“The answer to our woes, is a devolved English Parliament. Let the four constituent nations go their own separate way. let Scotland have independence, let Salmond have his way. Lets the Welsh & the Welsh and Northern Irish go. We moan on this site about the Internal Aid department, well how about we look a bit closer to home. England again has voted overwhelming Conservative, except this morning we are still governed by a party that is led and draws its legitimacy from the huge client state that is Scotland. All the usual suspects will whitter on about the unfairness of the FpTP system, whilst ignoring the biggest unfairness of all.”
Written by a character called Paul B, over at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog.
I happen increasingly to agree. While I yield to no-one in my admiration for much of what Scotland has brought to Britain and to the wider world – this book is a wonderful description – the brutal fact is that Scotland is now exerting an outrageously one-sided, and disproportionate, influence on British affairs. Its politicians have carefully natured a client state in the big cities such as Glasgow, where a huge proportion of the locals subsist on state benefits. If, as the Coffee House commenter suggests, we were to make it possible for Scotland to operate as an independent nation, then the Scottish Labour Party machine, a profoundly corrupt one and similar to the Chicago Democrat machine that gave the US Barack Obama would no longer exert its malign influence on England’s affairs.
It is time to cut Scotland loose, both for its interest, and more to the point, for those who want to see the back of the Scottish Labour Party and its arm-lock on UK affairs for the past decade and a half.
In the meantime, I suspect that the international bond market is going to have the casting vote on what happens next after this inconclusive election.
And for that very reason the Labour party would never allow either an English Parliament or Scottish Independance.
One of the results (so far) that strikes me as notable in its absence, as we go along, is the total vote for each of the major parties.
I’m very keen that we should have separate elections for an Executive Prime Minister and for the House of Commons (to say nothing of the Lords becoming a fully elected House of Taxpayers). It’s fairly obvious that such an arrangement, especially if it included elections using the Single Transferable Vote, could (and often would) lead to a lack of dominance by one political party. Good I say; let’s live with that and have a greater amount of discussion in parliament as to what the actual detailed policies should be.
Lacking those highly desirable separate elections, we need now to look at the electoral opinion that has been expressed in yesterday’s election.
Does not the total vote for each of the main parties give a strong indication of which party the country thinks should lead lead the government, if they were voting for an Executive Prime Minister, even if they are dependent on compromise with the HoC in what is done on tax, expenditure and law?
Looking at that information strikes me as much more useful, in our immediate circumstances, than considering a Disunited Kingdom, no matter that further consideration of constitutional change (including the possibility of an English parliament and devolutional alternative re-balancings) do need to be considered in due course.
Best regards
I always thought the outcome of the election wouldn’t change anything. But I never expected that it wouldn’t change this much.
A divided Uk (all countries ‘regionalised’) is exactly what the EU has been desperate to achieve. How wise is it to aid that agenda?
Well done “hmmm”, few seem to have noticed that factor, it was of course kept hidden by all parties.
hmmm
If the UK split into its component parts England would still be a substantial country of 50 million people and an economy still large enough to qualify for G20 membership. The population would be about the same as South Korea, while the economy is (still, slightly) larger.
I’m less sure where the other former members of the union would stand, but that is not my problem. Scotland at least does not want independsencel the height of the SNP’s aspirations is to move from perceived subservience to England to real subservience to Brussels.
One does wonder what would be the effect on the Scottish economy if many functions of the English government that are currently carried out in Scotland were to be repatriated.
Fair comment on the Scottish Labour Mafia. But, 80% of Scots did not vote for the SNP. Salmond and his fanatically anti-English following are loathed. The SNP were only 3% ahead of the Tories in Scotland. I think most Scots would accept a minority Tory UK government, if that is what transpires.
England now has the right to voice the same grievance that Scotland had during the Thatcher years: the right of a UK national party to govern them when they do not have a majority of seats in that part of the country. The time has come to answer the West Lothian question once and for all. The Scottish electorate should be asked two questions in a referendum: Independence or Status quo ante. I would vote for the latter.
Request for information: The Conservative Party just managed to squeeze past 1/3 of the total vote in the UK. Yes, they got a big majority of the seats in England, but how did they do in the England-Only vote count?
