THE NEED FOR AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT
Below is a copy of a recent article from the Daily Telegraph:
The Scots destroyed the Union – so vote SNP
By Simon Heffer
I have been trying to remember the last time I felt British. It must be at least 15 years ago. Ironically, it was just before I wrote a book about one of the most British Scotsmen in history, Thomas Carlyle. Here was a man who, when writing from his home in Dumfriesshire, or from Edinburgh, completed his address not with "Scotland" but with "NB": North Britain. In early Victorian times we were, in the constitutional sense, one nation. But those days are gone, and may never return.
It was on happy visits to Edinburgh to research my book that I realised there was a problem. The academics who helped me could not have been more charming to this upstart Englishman who presumed to write about one of their most renowned figures. But I realised Scotland had become, since my youthful visits, a foreign country.
We English had bought into the Union completely. We had never batted an eyelid when Scotland sent its sons to govern us as prime minister. In my lifetime there had been Macmillan and Home, and in the decades before that Rosebery, Campbell-Bannerman, Balfour and the Ulster Scot Bonar Law. However, once the Scots were made, thanks to the evils of democracy, to be ruled by a radical Englishwoman, Margaret Thatcher, they seemed to decide that, after all, self-government might be better.
That was the mental state in which I found them in the early 1990s. Instinctively, I didn't blame them. None of us, realising a national identity of our own, wishes to be ruled by what we regard as a foreign power. One reason I regard Gladstone as one of our greatest leaders is that he realised, in the teeth of opposition from a bovine Tory party and from some of his supporters, the impossibility of coercing Ireland. I detected a movement in Scotland that would demand Home Rule: and since the notion of English troops enforcing the Union on the streets of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen was unthinkable, it occurred to me that they had better have it.
Factors other than Mrs Thatcher helped the Scots towards this new sensibility. They had not merely been England's partner in empire, they had led the drive for it: and once empire was over, the shared British project had rather less purpose to it. There was, though, one very strong reason to keep up membership, and that was the huge annual subsidy paid by the English to the Scots: around ££11 billion currently. One reason Scotland hated Mrs Thatcher was that she was inimical to its addiction to welfarism.
So it was clear, even before Labour came to power in 1997, that a new accommodation would have to be reached. It may be an act of economic, strategic and political madness for the Scots to wish to break up the marital home: but grown-ups have to be allowed to make even the most awful mistakes, for they are often the only way of learning what is, indeed, sensible. Labour thought, though, that it had hit upon the ideal solution: a halfway house between marriage and divorce, a form of bigamy called "devolution". The old spouse remains at Westminster, deals with the big issues affecting the family, and pays most of the bills. The lover, though, is set up in luxury in Edinburgh, and is there to indulge those selfish little impulses that make one feel free of serious constraints.
Inevitably, though, the spouse's family, on learning of the arrangement, start to find reasons to dispute it: and when told that there can be no disputation, become resentful. Devolution was offered to the Scots in 1997. They accepted it. Their own parliament began work in 1999. It remains an ongoing mechanism to extract money from the English. The English have no say in how it is spent. The Scots, however, retain (through 59 MPs at Westminster) a say in how the money of English taxpayers is spent on English public services. This preposterous inequity has for eight years been shrugged off by Labour – English as well as Scots – and the English have now had enough.
Be in no doubt: the self-serving and meretricious argument Gordon Brown advanced in this newspaper last Saturday about the Union was designed purely to sustain his campaign to secure legitimacy for a Scotsman, sitting for a Scottish seat, being Prime Minister of England. Even before he can reach that eminence the Scots will hold a parliamentary election, on May 3, and the Scottish National Party may well win. If it does, it has promised a referendum on independence. Were such a plebiscite to succeed, Mr Brown would be finished – unless he could find a seat in England, or unless he scaled down his ambition and became leader of the opposition in the People's Republic of Scotland. Since running a bad-weather theme park, or the Albania of Western Europe, is perhaps beneath him, no wonder he is pleading for the Union.
