Bishop Hill has followed up on my post from Friday about the need for reform of how England is governed:

I reckon in fact that the advent of an English Parliament would be good not only for the English but also for the Celtic fringe, in that the loss of their subsidies will force them to embrace business in the way that their brethren in Ireland have done.

How then to square this with the ideas that I have put forward here and at Liberty Central (and that MatGB seems to share) for devolution of power down to the lowest practicable levels? What is the point of an English Parliament if all the power resides at community level? It’s hard to think of many areas of policy which would sit naturally at an England level were this kind of constitution to be enforced

He follows up with a discussion of Bondwoman’s excellent post at the Sharpener and concludes:

The answer then appears to me to be that there may in fact be no need for an English Parliament, because the constitutional imbalance can be righted and more local government delivered, without it.

This is, essentially, my position; we need to localise power. That it is, as Stuart observed in the comments, “for the English to decide how their country is governed, not the Scots, not the Welsh and not the Northern Irish” is unarguable. Where I disagree with him is his desire to see an English Parliament first. I want a Convention that will discuss how we are governed, followed by a preferendum to the people asking them how they wish to be governed. That has to be an essential cause that all reformers can agree on, regardless of what actual outcome we want, right?

I’m not closing comments on this post, but I’d like to keep them all together either here where I asked the questions or on Bishop’s post here if possible? Danke.