Prime
Minister David Cameron's hurried announcement of UK wide
constitutional reform in the wake of the Scottish Referendum result
risks breaking his pledge to the Scottish people and leaving England
with an ill thought through settlement driven by narrow party
political considerations.
His
coupling of more powers for Scotland (which the three big Westminster
parties promised in the independence referendum campaign) with
constitutional reform in the whole of the UK brings together two
issues, one of which has been thoroughly worked through and one of
which hasn't. Scotland has had two years of intense debate and
campaigning on these issues, England only started thinking about it
on Friday morning when the Scottish result came through. Getting the
promised Scottish reforms through Parliament was always going to be
challenging with the promised timetable of proposals in a couple of
months and draft legislation by January, especially as we have a General Election next year.
Cameron's
solution to the 'West Lothian Question" involves stopping
Scottish MPs voting on English matters. Now, at first glance this
seems fair enough, why should they vote on matters affecting only
voters who did not elect them? However such a solution would,
entirely uncoincidentally, remove a whole swathe of Labour MPs and
give the Conservative Party a pretty unassailable (and given past
voting patterns, a seemingly also permanent) majority in any English
Parliament. And presumably if Wales and Northern Ireland also win new
powers (as seems likely) their MPs would be barred too, further
strengthening the Conservative position. Indeed any future Labour
government for the UK as a whole would need a pretty hefty majority
of about 100 to stand any chance of getting legislation through an
'English only' Parliament.
Trying
to ram this through from a standing start in double quick time
without a proper breathing space for debate and consideration in the
wider country is not good for democracy. By linking the issue of more
Scottish powers with wider constitutional change, which David Cameron
did within an hour of the referendum result coming through, he risks
the promises to the Scottish electorate being broken, which will
reawaken the whole independence question again. Boris Johnson more or less confirmed this on the BBC News channel on Friday afternoon when he said that if the English reforms did not go through, he could not see how the Scottish ones could either. One of the main
gripes of the Scottish 'Yes' campaign was with the remote and arrogant
Westminster elite who break promises.
If
the Prime Minister does get it through this has gerrymandered us all.
The Labour Party may not be strong enough to stop this. They want to
devolve more power to the English cities and regions rather than to
England as a whole, but may not see that this might also be a good
time to push for proportional representation. While the Scots seem to
have got the best of both worlds (effective autonomy while still
remaining within the UK), in contrast those parts of England north of
the Home Counties or left of Nigel Farage (who seems to be
effectively driving Conservative policy at the moment from within
UKIP Towers) look screwed.
The
country deserves better than this. Sort out Scotland as promised and
don't rush through proposals for the rest of the country based merely
on expediency.
