Labour Party

Guest article countering calls for ‘Parliament of the North’

Labour Needs to Grab English policy making by the Collar

and accept that the English do not want regionalisation

The Labour Party currently has two choices, it embraces Englishness and nurtures a progressive civic English national identity or it simply falls on its British sword, chanting ‘One Nation!’ as it disappears from England in much the same way as the Conservative Party have disappeared in Scotland. That statement might seem a tad over dramatic but the future prosperity of the British Labour party in England will be dire if it doesn’t adapt to changing attitudes towards Britain by the English.

The Labour party needs to accept that a problem exists in its relationship with England, that it is not just a scratch but a deep wound that will turn sceptic if left untreated. The first step of treatment must be an assessment of why Labour regionalisation policy lost its way and how it has damaged Labours relationship with its traditional English core vote.

Labour’s policy makers have to acknowledge that the form of regionalisation chosen was always going fail in the UK, especially in England. This was largely due to its creators making two fundamental mistakes when the concept was given political life.

They thought that it wouldn’t matter if both Wales and Scotland retained their historical and national identity within their regional borders whilst England due to her size and diversity would happily regionalise into smaller pieces, with no attempt made to retain her national identity. Unfortunately, for the Labour creators of UK regionalisation, the opposite has happened by default Englishness has grown and is now increasingly demanding her own political voice.

Labour needs to accept that they have mismanaged the first opportunity to decentralise Britain’s powerbase due to their unbalanced approach to devolution, meaning many in England now distrust them because of it.

It could have worked had both the Welsh and the Scottish national identities been deconstructed at the same time as they attempted to deconstruct England. For example, Southern Wales could have been made into a region with Devon and Cornwall, the north of Wales placed into a region with Liverpool or the Scottish lowlands made into a region with Northumberland.

If this had occurred then a truly ‘British regionalised state’ would have emerged, but this did not happen, begging the question; Why didn’t the Labour party implement full regionalisation to all the nations in 1998 when they had the chance to realign the UK’s national boundaries?

The answer to that question has some obvious, painful implications for English Labour supporters – but it could also help the Labour party find the solution to its English problem.

When they introduced regionalisation, Labour allowed themselves to be overly influenced by Scottish and Welsh MP’s, succumbing to their desire to retain and re-establish their own distinct ‘national’ identities from their larger ‘neighbour’. This approach would of course have been fine, had the same consideration been bestowed upon the people of England.

As a result, a large section of Labour’s traditional English voters now perceive that the party no longer identifies with English concerns and are starting to look elsewhere in a bid to find a party that represents them.

Labour urgently needs to alter this perception if they are to have any chance under the current political climate to establish a flourishing powerbase in England. They need to realise that a number of essentials must change now that Scotland and Wales are devolving nations, not just regions.

England, being the largest and most dominant country within the UK, requires a solution that is suitable to her needs and that recognises the research which clearly shows her people have no desire to be broken up into bite-sized ‘regions’.

Bringing power closer to the people only enhances decision making if it has the cohesive, integrated direction of an overseeing group, otherwise each region will fight with one another for jobs and money. Why would a rich region share with a poor region if they do not have a connection, a shared responsibility and a sense of togetherness? Just look at Boris Johnson and the Greater London region within the British setting. Already questions have been raised as to finances going elsewhere. Devolving power simply has to be balanced with a collective voice and an English First Minister working within an English parliament could accomplish this.

Taking regionalisation into super regions, i.e. creating a parliament for the north of England just accentuates the problem and would lead to unanswerable questions about where the north of England ends and the south of England starts. Also if you begin that process then why not have a parliament in the west, the south and the east of England as well. Then we are back into regionalisation and massive layers of government which has been rejected by the people of England.

Many in the Labour party would rightly state that it is important to ensure the smaller nations of the UK are politically and economically protected. However, simply having separate Scottish and Welsh Labour parties, in the absence of a separate ‘English Labour’ Party, is no longer acceptable. Establishing an English Labour Party, that produces its own English manifesto with English policies, working in conjunction with pre-existing Scottish and Welsh manifesto’s is absolutely essential.