Since Scotland amounts to only about 10% of the population of the UK, I suspect that the Conservatives fell far short of a majority of votes in England.
The “Tory Majority England” meme may well be a myth — just another wierd impact of the UK’s gerrymandered voting system.
The Mother of Parliaments? Hardly!
A quick check: Population of the UK (2008) was 60.9 million, of whom 51.4 were in England, 5.17 were in Scotland, and 4.33 were elsewhere in the UK.
(Does Jonathan’s plan involve expelling only Scotland, or also Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Scilly Isles, etc? Just asking).
According to the BBC, the Conservatives got 36% of votes cast in the UK. If we make the assumptions:
1. Votes cast in Scotland and rest of UK were proportional to population, and
2. Conservatives got not a single vote in Scotland (obviously an unrealistic assumption),
then simple arithmetic says that the MAXIMUM share of the vote Conservatives could have got in the rest of the UK is 39%.
So what have we learned? Scotland is only about half of Johnathan’s non-English problem in the UK. And Conservatives are a minority in England. (Maybe not in parliamentary seats, but that brings us back to England’s gerrymandered voting system)
As an aside, in my occasional visits to England, I have been struck by the one great unifying factor in the English people I have met outside south east England — they all look down on Londoners, ranging from amused contempt in western England to outright hatred in northern England. Would an independent England be stable? It certainly would not be united by a love of the Conservatives.
I hate to say it – because hmmm is right (it’s why the SNP is in the absurd position of being a nationalist party that supports greater European unification) – but I’m increasingly coming to that view myself… if, as a Scot, for rather different reasons. My compatriots have to face up to the consequences of their actions in voting for socialists, and they won’t do that as long as England is around to bail them out. It beggars belief that anyone could actually go out and cast a positive vote for such an incompetent, corrupt government, yet that’s what they’ve done – in greater numbers than 2005. If I was down south, I’d take it as a slap in the face, quite frankly.
But Alice makes a good point, though, and in my discussion last night with friends and family, I pointed out that Tory wins in Wales used to be as unthinkable as they are up here… and in Scotland they weren’t until about fifteen years ago; they had about a quarter of Scottish seats right through the supposedly hated Thatcher government (it was, although Scots don’t realise it themselves any more, Major who was “too English” for them; many – far from a majority, but enough – Scots respected Thatcher’s honesty). It would be mad to through out babies with bathwater for the sake of what may be a relatively short-term phenomenon.
And anyway, despite their increasing differences, Scots don’t want to go. Support for independence, even the Nats’ watered-down EU membership type, has been steady at around 30% for years (it’s actually been consistently slightly lower than support for the party itself). If last night’s result can be explained as anything other than tribalism, it was an anti-SNP vote. They’re in power in Holyrood and therefore – while I think they’re doing surprisingly well myself – unpopular. You’d have to kick us out, and while this will stoke the fires of English nationalism, I can’t see that happening for a while yet.
Brown got an increased majority. For me, that says it all about the Scots.
(O.K. one can’t tar all Scots with the Jock red mafia brush, but they need to do something about it, if only for themselves.)
“Brown got an increased majority. For me, that says it all about the Scots.”
No, that says it all about Kevin B.
For goodness sake, Kevin, I am on another continent and even I know that the boundaries of Brown’s constituency got changed since the last election. (That’s why his house is now outside his constituency).
So the gerrymandering government gerrymandered the Prime Minister’s seat in such a way as to increase his majority. I am shocked! Totally shocked!
Good Lord, Kevin B. Do your homework before you go spouting your particular brand of prejudice.
Alice:
I haven’t yet found percentages but here are the seats:
England:
Party Seats Change
Conservative 296 +92
Labour 191 -87
Liberal Dem 43 -4
Scotland:
Labour 41 0
Liberal Dem 11 0
Scottish Nat 6 0
Conservative 1 0
Wales:
Labour 26 -4
Conservative 8 +5
Liberal Democrat 3 -1
Plaid Cymru 3 +1
So you can see where the “Lothian Question” meme comes from.
Kevin — Thanks for the info on seats. What I see is that the UK has a dysfunctional electoral system. First Past the Post is OK if there are only 2 Parties and if all constituencies are fairly similar in population. Neither of those applies to the UK.
