A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

A Constitutional Curate as PM?

With a lot of things in life we don't get everything we want. The British Constitution is a good example. Currently, we have a Prime Minister of the UK who represents a Scottish seat (a sizeable chunk of his workload passed on to an MSP!), but who has cavalier ideas for England. Brown is the first Prime Minister since the Earl of Home (later known as Sir Alec Douglas Home) to represent a Scottish seat. Before Lord Home, it was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a 100 years ago. However, unlike them and other MPs from Scotland of their time, they truly came to a United Kingdom parliament. Brown presides over a hybrid of his own making, and that of the devious Falconer and shifty Blair.


Now he thinks he's got some good ideas for meddling even more. Of course, none of this affects his own backyard, with its over-representation, over-financed devolved government, and the rest. He has two deluded suggestions on offer. First, he has proposed "regional ministers" in the made-up EU-inspired regions of England. So we are getting England carved up for good by a Scot? The best of these "regions" is the so-called South-East. This vaste swathe stretches from Banbury to Bognor, from Dover to Oxford. It has no cohesive community feel about it whatsoever. But this matters not to Gordon Brown, who speaks of Britishness as if it were a dose of medicine to be taken at regular intervals to ward off any thoughts of parity for England.

Just as we have appointed ministers for each region of England, I propose that to increase the accountability of local and regional decision-making the House consider creating committees to review the economies and public services of each region - and we will propose a regular question time for regional ministers.
Second, he denies England by saying -

But while we will listen to all proposals to improve our constitution in the light of devolution, we do not accept the proposal for English votes for English laws which would create two classes of MPs - some entitled to vote on all issues, some invited to vote only on some. We will do nothing to put at risk the Union.
Is he thinking straight? What on earth is he if he isn't a class apart from English MPs? The man needs corrective therapy, but then what's new. Blair was semi-detached in his thinking. If you crossed him, he would just say "well, yeah, look" as if to say "shut up, the decision's made!" Any risk to the Union is from this benighted fist-clunker!
Now is the time to rise up and let this new PM know what we think. The people of England are not going to be trifled with by a man who has democratic deficiencies on this scale!

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