The Labour party have some bloody nerve claiming that Sir Malcolm Rifkind's proposal for an English Grand Committee to prevent Scottish and Welsh MPs at Westminster voting on measures concerning only England would make Scottish and Welsh MPs second class members of Parliament and lead to the break up of the United Kingdom.
Firstly of all, English MPs are already second class members of the House because they can vote on measures specially concerning only Scotland and Wales because these powers have already been devolved to MSPs and AMs in Hollyrood and Cardiff Bay, yet Scottish MPs such as Gordon McStalin himself are presently allowed to vote on issues that solely concern England.
Finally and most importantly of all, if the Union does break-up, it will not be because David Cameron might adopt Rifkind's proposal if he won the next General Election because the dissolution horse has already bolted from the stable back in 1997. Who was responsible for that? Yes, McStalin, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Separatists. If these interests were so concerned about the future of the U.K. they should have given more careful consideration of their original proposals for Celtic devolution.
Far from causing the break-up of the U.K., the Rifkind plan is only a symptom of the botched job the left did with the original devolution process. The original devolution proposals were never about devolving power to the peoples of Scotland and Wales, they were about preventing future Conservative governments in Westminster from exercise executive and legislative power in Labour's Celtic heartlands, while also blunting the appeal of the equally left-wing separatists at the ballot box. Far from causing the break-up of the U.K., the Rifkind plan might actually save the Union by both addressing English grievances of Labour's Celtic overlordship while creating a truly federal United Kingdom in line with the devolution models of other Anglosphere nations in North America and the South-West Pacific.
2 comments:
Agree with the comment on Labour's cheak. However I suspect Sir Malcolm Rofkind knows his proposals don't go far enough.
In the end you have to have English votes, English laws and an English Executive operating at the same level and with equivalent insitutions. This means an English parliament.
Personally I favour John Redwood's ideas on a federated parliament. ( Its cheaper too ! )
Do I sense a tone of racial hatred here towards the non-English? It appears that you believe that Celtic politicians should be marginalised as they are Celtic? And something to do with that Labour have their heartlands in the 'Celtic' regions? Well, if you read your history you'd understand why this is the case. It has nothing to do with 'Celtic', but purely to do with the demographics and that areas such as in scotland and wales as well as Yorkshire were dominated by the Working classes, you know, those people who give lots of money for the rich to live well.
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