Conservatives got the votes of about 1 Brit in 3. Assuming something like 60% of the population voted, that means “Wonder Dave” has the positive support of about 1 Brit in 5. Not much of a mandate there.
Your problem in the UK is your broken electoral system, not the “West Lothian” question.
But our problem in England is, in large part, the fact that a small number of people in Scotland have a large influence on our Parliament and it shows. I didn’t make up this ‘particular brand of predjudice’. Here in England it is quite widely held.
Of course we have a broken electoral system. Many people smarter than me, (and I would venture to suggest, smarter than you), have observed this. What few have ever agreed on is a solution to this problem, not just here in the UK, but in many democracies world wide.
There are plenty of quotes along the lines of ‘the majority voting to steal from the minority’ and no obvious ways in a democracy to get round this.
And I don’t care how much Brown’s constituency has been gerrymandered, it is not predjudice to wonder how anyone voted for the man who as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister has been the architect of our most serious problems, let alone a bigger majority.
The problem with the FPTPTP is that it measures somethign rather odd, a sort of “coefficient of voter concentration”. So the party who win are the party whose voters are the most regionalised, which is why the Libs always do so badly as they don’t have particular regional constituencies to the same degree as e.g. Labour, who have the most lumpy voter base.
Anyway, if you look at the Teglegraph’s electoral map and switch between the geographic view and the equal-sized-constituency view, you see the “Tory England” idea collapse to a significant degree. Vast swathes of red constituencies, with the blue in the South East outside London. Lots and lots of red in the old industrial areas (sprobably enhanced to some degree by the immigrant concentration in those areas). You just don’t see such a strong distinction between blue England and Red Celts, as such. There are more Tories in England, sure, but not overwhelmingly so. And then as Libertarians, we must remember that most of those Tories don’t want small government, liberal “conservatism” either. They want ruralist NIMBYism and family values and shit like that.
So I dunno, really. I don’t think the case for dumping Scotland and Wales is as strong as it appears at first sight.
Basically to use the same logic, you’d have to dump everywhere north of Nottingham, Birmingham, Greater London and the West Country, resulting in a strange new country called, perhaps, Shireland, whose population would probably spend most of their time blocking any economic development of their beautiful village, then complaining that the village shop had to close.
“I didn’t make up this ‘particular brand of predjudice’. Here in England it is quite widely held.”
So holding an erroneous prejudiced view is OK as long as lots of fellow bigots do too?
Any rational assessment shows that the “West Lothian” question is the symptom, not the problem itself.
Under the broken electoral system that (mainly English) people created, there are always going to be problems. If the English got rid of the Northern Irish & the Welsh & the Scots & the Manx, there would soon be whining from Londoners about the voting habits of those knuckle-draggers in Liverpool. Your (English) electoral system is broken!
What is it about you Brits, anyway? Four hundred years under the same roof, and you still hate each other. You would rather throw stones at your neighbors than roll up your sleeves and work together to solve a shared problem.
“So the gerrymandering government gerrymandered the Prime Minister’s seat in such a way as to increase his majority.”
Alice, I’ve been thinking about this since I posted, and without wanting it to sound like sour grapes, I reckon you’re on to something. (Although I think, hard as it may be to believe, the Kirkaldy folk really do like Brown; industrial, and post-industrial, central Scotland is profoundly weird.)
The thing is, the Tories are a very close second in a lot of Scottish seats. The conspiratorially-minded might suggest some deliberate manouvering there. I know Eastwood, south of Glasgow, used to be solidly Tory until the boundary was changed to include a huge council estate about twenty years ago. Safe Labour ever since. Bearsden, to the northwest of the City would probably be similar (its postcode has highest concentration of millionaires in Britain, believe it or not), if part of the giant Drumchapel “scheme” wasn’t in the same constituency.
And in the Edinburgh Gasworks, where there is PR, they have a relatively decent showing, commensurate with their support across Scotland: around 20%, much the same as the LibDems. Back when Labour declared a “Tory-free zone” in ’97, it was the same: one in five Scots voted Conservative. In a four-party system, 20% isn’t really all that bad. Not good, but not the irrelevance the Leftist parties would have us believe.
I don’t like PR, but it may be the only hope for any kind of centre-right party (even the TINOs) in Scotland. And by extension, for the United Kingdom itself.
