I am reminded that this year will mark the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union that created Great Britain. There are those that would like it to also be the last, a subject I’ve written about extensively in the past. Indeed this desire seems to be spreading both North and South of the border:
devolution was supposed to defeat nationalism. That was what George Robertson, the former chief of Nato, famously said would happen: devolution would kill nationalism ’stone dead’. Not so. For England increasingly feels the intrinsic unfairness of devolution. Now John Reid, a Scottish Home Secretary, presides over a department that has limited powers in his own constituency of Airdrie and Shotts. Soon Gordon Brown will move into 10 Downing Street, to make laws on health and education that have no play in North Queensferry, where he lives. Meanwhile, a nation ashamed of the Iraq war tries to shake off culpability by turning to the SNP.
Me? Well, I still stand by the words I wrote in my very first post at teh old site, now to be found here:
Great Britain was founded in 1707, nearly three hundred years ago. The anniversary approaches. Are we doing anything about it? Let’s be proud to be British, and remember that we are also English, Welsh, Scottish or whatever. Let us look to the future and be proud of our heritage, not look to the past and try to bolt the doors.
I’d like to celebrate the foundation of this great nation. Look to the future, a liberal, tolerant, open minded society that truly does live and let live.
Given that this useless Government appears to be doing and planning absolutely nothing, anyone got any ideas?
January 11th, 2007
Posted by
MatGB |
Britain, patriotism, Liberal Britain, England, Devolution, History |
7 comments
Right, first of all the partizan silliness, courtesy of Alex Wilcock:
So, let’s recap: it’s wrong for Liberal Democrats to point out Four Jobs Bob isn’t local to Bromley because he lives somewhere completely different – which is a statement of fact. But it’s all right for the Conservatives to say the leader of a country that’s a union of different nations can only come from the bit that the Tories have all their votes in, ruling out Scots not because of their ability or their ideas but simply because of where they live. Which is a wholly negative opinion that Scots should be second-class citizens in the Britain made up of all of us, based on their being not ‘local’ to England.
Yup, to run for election as an MP while not being local is acceptable, but to run for election as British Prime Minister while living in Britain, being British and married to an English wife isn’t if you’re not local to most Tory MPs (ie, Southern England).
But, the more important link. Ministry of Truth:
If, by excluding Scottish MPs from voting on English bills, parliament is left with left with a government that lacks a Common’s majority on English issues, how is fair that that government retains control of the legislative programme and timetable for England.
This is of course all linked to the Conservatives desire to not appear to be “too radical” and instead implement something that sounds right, and simple. Except of course, it isn’t right, it isn’t simple, and it’s a lot more radical than either of the three other main solutions.
July 4th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, Constitution, England, Devolution, English Parliament |
9 comments
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.
May 29th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, Constitution, England, Devolution, English Parliament |
6 comments
Was just prompted by a friend to pick up my copy of the Complete Works, hadn’t looked at it for a few years. I was looking for Macbeth, but there was a page marked. Most certainly not a bookmark, just an envelope addressed to my address before last, keeping a page for reference. Which page?
Richard II:
John of Gaunt:
Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!
So, England has a problem that needs solving. It’s come up (again) in the comments on the previous post, so I thought I’d open a question for debate.
Squaring the circle. How do you bring power as close as possible to the people, recognise the existence of England as a unit, and ensure that a Parliament of 80% of the population does not destabilise or undermine the British parliament?
How is the need to take power away from the centre helped by creating a new administrative unit that is as big as England? How does this improve the way I am governed?
I ask this in the attempt to have a reasoned debate - can “nationalism” be removed from this discussion? Does “England”, in and of itself, matter? England is nearly as big as Britain. If Britain is to continue to exist as an administrative unit, what will the England govt do? I’ve said before that a medium term objective of all disparate reformers has to be a constitutional convention, and in that, nothing can be ruled out or ruled in. I’m convinced that a Parliament for England is an irrelevence for as long as Britain exists, too distant and remote.
However, can we devolve power from the center into units big enough to be effective but local enough to be responsive? And can such a system also include an “English dimension” in some way?
May 26th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, England, Devolution, English Parliament, Shakespeare, John of Gaunt |
9 comments
Scottish electoral mechanics are always interesting to watch. South of the border, most seats are either safe or two-way marginals. Three-way marginals are rare, and tend to disappear over the course of a few elections, the third party squeeze / ratchet effect caused by Duverger’s Law means that it becomes “irrational” as the economists put it to vote for the third place or below candidate. Yet in Scotland? They not only still have three way marginals, they also have some 4 way marginals.
May 19th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
NuLab, voting, Parties, LibDems, electoral reform, FPTP, Duverger, Scotland, elections |
2 comments
I think it’s pretty much established amongst the informed bunch that read this blog that something is rotten in the state of Britain. Liberty Central is a good project aimed at working out a new way of governing the country. Hopefully, it can be used to build pressure to sort the whole mess out.
The big problem is that for many, reformers are a series of disparate, single issue campaigners. We have:
- electoral reformers
- civil liberties groups
- devolutionists of various stripes
- parliamentary reformers (concentrating currently on the Lords)
My issue with this; all of the problems are interlinked. Each feeds of each other, it’s a systemic problem within the British polity.