If they can take control of the English policy, giving it the love, care and attention that it craves and deserves, then Labour might just be a master worth being loyal to…

Eddie Bone & James Black
Campaign for an English Parliament

 

 

Why Labour should support an English parliament

A devolved body could aid the party’s revival in England.

by Eddie Bone Published 9 July, 2012 – 11:34

“An English parliament would be accompanied by a resurgent Labour movement in England”.

The former Labour cabinet minister George Robertson declared that devolution would “kill nationalism stone dead”. Instead, it turned out to be the biggest threat the Union has ever faced. Devolution has given the Scottish National Party [SNP] the platform it needs to fulfil its dream of disbanding the United Kingdom.

Alex Salmond is proving just as adept at manipulating English public opinion as Scottish public opinion. The Campaign for an English Parliament , which I chair, has noticed a sharp increase in calls for English independence in line with the SNP’s campaign for Scottish independence. A ComRes survey for Newsnight showed that 36 per cent of people in England (and 47 per cent of skilled manual workers) now want England to become an independent state and to break up the United Kingdom.

The devolutionary problem is that it is too easy for nationalist politicians to indulge in political point scoring by blaming Westminster for their problems. And at a time of unprecedented public austerity these tensions are exacerbated yet further.

There are now distinct differences in state provision, including health, education (most notably tuition fees) and elderly care, between the different nations of the UK. These divisions are deliberately emphasised by nationalist politicians with the aim of inflaming national passions. And not only ostensibly nationalist politicians. Rhodri Morgan, Labour’s former First Minister for Wales, declared that his aim is to “make the English feel jealous”. But it is encouraging to hear Carwyn Jones now talk about the need for an English parliament.

The Union will only survive if it treats all its citizens fairly and equally. We need a solution that is fair to all the UK’s constituent nations, and that allows us to separate what divides us, from what unites us. If this is done in good faith, then there is no reason why a renewed Union cannot be cemented. At least, if it is done early enough, and before attitudes have hardened too far on all sides and the talk of independence becomes too entrenched

The only answer to these problems is to reinstate an English parliament matching those parliaments already granted to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. As Tony Benn proposed in his 1991 Private Member’s Bill “The Commonwealth of Britain”, this would mean national parliaments dealing with the issues that concern the individual nations of the United Kingdom. Just as there is no better way to drive a wedge between us than by treating the people of England as lesser citizens, there is no better way of reinforcing the UK family than by recognising our individual needs and treating us all equally.

The problem is that Westminster MPs will not vote for an English parliament that takes away most of their domestic powers. This is naked careerist self-interest. The remaining federal responsibilities would only need a much smaller Union parliament or, in other words, one with fewer MPs. And so even though every MP lost from the Union parliament could be an MP gained by an English parliament, they don’t want to take the risk of voting themselves out of a job.

There are other arguments against the restoration of an English parliament, of course. But they fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. The first of these is that an English Parliament would be inevitably dominated by the Conservative Party. Yet the same was said about the “inevitable” Labour domination of the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, which simply did not happen. Democracy has a tendency to find a balance. An English parliament would be accompanied by a resurgent Labour movement in England under an English Labour Party, which in turn would improve the party’s standing in Westminster.

Labour established devolution in the first place in order to defend Scotland and Wales from what it saw as the depredations of an over-mighty Conservative parliament at Westminster. The same opportunity is now presenting itself. For instance, England’s forests were put up for sale by the coalition but the forests of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were all protected by their respective parliaments.

The second argument is that the current problems with the restored Scottish parliament would be replicated in a restored English parliament. This is unlikely as long as the resentment now building in England is dealt before the Scottish independence referendum. Labour cannot wait, procrastination will be fatal. National Devolution has emphasised the fault lines within the Union. Indeed, rather than trying to deny that these exist it is necessary to cement the Union along these lines by going still further and creating a federal state – the only practical way of separating what divides us from what unites us.

