The Progressive Union
What was a slow rumble of discontent, in part originally fuelled by Mel Gibson’s pseudo historical film Braveheart, has steadily grown into a loud clamouring for schism. The Union between the English and Scottish parliaments, established three hundred years ago this May, is under threat. The fabric of Britain is set to be torn apart by a noxious mixture of Scottish and English nationalisms, aided and abetted by parochial political opportunism on both sides of the border. The Scottish elections in three months time may decide the future of Britain.
There are strong majorities in favour of English devolution in both England (61%) and Scotland (51%). Make no mistake, however, an English parliament would set Britain on the road to oblivion, Westminster as it exists today would become useless. Start tugging at loose threads and pretty soon the whole garment unravels.
David Cameron’s Conservatives, once staunch defenders of the UK, have realised that they can no longer hope to win any seats in Wales or Scotland. They have become an English party so, naturally, they will do anything they can to weaken the links between England and the Celtic fringes – all the better for their political prospects, forget what is in the countries interest. If they can’t have the whole cake, they’ll chuck it out of the window and deny it (and its benefits) to everyone. Add this to the Tories cheap shots at Gordon Brown for being Scottish (Alan Duncan said that it had become ‘almost impossible’ for Britain to have a Scot Prime Minister) and you have a disturbing concoction of English exceptionalism and naked political calculation.
The Scottish National Party has called for a referendum on Scottish Independence and insists that Scotland would benefit from cutting its links with England. They forget to mention the fact that, under the Barnett formula, the average Scot receives £7,346 in public funding per year – well above the English amount. England subsidizes Scotland or, if you like, the richer area of the country supports the poorer region. Here is the basic principle of redistribution of wealth in action. Abolish Britain and you cut off less wealthy Scots from the aid that English taxes bring.
Who, then, can speak for Britain? Looking slightly forlorn, it is Labour who stand as the true defenders of the Union. This is an odd position for a left-wing party to take, and may make many progressives feel uneasy. After all, is nationalism not a narrow and crass concept to the true left-wing conscience? Should the left not welcome the dissolution of Britain, laden as it is with its hardly-spotless history of Empire and conquest?
In theory maybe, but as so often, reality renders conjecture useless. The Union is a progressive force and to see it smashed would be a triumph for the Isolationist right. In England, the result would be permanent Conservative administration. Untamed by the leftie leanings of Scottish and Welsh voters, England would drift ever further to the Right. For all its talk of becoming another ‘Celtic tiger’ economy like Ireland, Scotland is in no position to roar. The SNP manifesto forgets to mention that the North Sea Oil fields, upon which the Scottish nationalist places so much hope, are running dry.
Would an English parliament be any better than the one we have at present? England is as divided as Britain and the economic imbalance between North and South in England is very great. When there are mutterings of an English parliament, what we are really hearing of is talk of a South of England parliament, constantly in thrall to the massive Tory block vote in the South East.
On the world stage, Britain united speaks with far more force and authority than its component parts would were they to be divided. How much bargaining power would Scotland or Wales have in the brutal fisticuffs of EU trade negotiations? Precious little, to be sure. In the fierce jungle of international global relations Britain retains some measure of influence and respect and much of this would evaporate if the Union was to fissure.
Britain is good for everyone. Not in a crude nationalist sense, but in a practical and progressive way that allows pluralism. We must emphasise and defend the big British tent, rather than retreat back to the medieval fortresses of difference and allow assorted pernicious forces to tear our country apart.
-posted by Adam
The situation at the moment is a SCANDAL. The fact that New Labour can use their MPs from Scotland, Wales and NI to vote on English only matters in order to force through controversial legislation that applies only to the English, is shocking and surely breaches the fundamental basics of the principles of democracy as well as fairness.
Furthermore the Barnett Formula is not redistributing money from richer areas to poorer areas - it is giving Scotland and Wales enough additional revenue to give their citizens freebies whether these citizens are rich or poor - everyone in Scotland is entitled to free university education whether they are the son of a Duke or the son of a roadsweeper. Everyone in England has to pay £3000 a year tuition fees and that includes our poorest citizens.
