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The Midgie is quite correct in noting the ubiquity of Ms Chakrabarti on our airwaves, but fails to give her the eminence she deserves in her technique of talking over any interlocuter who does not share her views. She is the foremost expert in this field, and it should not go un-noticed that she is aided in this respect by the Beeb’s finest (Dimbleby, Vine etc) who seem to allow her free rein on their programmes, at the expense of anyone who tries to offer an alternative opinion.
Gordon Hay
I cannot let Tom Gallagher’s percipient article pass without commenting on his references to English devolution. His account of the Spanish experience is certainly relevant – I understand that Donald Dewar based his idea for devolution, his plan to ‘dish the nationalists’, on the Spanish model.
He is quite right to suggest that ‘many UK federalists believe that Scottish and Welsh self-government can only be stabilised if matched by a devolved England’. But what sort of devolution would this be? As he says, the north-east rejected a regional assembly (by an overwhelming majority of 78% to 22%) in 2004. England does not want elected regional assemblies. That needs to be understood. A federation of ‘regions and nations’ is impossible.
The difficulty in answering the question ‘What sort of devolution?’ lies in the meaning implied by the comments made by the unnamed Labour MP from ‘well south of Hadrian’s wall’ with whom he spent ‘an instructive Sunday afternoon’ and who was reported to be ‘impatient with his fellow English for forsaking territorial devolution’. Really? Do the English do not know what is good for them? The MP found it perfectly normal that Alex Salmond should wish ‘to give a defined people like the Scots self-rule’.
Unfortunately, many self-interested parties in England, perhaps this MP included, refuse to recognise the English as a ‘defined people’ although the English have been recognised as a people since Bede and then a united nation since the 10th century – longer than the Scots. The English are naturally impatient with those who persist in proposing that England should be abolished in favour of ‘English regions’ and who persist with their rejected ‘dream’ of regional assemblies or something similar.
This is not because the English are ‘bovine’ but it is precisely because they are of course a nation too. If not bovine, it is at least ‘ostrich-like’ to suggest otherwise. The majority (60% plus in most surveys) want England to be self-governing. A ‘devolved England’ requires an English parliament. Yes, the UK has become highly centralised but further devolution within England should be under the aegis of an English parliament – it might indeed be to ‘city regions’ but it could equally be to English counties, some of which pre-date the Norman conquest.
Only one county (Yorkshire) is big enough to double up as a ‘region’. The other so-called regions have no particular coherence or any desire for political representation. It would good be if some the powers poached from the English counties by the UK Government could be restored to them but that would not remove the need for an English parliament, which would provide a ‘focus for the nation’, quoting Tony Blair in relation to Scotland.
Unfortunately, the unionist parties in England refuse to consider English self-government. They will not even ask the question in a referendum because, as Tony Blair also once pronounced, the English would say yes to their own parliament. Dear, oh dear – why would they do that? David Cameron has said, and no doubt Ed Miliband would agree with him on this, that he does not want to be PM ‘just of England’. He wishes to be boss of the UK and to run England’s domestic government. This is why the English cannot have what they want and why they will not be asked.
As a confirmed pedant, I write to challenge the use of the word ‘disinterest’ in the potted CV of Tom Gallagher at the end of his item on he EU. I suggest that the word should have been replaced with the phrase ‘lack of interest’.
Robin MacCormick
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