The U.K. today - a reply
Posted by Owen Sanderson on January 19th, 2007
Reading Will’s post on constitutional reform, I can’t help but disagree with almost all of it (hello by the way, my name is Owen, the final member of the Clare politics. Like Patrick and Will, I’m a history student, a point which may become apparent in the course of this post…)
The Union is a bizarre compromise- Wales is a conquered principality, Scotland started as a personal union, joined in voluntary equal union with England, and was then conquered, and Northern Ireland is the remnant of a colony under military occupation. I could go into detail about the problems of comparison with Spain and Germany, but I will spare you the history lesson.
The important distinction though is the degree to which England dominates the Union. Nationalists in Scotland and Ireland have long argued that ‘British’ is unfairly used as a synonym for ‘English’ by the English. They are right about the usage, but wrong that it is unfair. London has a larger population and a larger economy than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and contains such a large proportion of the national population and media that the centre of gravity of ‘Britain’ remains in firmly in London. Clearly a special kind of federalism is needed for such an unequal set of circumstances, and that has been acknowledged with the bastardised federalism under New Labour. It isn’t rational, it isn’t consistent, but it does fit the UK. And where are the English protests on the street? Where are the anti-Scotland riots? English regional government, a solution to ‘under-representation’ fell flat because of lack of public interest everywhere except London. The English are happy to be governed by a British Parliament, because it remains an overwhelming English Parliament. The most talented Scottish and Welsh politicians continue to come to Westminster, and with a little tact from them, and their respective party whips, the dissolution of the Union is nothing more than alarmist chatter. The potential victory of the SNP in Scotland is no more significant than the number of UKIP MEPs- it represents a surge of minority politics in an insignificant institution, combined with a temporary failure of the mainstream parties.
Filed under: constitution, scotland, ukpolitics on January 19th, 2007
Owen, I wish I was as confident about the “insignificance” of the SNP as you seem to be. I fear though you will sleep walk your way into a situation where suddenly this island is divided into 3 seperate entities through referendums, if you don’t wake up to at least some of the problems we face. Granted some of it is alarmist chatter from minority groups. You say however that the English are not complaining about the fact they have no representation in the Union. Read the BBC or other news website pages and the commentaries are full of English resentment, calling for the independence of Scotland so as to stop Scottish mp’s being rushed in to vote on English matters. The poll this week in The Week testifies to this surge in English resentment at the Union and calling for it to go. Do you want to foster this further by allowing a one way democratic system to continue? We don’t need history lessons about the unusual creation of the U.K, we need to listen to its current problems and try to stop the growing rifts. After all we have far greater issues as a whole to face in the world than internal squabling….p.s apologies if I
can’t spell
I’m going to semi-agree with both of you - I don’t agree that the SNP is insignificant (although to make things clear, especially what with being Scottish myself, I wish it were), but I do possibly think it’s significant for the wrong reasons, if that makes sense. It seems to me from my multiple trips to the Scottish Parliament that all the politicians there are pretty incompetent (anyone who has ever seen a Scottish Parliament debate would be forced to agree with me), especially the SNP, who spend their entire time heckling the other parties and then have nothing constructive to say at all. But I think this is the view most Scottish people have of Westminster as well. I doubt that everyone actually wants independence - it’s more that the SNP represent something different from Westminster and most people are completely unaware of what the Scottish Parliament does.
Otherwise I’m sure, like me, everyone would be terrified of the thought of Nicola Sturgeon being First Minister.
Potentially the Scottish parliament have nothing constructive to talk about since they have no constructive power. From a southern English perspective they are effectively a big council with less influence. No wonder they are dissolusioned and just whinge the whole time….
Okay, I’d respond to that by saying that the Scottish Parliament actually has a fair degree of influence. Things like free personal care for the elderly, legislating on our (far superior) education system, removing charges for eye tests…they certainly have far more to do than a ‘big council’. It’s just that somehow they seem to get these good things done almost by accident because half of them clearly have no idea what they’re talking about.
I totally agree with Will about this.
The lack of an English parliament isn’t really a problem at the moment because Labour have the majority in Scotland, so by and large it’s not a problem. But should the majoirty in Scotland not follow Britain as a whole then England’s lack of a legislative assembly leaves the political situation skewed.
For example, as a problem even today, top-up fees were only introduced with the help of scottish labour MPs - but as it doesn’t apply to Scotland, what democratic right do they have to vote on matters which don’t concern them? Just as English MPs wouldn’t vote on Scottish matters, Labout shouldn’t be able to use it’s majority in Scotland to get through Bills which the English MPs don’t accept.
Constitutional lawyers accept the West Lothian problem as a constitutional flaw in our country - there’s no excuse for not having it.