Every elderly person in Scotland is entitled to free nursing care without having to sell their homes -and that includes Scotlands wealthiest citizens. The elderly in England have to sell their homes to pay for nursing care. End result - the Scots can leave a legacy to their next generation. The English can't.
The Welsh have just announced free prescriptions for everybody in Wales regardless of how wealthy they already are.
Bearing these examples in mind ( there are others ) I would argue that that the Barnett Formula takes from the poor and gives to the rich - i am sure you will agree.
Regards
A disenfranchised and disadvantaged Englishman
(Comment this)
This brings me on to another point- the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) believes an English Parliament is the only way of saving the Union. But that is just our belief. No-one can know for certain what the future holds. What we must not do is ignore the wishes of the majority of the people of England (as you rightly point out, 61% of people in England want an English Parliament), out of a fear that it may weaken the Union.
The Barnett Formula is most certainly not the “basic principle of redistribution of wealth in action”. Far from it. The Barnett Formula allocates resources throughout the UK based on population sizes, not need. Only when we have a formula that allocates resources throughout the UK on the basis of need will we see proper redistribution of wealth.
You ask, “Who, then, can speak for Britain?”. The question should be, in an asymmetrically governed UK, who can speak for England? Westminster is the UK Parliament. We have a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly and (hopefully) an Assembly for Northern Ireland. Who speaks for England? There is no political institution to speak up for England, even though England’s students are the only ones in the UK to pay University tuition fees. Only England’s pensioners have to sell their homes to afford personal care (in Scotland it is provided free), and only in England are life-saving cancer drugs like Herceptin unavailable on the NHS, denied on the grounds of cost (they are provided free in Scotland). And all the time, it is England’s money used to make University education, long-term personal care and life-saving drugs FREE in Scotland.
We need an English Parliament and Executive to speak for England. Otherwise, the Union, from England’s point of view, is simply not worth saving.
(Comment this)
First off the Barnett Formula is not about wealth redistribution. That may have been its goal originally but now it simply maintains a higher level of spending in Scotland when there are regions of England and Wales that are far more in need of increased levels of social spending than Scotland. As Joel Barnett says:
"It was never meant to last this long, but it has gone on and on and it has become increasingly unfair to the regions of England. I didn’t create this formula to give Scotland an advantage over the rest of the country when it comes to public funding."
This higher spending in Scotland has been maintained because successive governments are scared of the separatists. It is funding that is secured by the threat of independence.
Have you considered that this progressive union that you speak of is actually a hamper to race relations? At the moment we have a chancellor besotted with inculcating a sense of Britishness in the immigrant population, but he's doing this at a time when the indigenous population is moving towards English/Scottish and Welsh as their primary identities. As the CRE reported:
<i>In England, white English participants perceived themselves as English first and British second, while ethnic minority participants perceived themselves as British; none identified as English, which they saw as meaning exclusively white people. Thus, the participants who identified most strongly with Britishness were those from ethnic minority backgrounds resident in England.</i>
And
<i>We therefore found that most black Caribbean participants identified as black British in England, as black Scottish in Scotland and as black Welsh in Wales....it may be that partial devolution in Scotland and Wales means that Scottish, Welsh or even European identities become more attractive than a British identity.</i>
The problem with Britishness is that it is standing in the way of creating a progressive, civic, sense of Englishness.
Please see Why do we need an English parliament? and English Civic Nationalism
People on the left really need to move away from the idea that 'British' is the only acceptable inclusive identity. British pluralism has its roots in English pluralism, as does its democracy, liberalism, libertarianism and internationalism. Yasmin Alibai-Brown was right when she said that there was a 'white-flight' into Englishness, however she did not understand the reasons behind it - it's devolution not multiculturalism that has destroyed the concept of Britishness.
Opposing an English parliament for party-political reasons is just plain wrong. The English have a right to be governed as they see fit, and by who they vote for - just as any other nation on earth, including Scotland and Wales. It's highly probable that an English parliament would be elected on some form of PR which would (by today's opinion polls) leave the Conservatives with the plurality of the vote but without a majority.
