THE NEED FOR AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT

Speaking at the recent Scottish Labour conference in Dundee, Gordon Brown let slip a couple of matters that shed light on Labour’s economic policy.

As has been alleged already, Mr Brown is pumping the line that the banking crisis is all a global problem requiring a global solution:

‘I believe there is an emerging consensus that where capital flows are global we cannot just have national supervision, but need global supervision too.’

Mr Brown set out four areas to be covered by his new global financial policy:

The regulation of tax havens
International principles to end the ‘short-term bonus culture’
The monitoring of the whole financial system
A global framework for international financial supervision

Mr Brown asserted that:

‘You solve a global problem not by separatist solutions but by us all working together.’

Mr Brown then continued to give an example of the benefits of us all working together:

‘Let us remember that, when Scottish banks collapsed, the whole of the UK came together to stand by our banking system to prevent the banks from total collapse. With an investment bigger than the Scottish administration’s entire budget and giving guarantees that no country the size of Scotland could ever have been able to give.’

This is disingenuous. From where in the UK did all the money come from for the bail out of the Scottish banks? Scotland, by Mr Brown’s own admission could not afford it. Northern Ireland is scarcely able to underwrite such largesse, and ditto Wales.

It is England where the money has come from. And when all the hundreds of £billions were being showered onto the Scottish banks, who was supposed to be representing English interests? The reality is that no one did. England was simply looted, and Mr Brown is determined to loot England even more. He continued by saying that he would uphold the findings of the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution - whatever they might be - and further alleged that:

‘People know that what scars Scotland is not its border but its poverty.’

In fact Scotland is one of the wealthier regions of the UK. This kind of greedy, self-centred whinging by Labour’s McMafia is unjustified and uncalled for.

Mr Brown is trying to shift responsibility for the governance of British banking onto some global institution. He is trying to dodge the issue. It does not require a global supervision to stop greedy bankers in the UK helping themselves to English taxpayers’ money, nor to stop Labour ministers using English taxpayers’ money to lavish extortionate pensions upon incompetent banking fat cats.

We do not need Mr Brown and Labour grandstanding as global leaders. Their bombast does not absolve them from their squandering of English taxpayers’ money bailing out a banking cartel and the ruination of the economy for a generation to come.

We need an English parliament to represent English interests.