Yet, as many of our readers have been quick to point out, he is the author of his own potential misfortune. He was prominent in the Cabinet that drove devolution, thinking the halfway house would satisfy everyone. He was warned it wouldn't but, as usual, he knew better. Those who have had a taste of power now want more of it – as I have written here before, genies are hard to put back in bottles. And those who are paying for it, and who are democratically disadvantaged by it – the English – are justly aggrieved, and wish to be governed on the same terms.
That is why to many English people "Britishness" means nothing other than a series of (often quite glorious) historical facts. "Britain", to me, is now simply a geographical entity. The English have not destroyed the Union: the Scots have, and that was their right. Mr Brown's piece reminded me of those rather sad and romantic old men with military moustaches who used to bang on about "The Empire" well into the 1960s. His banging on about "The Union" is every bit as anachronistic, and as futile. Whether out of blinkeredness, stupidity or cynicism, he simply doesn't realise what is going on in England or in his own country.
The process Labour started with devolution – a stupid piece of constitutional vandalism that is likely to have no equal in the history of these islands – now demands what psychologists call "closure". Scotland is overdue for its confrontation with reality. It is a grown-up nation, and cannot go on being the dependent relative. The English must be allowed the same democratic rights as the Scots. If this means there is never a Labour government at Westminster again, because of the loss of Scottish lobby-fodder, then that is a blow we shall just all have to learn to bear.
In 1997, at the time of the referendum on devolution, the correct choice to offer – as Gladstone wanted to with the Irish in 1886 – was Home Rule. Did the Scots wish to be independent or not? But out of cowardice and self-preservation Labour did not give them that choice, preferring to set up inequalities and to bleed the English taxpayer white. That choice must now be put to the Scots again, to lance this boil and take the heat out of the growing resentment and anger of the English. And that is why, in my very humble opinion, all sensible Scots should vote SNP on May 3.
The Scots destroyed the Union – so vote SNP
By Simon Heffer
I have been trying to remember the last time I felt British. It must be at least 15 years ago. Ironically, it was just before I wrote a book about one of the most British Scotsmen in history, Thomas Carlyle. Here was a man who, when writing from his home in Dumfriesshire, or from Edinburgh, completed his address not with "Scotland" but with "NB": North Britain. In early Victorian times we were, in the constitutional sense, one nation. But those days are gone, and may never return.
It was on happy visits to Edinburgh to research my book that I realised there was a problem. The academics who helped me could not have been more charming to this upstart Englishman who presumed to write about one of their most renowned figures. But I realised Scotland had become, since my youthful visits, a foreign country.
We English had bought into the Union completely. We had never batted an eyelid when Scotland sent its sons to govern us as prime minister. In my lifetime there had been Macmillan and Home, and in the decades before that Rosebery, Campbell-Bannerman, Balfour and the Ulster Scot Bonar Law. However, once the Scots were made, thanks to the evils of democracy, to be ruled by a radical Englishwoman, Margaret Thatcher, they seemed to decide that, after all, self-government might be better.
That was the mental state in which I found them in the early 1990s. Instinctively, I didn't blame them. None of us, realising a national identity of our own, wishes to be ruled by what we regard as a foreign power. One reason I regard Gladstone as one of our greatest leaders is that he realised, in the teeth of opposition from a bovine Tory party and from some of his supporters, the impossibility of coercing Ireland. I detected a movement in Scotland that would demand Home Rule: and since the notion of English troops enforcing the Union on the streets of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen was unthinkable, it occurred to me that they had better have it.
Factors other than Mrs Thatcher helped the Scots towards this new sensibility. They had not merely been England's partner in empire, they had led the drive for it: and once empire was over, the shared British project had rather less purpose to it. There was, though, one very strong reason to keep up membership, and that was the huge annual subsidy paid by the English to the Scots: around ££11 billion currently. One reason Scotland hated Mrs Thatcher was that she was inimical to its addiction to welfarism.
