British Votes On British Laws

David Cameron is beating the old “English votes” drum again.

Of course, we all know that, whether with a tiny majority (although that is psephologically mind-boggling), or else leading the largest party in a hung Parliament, he would not be sacrificing even one vote on the floor of the House of Commons. And he would need to have won both more than one seat in Scotland and more than one seat in Wales in order to bring about either of those states of affairs.

So he is not going to do it.

And no one is going to care, because his party will have won either the majority of seats in England (although that is psephologically mind-boggling), or at least the single largest number of such seats.

Likewise, John Smith would probably never have legislated for devolution, and certainly not in the form that now exists. He was an old Cabinet hand, and thus at the opposite end of the spectrum from Blair, who was not really interested in politics at all, never mind experienced in it when he became Prime Minister.

So Smith would have presented the question as answered by the fact of a Labour Government headed by himself. If pushed (although by whom?), he might have um-ed and ah-ed about how things are always promised in Opposition that turn out to be impractical in Government, but that the 1979 Assembly proposal might just about be feasible, provided that it took fifty per cent of the eligible vote in a referendum. It would not have done so. And that would have been that.

But he would mostly have got on with doing economically social democratic things while not doing morally and socially unconservative ones. That would have pleased Scotland, and plenty of other parts of the country, no end. Not least, he would have done as he always promised, legislating for employment rights to begin with employment and to apply regardless of the number of hours worked. That still has not happened, twelve years into a Labour Government. It really would be his legacy. Any candidate not promising it next time is not worth a vote.

And Cameron’s failure to deliver “English votes on English laws”, would that not leave the problem that it is designed to remedy? No, because that problem does not exist. The Parliament of the United Kingdom reserves the right to legislate in any policy area for any part of the United Kingdom, with that legislation overriding any enactment of any devolved body should the two conflict. It does not need to enact any specific piece of such legislation. It only needs to be able to do so. And no one disputes that it is so able. So there is no “West Lothian Question”.

That said, it would be no bad thing if such legislation were indeed enacted routinely. The potential problems from such as the STUC, insofar as they were not just blustering anyway, presupposed a Labour or Labour-led Executive at Holyrood, doing things of which such as the STUC approved, or at least declining to do things of which they disapproved. That no longer applies. And there would be little or no union-based or similar trouble in Wales. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Any sort of enthusiasm for devolution of the part of any significant part of the Scottish Labour Party was always an aberration, occurring only among those of a generation which otherwise saw little or no hope of Ministerial office for any length of time, if at all. Yet even they denied the Scottish devolved body the borrowing powers of a local authority, indicating that, even before it came about, they already held it in scorn. Scottish Labour is now reverting to its historical norm of this subject. Within the situation as it now exists, Westminster’s routine enactment of overriding legislation would suit Scottish Labour down to the ground.

Welsh Labour has never been enthusiastic, to say the very least, about devolution, and, right up to the present Secretary of State, it still is not. It denied the Welsh devolved body even the revenue-raising powers, never mind the borrowing powers, of a local authority. Within the situation as it now exists, Westminster’s routine enactment of overriding legislation would strike Welsh Labour as the very least that could and should be done.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, have inherited both the grave doubts of many in the SDP (the party that George Cunningham joined), and also the true character of the Liberal Party: locally communitarian and populist, and therefore no more (or less) British federalist than European federalist, but instead fully in favour of whatever delivers the locally communitarian and populist things desired, and not of anything else.

The parts of Scotland and Wales where the Lib Dems are strong are parts where the No vote on devolution was strong (relatively in Scotland, absolutely in Wales), where the abstention rate was high, and where the view is now firmly entrenched that devolution has brought neglect. If Westminster were prepared to enact legislation in the local communitarian and populist interest of those areas over the heads of Holyrood and Cardiff, then the Scottish and Welsh Lib Dems would be all for it, just so long as they agreed with the legislation itself. The easiest way to ensure that they were would be to involve them in drafting it.

Watching the SNP and Plaid Cymru trying to justify voting against the measures that pleased either Scottish and Welsh Labour or the Scottish and Welsh Lib Dems, now that would be a true joy to behold.

The hardest nuts to crack – indeed, the only nuts to crack – would be the Scottish and Welsh Tories, so terrified of being branded “English” that, with a section of the English Tories, they would be the least Unionist people in the room.