Well we’ve lost our brief opportunity to send scad loads of illegal immigrants back home north in the window between Scotland becoming independent and it joining the European Union 🙂
Now thing get interesting … because of the promises of the “No” campaigners, Scotland has been given some vague promises of greater devolution with more powers for the Scottish parliament.
Which has been immediately seized upon by the Welsh parliament and the Northern Ireland parliament as justifying extra powers for their own parliaments.
But what about an English parliament? The Tories have ruled that out straight away. I’m not sure I want an English parliament, but I do know that I would like to have a discussion on the merits of one. Ruling out the option of an English parliament is representative of the contempt the Tories have for the will of the people.
If the Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Irish are mature enough for the responsibility of devolved powers, shouldn’t the English be considered mature enough too? Admittedly, the English do have a tendency to send too many vote the Tories’ way, but perhaps giving us some additional responsibility will lead us to leave our childish ways behind us.
But perhaps England is too large a unit rub shoulders with Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in a UK parliament. Perhaps we should be considering a larger number of smaller sub-countries. Vehement English nationalists would be up in arms at the suggestion that we can sub-divide England – which by itself is a reason to consider the idea.
England as a country is an artificial creation brought about through conquest, and there is no reason to devolve powers to England if those powers could be devolved to smaller and more sensibly sized sub-countries. As an example, what about :-
- Cornwall (and probably Devon too).
- Wessex (Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Dorset, Somerset, and Gloucester)
- Northumbria (Lancaster, Yorkshire, Durham, and Cumbra)
- Mercia (the bits in the middle)
- London.
In the same sense that the UK is too large for us to feel connected to the government, so would England be.
If we are going to look again at how the UK is structured, we need to look closely at all the options no matter how radical. It’s all too possible that the politicians will do as little as possible to keep their comfortable lives the same.