So it was clear, even before Labour came to power in 1997, that a new accommodation would have to be reached. It may be an act of economic, strategic and political madness for the Scots to wish to break up the marital home: but grown-ups have to be allowed to make even the most awful mistakes, for they are often the only way of learning what is, indeed, sensible. Labour thought, though, that it had hit upon the ideal solution: a halfway house between marriage and divorce, a form of bigamy called "devolution". The old spouse remains at Westminster, deals with the big issues affecting the family, and pays most of the bills. The lover, though, is set up in luxury in Edinburgh, and is there to indulge those selfish little impulses that make one feel free of serious constraints.
Inevitably, though, the spouse's family, on learning of the arrangement, start to find reasons to dispute it: and when told that there can be no disputation, become resentful. Devolution was offered to the Scots in 1997. They accepted it. Their own parliament began work in 1999. It remains an ongoing mechanism to extract money from the English. The English have no say in how it is spent. The Scots, however, retain (through 59 MPs at Westminster) a say in how the money of English taxpayers is spent on English public services. This preposterous inequity has for eight years been shrugged off by Labour – English as well as Scots – and the English have now had enough.
Be in no doubt: the self-serving and meretricious argument Gordon Brown advanced in this newspaper last Saturday about the Union was designed purely to sustain his campaign to secure legitimacy for a Scotsman, sitting for a Scottish seat, being Prime Minister of England. Even before he can reach that eminence the Scots will hold a parliamentary election, on May 3, and the Scottish National Party may well win. If it does, it has promised a referendum on independence. Were such a plebiscite to succeed, Mr Brown would be finished – unless he could find a seat in England, or unless he scaled down his ambition and became leader of the opposition in the People's Republic of Scotland. Since running a bad-weather theme park, or the Albania of Western Europe, is perhaps beneath him, no wonder he is pleading for the Union.
Yet, as many of our readers have been quick to point out, he is the author of his own potential misfortune. He was prominent in the Cabinet that drove devolution, thinking the halfway house would satisfy everyone. He was warned it wouldn't but, as usual, he knew better. Those who have had a taste of power now want more of it – as I have written here before, genies are hard to put back in bottles. And those who are paying for it, and who are democratically disadvantaged by it – the English – are justly aggrieved, and wish to be governed on the same terms.
That is why to many English people "Britishness" means nothing other than a series of (often quite glorious) historical facts. "Britain", to me, is now simply a geographical entity. The English have not destroyed the Union: the Scots have, and that was their right. Mr Brown's piece reminded me of those rather sad and romantic old men with military moustaches who used to bang on about "The Empire" well into the 1960s. His banging on about "The Union" is every bit as anachronistic, and as futile. Whether out of blinkeredness, stupidity or cynicism, he simply doesn't realise what is going on in England or in his own country.
The process Labour started with devolution – a stupid piece of constitutional vandalism that is likely to have no equal in the history of these islands – now demands what psychologists call "closure". Scotland is overdue for its confrontation with reality. It is a grown-up nation, and cannot go on being the dependent relative. The English must be allowed the same democratic rights as the Scots. If this means there is never a Labour government at Westminster again, because of the loss of Scottish lobby-fodder, then that is a blow we shall just all have to learn to bear.
In 1997, at the time of the referendum on devolution, the correct choice to offer – as Gladstone wanted to with the Irish in 1886 – was Home Rule. Did the Scots wish to be independent or not? But out of cowardice and self-preservation Labour did not give them that choice, preferring to set up inequalities and to bleed the English taxpayer white. That choice must now be put to the Scots again, to lance this boil and take the heat out of the growing resentment and anger of the English. And that is why, in my very humble opinion, all sensible Scots should vote SNP on May 3.
posted by erc @ 7:53 pm
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