I am fearful for my country. For the record, my country is the United Kingdom. I am English, British and a passionate Unionist. I believe in the Union and want it to continue for centuries more.
The Scottish referendum nearly broke up the Union and destroyed my country. 45% of the vote on an 85% turnout should give all Unionists pause for thought. A huge chunk of the people in one of the partner nations of the Union have decided it's not for them. For that reason, even more than the vows made by the 3 party leaders, there will have to be further devolution for Scotland.
There is something we're overlooking though. One of the important critiques by the Yes campaign was that Westminster wasn't theirs. It was seen as essentially the English Parliament to which Scottish MPs were allowed occasional walk-on parts under sufferance. That's a shocking indictment of the system considering the Prime Minister 2007-10 was the very Scottish Gordon Brown, and we've seen a lot of prominent Scottish politicians at Westminster: Alistair Darling, Douglas Alexander, George Robertson, John Reid, Malcolm Rifkind, Robin Cook, Helen Liddell, Des Browne, Ian Lang, James MacKay, Derry Irvine, Charles Kennedy, Menzies Campbell and Iain Macleod, not to mention the Scots who represent seats in England like Michael Ancram, Liam Fox and Michael Gove. Why is that?
Part of the answer might be the different political traditions in Scotland compared to England. But another part of it surely is that Westminster, because of the lopsided devolution we currently have with a Scottish Parliament but no English Parliament, has to double up as a UK and English Parliament. A lot of the business that comes before it is essentially English not British and consequently a lot of the debates are English not British. That's not the end of it of course because the current rules allow Scottish MPs to vote on English and rest of UK matters. With plans for further devolution to Scotland a situation that was intolerable in theory risks becoming intolerable in practice.
One solution being touted is English Votes for English Laws (EVEL). That may be superficially attractive but it entrenches the nationalist view that Westminster is really the English not UK Parliament. If it was a really attractive idea, then why do Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland elect separate Parliament/Assemblies rather than simply restrict votes to MPs from those nations? Perhaps for the same reason we don't abolish Kent County Council and suggest the Kent MPs just get together and run things. If you're going to have a separate body to deal with specific issues, then its probably best to elect people especially for the purpose. The Holyrood elections are conspicuously not identical to Westminster elections in Scotland.
We're not going to get rid of the devolved Parliament and Assemblies. No-one wants to. So what should we do? We need to keep two things in mind: we want to settle devolution, and re-bind the Union together. To me that means one thing: an Equal Settlement for everyone.
If Scotland is to get more powers, then Wales and Northern Ireland should get exactly the same powers. If Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved Parliaments, then so should England. At that point Westminster would return to definitely being the UK Parliament again, with all MPs definitely equal to each other with the same voting rights. The United Kingdom would return to being a united partnership and stop looking suspiciously like an English empire.
The first implication of this is that deciding the new Scottish powers isn't solely a Scottish question. If we're all going to have the same deal, we all need to be involved now.
The second implication flows from this. One thorny issue has already raised its head - what to do about the Barnett formula which allocates public spending to the nations. Some Scottish politicians seem very keen on keeping it, others want Scotland to fund its spending solely out of Scottish taxation. But this presents big problems for Wales who find Barnett is unfair to them, but would find funding all their spending out of Welsh taxes ever more difficult. We're a United Kingdom so moving money around shouldn't be a problem, but we clearly need a new way of doing it, so that's one big topic to talk about.
The third implication is that we need to start talking about where we devolve to in England. EVEL at Westminster isn't an Equal Settlement, but a separate English Parliament on the same terms as the Scottish Parliament would be. That's not the only option though. Daniel Hannan MEP and Douglas Carswell favour putting county councils and cities in England on the same footing as the Scottish Parliament. John Prescott has come out in favour of regional Parliaments in England which have the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. Even if you favour the regional option, there are different ways to do it - do you follow the regions we use for European elections (e.g. South East, North West etc.) or do you make bigger regions based on culture and identity like Northern England, Midlands, West Country, London, Home Counties and East Anglia?
There's lots to discuss but we need to start talking now. The Campaign for an Equal Settlement starts here.
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