The “West Lothian Question” is one of vital import to the future of the country
It has come about because a government that was initially radical and prepared to decentralise heavily has acquired cold feet and isn’t prepared to address the real issues and concerns of those that haven’t (yet) had power devolved from Westminster. Yet, ultimately, very few if any are genuinely calling for the complete break up of Britain, the Scots Nats appear to be losing, not gaining, ground in Scotland and the CEP is adament that they want parity for England within the UK (or Britain, depending on whether the person in question wants to keep the 1800 Act).
You cannot fix the “England Question” independent of the other problems
Virtually every other country of significance that has a bicameral Parliament draws its second chamber members as representatives of the next highest administrative level. US and Australian Senators are elected directly, the German Bundesrat members are sent as representatives of the Lander assemblies, etc.
I favour this approach, in part, for the Lords (or whatever we call the replacement). So, in order to solve the increasingly urgent issue that is the make up of the second chamber, we also need to figure out what level below Westminster we want as well.
The electoral system that we use is outdated
It specifically encourages a two-party system, yet increasingly a market orientated society wants genuine choice at election time as well, two-party politics doesn’t cut it any more. So we have a government elected with a fairly substantial majority with much less than 40% of the vote; compare this to 1992, when John Major got the highest number of votes cast since 1945, and a higher vote share than either Maggie or Blair ever acheived, yet had a wafer thin majority.
This leads to a worried government, that plays to a perceived gallery for headline grabbing initiatives, yet one that knows, deep down, that while it has a ‘legitimate’ mandate, it does not have a popular mandate; protesters are limited and arrested as never before, yet are increasingly likely as what are viewed as traditional liberties are encroached upon as never before.
Part of the recommendations of the Power commission is a new Concordat. Essentially, they are right. As Nosemonkey points out in comments here, the Bill of Rights is effectively irrelevent. Yet any constitutional historian worth their salt can confirm that the Bill of Rights is the founding principle of the modern parliamentary system. If it’s no longer relevent, what is?
I am not in favour of a ‘written constitution’
A study of the US shows that such exercises in aspic setting can, in later years, come back to bite you; the veneration of their outdated document the Americans show is worrying, let alone damaging. We need a new Bill of Rights, new Acts of Settlement. We need a British solution.
We need, as a nation, to determine, once again, how we are governed.
We, all of us, who are concerned with the constitution, who want to address these issues, need to work together to pressure our rulers to call a new convention. This may be a good place to start.
March 17th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, Constitution, freedom, democracy, electoral reform, Parliament, ElectTheLords, civil liberties, England, English Parliament, Power Commision |
3 comments
Well, my post from last night has generated some comments here and elsewhere, and another post on United Irelander. Specifically, I’ve just had a comment from ‘an deoraíocht’ of The Northern Irish Magyar, and it’s both a good one and specifically disagreeing with a number of my points; I typed up a response, but it’s long enough to justify a follow up post. I’ve snipped some of what he said, as the full text of both would make this, well, too long; apologies if it’s a little dijointed to read…
February 9th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Constitution, Britain, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland |
15 comments
Well, I wouldn’t go that far…
United Irelander: Top Ten Tuesday - The English:
7. Fairly objective towards Ireland’s north - The English seem fairly apathetic towards the North these days and when the North is brought up, they tend to approach things with an open mind. In fact, according to recent polls, the English actually favour a United Ireland at this point.
Not yet, anyway.
For those paying attention, yes, the logo at the top combines three flags. Two crosses and a Dragon. No St Patrick to be seen. And yes, that is deliberate. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I’m British, not UKish. While I instintively distrust the likes of McGuinness and Adams, I’m not that keen on Paisley and his ilk either, both sides were out of order throughout the conflict. British Govt regularly touts the ’self determination’ mantra. Anyone ask us? Keep 1707, that one made us Great. Get rid of 1800, we were never really United, were we?
Now is not the time, no idea when it will be, but I just don’t care about 6 counties and the protestanct ascendancy. Never have. Not just because I’m an atheist. Orange landed at Brixham, doesn’t mean I like the Orangemen much…
February 8th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Constitution, Britain, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland |
18 comments
Ok, it seems that half the blogosphere, and at least two serious papers (Torygraph and Indy) are talking about the “new” website launched by the Dept of Culture (at a rather large cost from what I can tell considering, DK agrees) Icons of England.
From the bumpph, it’s a lighthearted attempt to promote symbols of England. OK. It’s new. Um, no. Y’see, I linked to an ‘icon’ nominated by a friend of a friend. He emailed me about it and asked me to vote for it (go on, what could be more English than Winnie The Pooh Illustrations by E H Shepard?). According to Gmail, I got the email [Date: 05-Oct-2005 21:48].
New? No. Relaunch, formal launch, slow news day, distraction? Maybe.
Of course, that our friendly Devil could probably have done the job for a 3rd of the cost and a healthy profit is irrelevent, right?
January 10th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
NuLab, England, icons |
2 comments
I am reminded by my friend Mark, from Alderney, that today is the anniversary of his bit of the worlds invasion of our bit of the world, the Battle of Hastings. This brings to mind a little phrase that always seems to crop up when matter European are discussed, that wonderful old phrase about a thousand years of history. An example, from UKIP, here:
…the Prime Minister is signing away nothing less than Britain’s right to self-government. A thousand years of history goes down the drain…
The historian in me is always bothered by this terminology. What thousand years are you referring to, exactly?
October 14th, 2005
Posted by
MatGB |
Britain, europe, England, History |
4 comments
