leps).

The other alternative which might be tried as an excuse to deny England a Parliament would be English votes on English laws. This would be difficult to implement because of the difficulty of deciding what was and was not legislation which affected England only.

It  might be possible to do it simply by saying that any policy area  devolved to the Scottish Parliament (which has the broadest devolution power) would also be treated as an English-only area of legislation. However, to do that would require the Welsh  and Northern Ireland assemblies to have the same powers,  because a good deal of the legislation currently  passed at Westminster covers Wales and Northern Ireland as well as England. This happens because Wales and Northern Ireland those countries have much less devolved power than Scotland. Whether Wales and Northern Ireland would be competent to receive such extra powers or would want them is debatable at best. It is worth noting that a recent BBC Cymru Wales poll  found that 23% of Welsh voters wanted to abolish the Welsh assembly (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-26378274).

That is the position at present. But if Scotland was to have DEVOMAX the other home countries would have to be given the same enhanced devolved powers otherwise we would be back to a variable geometry devolution.   That would greatly increase the importance of the competence and desire questions for Wales and Northern Ireland.

Apart from the difficulty of deciding what was an English-only affecting law, to exclude MPs from non-English seats from participating in English only matters would be to remove them from much of the discussion and decision making of the House of Commons. That would be so even with the current level of devolution enjoyed by Scotland. With DEVOMAX the position could  become absurd because MPs for non-English seats could easily end up being restricted to not much more than the classic federal issues of  foreign policy, diplomacy,  defence and management of the currency.  At that point the taxpayer might well ask what are we paying Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs for?

There would be a further complication with the House of Lords. At the moment England uniquely amongst the four home countries has all its domestic legislation subject to Lords scrutiny and approval. That is bad enough as things stand, but if DEVOMAX was granted to Scotland but not England the problem would be greatly magnified. Conversely, if DEVOMAX was granted to all the home countries, then the Lords would become to a large extent redundant because most of the legislation it now deals with would be removed from it.

All in all it is difficult to see how anyone could seriously put forward English votes for English laws as an answer to the injustice England currently experiences with a substantial part of their laws being decided in part by MPs from outside of England while English MPs have no say about the legislation involved in the areas of devolved powers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

If the regional assemblies and English votes for English laws are ruled out then an English Parliament is the only alternative to the  increasingly unfair dichotomy between the governance of  England and the rest of the UK.  The neatest solution would be to go for a true federal solution.  Instead of having separate members elected to the Commons and national assemblies, a member should be elected to serve in both the Commons (when non-devolved  matters are dealt with) and their  national assembly to deal with devolved matters. The Commons should also serve as the English national Parliament with of course only English MPs sitting.  This would prevent any  great additional expense from either a new English Parliament or additional politicians. Indeed, there would be fewer with the ending of separate members for the Celtic Fringe national assemblies and the House of Commons.

Whether the Lords needs to be retained is debatable. I do not like single chamber parliaments because they have no brake on them, but it is not obvious what function  the Lords would have once and English Parliament was up and running. Perhaps the Lords (or some other second chamber) could deal just with non-devolved powers. That would at least place England on an  equal basis with the other home countries with all devolved issues being subject to a single chamber national parliament. If the UK had a written constitution, something sorely needed, the Lords could also act as a form of Grand Jury to decide constitutional questions.  

The one thing which is absolutely clear is that the practical need and moral justification for an English Parliament, which is already great, would be substantially advanced by a vote against Scottish independence and an increase in devolved power to Scotland.

SNP 2013 XMAS INDEPENDENCE NOVELTIES

Make you own currency kit

Allows you to name your currency,  design your own coins and banknotes, create coins (3D printer included) and banknotes and set up a central piggy bank.  Warning: the money will have the same value as that used in the game monopoly.  Not to be confused with real life.

IndependenceWorld

Create your own independent Scotland virtual world. The beauty of the programme is that you can make it as  improbable as you want and it will still seem plausible if you are an SNP supporter. Lose yourself in pure fantasy.

DevoMaxWorld

A computer  game in which players attempt to build  an ever more fantastical  world in which Scotland is granted wildly  improbable privileges to be paid for by England whilst Scotland remains  safe within the UK. For the less adventurous player.

Islands

A game for two people.  It is played on a magnetic board representing the British Isles. Players are called UK  and Scotland  The idea is for the player designated Scotland  to keep their  islands and their oil attached to  the Scottish mainland  while the player designated UK tries to make them break away and join the UK .

The game proceeds by the use of a special pack of cards with messages such as UK offers to patrol Orkney waters gain 10 watts and Scotland attempts to occupy the Island of Lewis lose 50 watts. The magnetism comes from electro magnets which each player must increase or decrease in power as their cards dictate.  The islands move on the board  from their current position towards the UK or remain as they are depending on the play of the cards. Trials of game  show a remarkably high incidence of the Islands and their oil ending up in UK hands.

My little Alec Salmon

Lifelike figure in the form of the SNP leader.  Fully animatronic. Will have you in fits of laughter as it struts up and down and makes ever more ridiculous claims.  Also programmed to do  impersonations  of Will Fyffe,  Harry Lauder, Andy Stewart and other Scottish favourites.

Government Independence Contract Monopoly 

Played on a board marked out with contracts offered by the UK government. Players move by the use of a dice and there is community chest with cards carrying instructions such as UK takes all defence contracts away from Scotland.  Players unsuccessfully attempt to collect 200 million pounds of English taxpayers’ money every time they pass GO or at any other time.  Warning: in trial uses of the game no contract has ever been awarded to Scotland.

Independence Sweepstake Game

Before independence  Players make their estimates of what the following will be after independence

–          The average oil revenue in the first five years of after independence

–          The number of English taxpayer  funded jobs in Scotland which will be lost

–          The cost of setting up a Scottish civil service

–          The cost of setting up Scottish defence forces

–          The size of the Scottish share of the UK national debt in 2016

–          The size of the Scottish share of the UK public service pensions provision in 2016

 

In the event of a vote for independence, the estimates are compared with the actuality after five years of independence.  If it happens, be amazed at the difference between the sweepstake figures (hilariously optimistic) and reality.

SNP Sovereign Wealth Fund Moneybox

Purely decorative. The box is designed without any money cache because none will be needed. Frightening realistic.

English Subsidy Moneybox

A perennial favourite but with a difference. The money box  remains open after independence but Scots find that the only money they will get from it will be that which they put in themselves. Hours of innocent fun watching the owner’s expression change from smug expectation to utter dismay.

Warships

A board game for two players where one tries to keep UK warship building in Scotland after independence and the other refuses to award the contracts to Scotland.

Call my SNP bluff

Three players  recite what is claimed to be SNP policy  while the other players decide which is the real SNP policy amongst the three. Warning: players  must  make sure the two false policies amongst the three are outlandishly  improbable  otherwise it will be all too easy to spot the real SNP policy.

Conversational Gaelic DVD

Learn the language of your ancestors  and find yourself part of a community of dozens of fellow speakers of our glorious tongue. Warning: due to a lack of Gaelic words for items and ideas created after 1700, speakers may find the range of conversation extremely limited.

Diplomacy

Played on a similar board to monopoly with similar rules. The idea is for players to establish  Scottish embassies in all the world’s capitals after independence.  Cry with laughter as Scotland  rents a bedsitter in Moscow and a Studio Flat in Washington.

EU Jigsaw

Giant jigsaw of the European Union. Players try to complete the jigsaw so that it includes an independent Scotland. Warning: the parts representing Scotland may not fit.

Paint your own Saltire

Paint a glorious Saltire by numbers. Suitable for SNP supporters of all ages.

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! While the SNP lasts