Nor is England “too big” for a federation to work. A federation would directly address the problem of an out-sized England because English voting weight would affect only England itself. If a federation with England wouldn’t work then a Union without a federation’s protections certainly couldn’t – except of course it did, for nearly 300 years before being undermined by devolution.

In his book Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020?, the Welsh Conservative Assembly Member David Melding argued: “The best way to preserve Britain as a multi-national state is to accept that the UK…requires a new settlement. This settlement will need to be federal in character so that the sovereignties of the Home Nations and the UK State can be recognised in their respective jurisdictions”. Henry McLeish, the former First Minister of Scotland, was also the man who saw the Scotland Act through Westminster. When speaking to the Calman Commission (on Scottish Devolution) he said that the English need a voice, and that he doesn’t think that our current asymmetrical devolution can be sustained. Furthermore, and I quote: “We must move towards some balanced framework, a quasi-federal framework, where it can make some sense rather than the English feeling aggrieved. At the end of the day, their grief and their anger spills over on to us.”

It’s not too late to resolve the problems that devolution has caused. But time is short. What do you chose – dissolution of the UK or a federal UK? If the latter, then action is urgently needed.

Eddie Bone is the chair of The Campaign for an English Parliament.

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2 Comments on "Labour Party"

  1. David Nicholson | May 22, 2015 at 10:37 am | Reply

    The Scots have had their referendum. Since the UK GE, it is apparent that the SNP are using the current situation to begin positioning themselves for another referendum, triggered by one of two possibilities. First that the “Westminster Parliament” does not deliver all of the further powers which the SNP will insist were on offer, or that the UK (but not Scotland) votes to leave the EU. The media has reacted darkly to this approach, which flies in the face of the demonstrated will of the Scottish people. It appears that the SNP will ignore the wishes of Scotlands peoples because the outcome is not one they like. This is reprehensible and anti democratic. Whilst the Westminster machine bemoans and reacts to the SNP tactics, I hear not one word about the illegitimacy of such, given the outcome of the referendum.

    Now why would the UK Govt ignore such an abuse of the democratic process in Scotland? Why are they not defending the position the Scots democratically arrived at?

    The answer is plain. The Govt are not defending the democratic process, because we do not have one. We are currently living in the Elective Dictatorship which Lord Hailsham warned about. The LibLabCon cabal will defend THEIR rights with every power at their disposal. It appears that the move to regionalism, rejected by the North East then shelved as a similar fate was forecast to any similar vote taken elsewhere in England. The English had demonstrated their will in the North East and were likely to reject regionalism elsewhere, given a vote. It appears that the Westminster cabal, not liking the rejection are now set on imposing Westminster’s will, by other means. The SNP cannot therefore be blamed for their tactics, they are simply following a trail already set by Westminster.

    Given the above, I feel it is likely that whilst some lip service may be given to electoral reform at local level, (to further facilitate an already rejected regionalsation plan) the major parties will continue to deny the electorate any real change to the current, FPTP system which underpins the Elective Dictatorship. Without any changes to the latter, changes to the former are rendered impotent and meaningless.

    • David,

      I did some research and found out that the Council of Europe compiled a report into the UK Democratic systems as far back as 1996, the report was damning. This report has been deliberately kept secret for a purpose – to stop us from demanding PR with an Additional Member System.

      I found this out after reading the work of Dr James Wilkie of the Scotland UN Committee leaked this information in his article ‘Devolution and the Labour Myth’

      FPTP and the assymmetric devolution mess is being defended vexatiously by the UK elites because without it their powerbase will fall, that is why there is so much secrecy and dishonesty over the Devolution Cabinet Minute meetings because devolution was actually brought about by threat of international sanctions rather than Labour’s devolution policies.

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