England is divided, and we have successive British Governments to thank for that. We need an English Government to act in the interests of England. As far as I am concerned a good start in redistribution would be to 'redistribute' the UK parliament, government and civil service out of London to somewhere more equidistant between the national capitals (lets say Liverpool since they need the investment and it would be fun to see Boris Johnson enjoying the nightlife).
Who will speak for Britain? How about Brown, Blair, Hain, Falconer, Cameron, Ming Campbell....I could go on. Now tell me who speaks for England. (Comment this)
Scotland has a higher 'identifiable' spending figure than the UK, but then that has to cover the costs of providing government services to our 1/12 of the UK population spread over 1/3 of the landmass. London gets as much per head as Scotland, even before you include the £74bn of 'unidentified' expenditure which primarily benefits London and the South.
In any case, these figures take no heed of the revenues raised to cover them. On that front, thanks in part to oil but also to huge corporation tax receipts, Scotland has been in a surplus situation relative to the rest of the UK for most of the last 3 decades. In actual fact, this year the UK debt will be £35bn, taking it to a cumulative £700bn by 2010/11. Are your eyes watering yet, because mine certainly are - and as a Scottish taxpayer I'm already feeling a sharp pain in my wallet.
You argue that the Union is a progressive force - perhaps, though some in Baghdad might disagree with you as things stand. And as for regarding the Scots as your bolt-on accessory to keep England out of the clutches of the political right, I don't think I've heard a more patronising or offensive justification for union. Get out there and fight for the kind of England you want to live in yourself, and if you really want to marginalise the right, start arguing for proportional representation before the opportunity is lost for another generation.
You also ask how much bargaining power would Scotland or Wales have in the brutal fisticuffs of EU trade negotiations and give the answer 'precious little'. However, top civil servant Michael Aron might disagree with you there. See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6286827.stm
In any case, as Si Kahn sings 'what good is strength and muscle if you can only push and shove?'. Personally, I'd rather cut the post-imperial delusions of grandeur from under Blair and get on with building a progressive, internationalist, outward-looking Scotland. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results if you try doing that in England too :-) (Comment this)
Wales and Scotland currently have much better representation in the EU and have separately negotiated better subsidies for hill farmers. The British government negotiated nothing for English hill farmers. The Campaign for an English Parliament has never sought independence for England, nor for a federal Britain, but only for that "permissive autonomy" freely granted to Scotland. The scaled down UK Parliament would then represent Britain for reserved matters such as defence, foreign policy etc. The current concept of Britain is not progressive, it is 300 years old and has been permanently tampered with by this Government. What is needed is a new concept of what the respective nations (not regions) of Britain want together in the future. Who speaks for Britain? Gordon Brown, presumably, although he confuses British achievements with the English achievements of Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights. I ask Who speaks for England?
Scilla Cullen, Campaign for an English Parliament (Comment this)
Of course, nowhere did I argue that the Union as it stands now is perfect - far from it. There are inconsistancies and creases which should be ironed out, and the devolution program implemented by Labour was a messy and imperfect solution to the problem (which I wasn't ever particularly happy about). Thing is though, they had to throw the nationalists a bone after 1997 and limited devolution was a good practical solution.
As far as the Barnett formula goes - obviously it needs updating, but its flaws do not merit an English parliament.
I don't believe that the answer lies in abolishing or emasculating the Union, however, and this certainly would happen if England were given her own Parliament. With all the bits of the UK governing themselves it would only be a matter of time before they split up and went their seperate ways - something which wouldn't be good for anyone.
I don't 'hate' England at all. I have lived here alll my lfie and find it pleasent. I have always thought of myself as British rather than English though. I realise this is not a position shared by many other English people (or Scots) but I do genuinely feel that the component parts of Britain would be doing themselves a disservice if they decided to split. (Comment this)
Scilla Cullen,CEP (Comment this)
first, I really cant see any fucking difference between an English and a damn Scotish.. it is the same thing with two different names.. simple like that.
second, have you ever heard about federalism? well.. it is same discussion that the people of Okinawa in Japan wanted to separated from the rest of japan because.. well.. THEY ARE OKINAWANS! KKKKKKKKKKKK.. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, YOU MAKE ME LAUGH, YOU DAMN BRITS! (Comment this)