“I don’t like PR”
Sam, I wonder if we have framed the question properly. Proportional Representation is fine if everyone identifies with a Party rather than a Nation. But maybe Parties are a Bad Idea?
Looking at the Electoral College in the US Constitution, the idea was clear — we choose a local individual we know & trust, and then send him away to far-off Washington to choose the President on our behalf. It was entirely appropriate to the technology of the times.
There are no Parties in the US Constitution. They were a later invention, and the two major Parties have made the First Past The Post system work in the US essentially by creating enormous barriers to entry for any third Party.
I wonder if it would be better to go back to the 18th Century idea of choosing a local person we know & trust as an individual, and empowering him make decisions on narrowly-defined issues for a limited time. This would not be compatible with the modern concepts of a massive government deciding what kind of lightbulbs we can have, or with career politicians. But I would happily sacrifice those.
Ian B, I’ll settle for losing the Scots and Welsh since they already have their own parliaments that look after such minor things as Health, Education and where to spend the English and EU subsidies. If the NE want to join with the Scots, far be it for me to stand in their way.
Your Telegraph proportional map gives each seat the same size, but does not take into account the number of voters, so it doesn’t quite make the case against the Lothian question that you might think.
Oh, and I’d like to thank Alice for condescending to point out the mess we Brits have made of our Democracy. Perhaps if she has time later, she might offer some solutions, or at least point to some examples where polities govern with calm efficiency and without recriminations between tribes, (whether political or not.)
As a Glaswegian, it was profoundly depressing to have my nose rubbed -once more- in the fact that my vote was worth precisely nothing. I hardly exaggerate when I say that a rusty bucket filled with manure would be elected to serve in my constituency, so long as it boasted a Labour rosette.
I would suggest that Scotland’s disproportionate influence on UK politics could be fixed by merely cutting the number of Scottish MPs from 59 to 12 (or 15 at most). We already have our own ‘parliament’ so why on earth do we need such a hefty cabal at Westminster?
This post is mainly to check something about the performance of the ever-vigilant SmiteBot. But rather than simply write “Test”, here’s a delayed reaction to a comment by MarkE:
“If the UK split into its component parts England would still be a substantial country of 50 million people and an economy still large enough to qualify for G20 membership.”
And the English economy would still be running an annual deficit of over 10% of GDP and have a staggering debt burden of around 100% of GDP. Ratings agencies would still be warning about downgrading English debt. England can’t support itself, not in its current style.
In a separate England, the former English car industry would still be gone, as would the former English aircraft industry and the former English steel industry. (Yes, Japanese companies build cars in England, and the French let the English build parts of their planes. But only as long as the English know their place and stay subservient to the EU).
England’s only really successful industry of late has been London’s Financial Center. But there has been a little hiccup recently in the financial biz. And, going forward, London is facing steadily increasing competition from the Dubais, Singapores & Shanghais of this world. London may be able to hang on to parts of the financial business, but increasing international competition will mean that the days of giant economy-supporting profits are going.
There is a big hole in the bottom of the English boat. Yes, there are holes in the Irish, Welsh, & Scottish boats too. Little Englandism seems strangely irrelevant at this point. It is time you all started bailing!
Antone Clarke has an interesting thought that I believe has weight here.
A.C. thinks people like me are too gloomy because we assume that everyone is a “text learner”.
In short we think that everyone values school text books, and serious political discusssion, very highly – and so are thrown into a nightmare of despair by the control of the left of such things as formal education (including the private schools) and the mainstream media.
Most people (according to A.C.) do not form their political opinions this way – they form them from their experiences of everyday life, mixed with gut instinct (cultural traditions and “common sense” i.e. reasoning).
However, there is one close by culture which is what Antoine would call a “text learning” one.
Scotland.
In Scotland people (or most people) really do form their political opinions via a mixture of school textbooks and formal political discusssion (even among the very poor).
No wonder they are so leftist – as the left utterly controls such things as school text books and the terms in which formal political discusssions are conducted in.
Sadly there is no way that England can be reformed whilst it is tied to such a culture (however well Scotland’s “text learning” culture served it in the past – i.e. before the left controlled such texts).
Scotland must go.