Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Monday, 10 December 2007
Problem Solved
David William Donald Cameron, of the Isle of Jura, denounces “narrow English nationalism”, as well he might. But what is he going to do about it? No further legislation is necessary. Instead, the Parliament of the United Kingdom should simply avail itself of its right to legislate in any policy area for any part of the United Kingdom, with that legislation prevailing over any enactment of any devolved body. That is what the devolution legislation says, and anyone who objects to it ought therefore to have opposed devolution. I bet they didn’t.
Cameron does not come from Jura. He is no more from Jura than Penelope iw from Fortrose or Joanna Lumley is from Dumfrieshire - these are the places where Ms Keith and Ms Lumley have boltholes.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, if you want to force unpopular legislation down the Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish gullets you will probably get the political situation that you do not want. A true disciple of Milosovic.
Or if you like the Colonel Blimps who spent much of the late 19th and early 20th century trying to sabotage Irish autonomy within the UK. Result - well ring Dublin and ask Bertie Ahern for details.
You voted against devolution in the referendum, then? Because this is what it means, and if you don't like it, then you should have voted against it.
ReplyDeleteThe popularity or otherwise of the policies would depend on what they were. And they would at least exist. The SNP was elected to do one thing, but is absolutely determined not to do it while there is breath in the body of Lord Salmond KT OM CH, The Grand Old Man Who Destroyed Scottish Nationalism Way Back In The Noughties.
Everything else is worthy but unremarkable populist tinkering with road tolls and such like. Is that it? Yes. If you really believe in independence, then you should leave the SNP.
As for Ireland, it would never have happened if huge numbers of Gaelic Catholics, none of them conscripts, had not been away fighting in the British Armed Forces at the time.
And as for Cameron's Scottishness, there have been mutterings about it from Day One. If Brown really does hand over to the unambiguously English Miliband or Balls before the June 2010 Election, then that will be the end of the line for a man whose English public school, whose Oxbridge degree, whose marriage into the English baronetage and whose safe Tory seat in (these days) the Home Counties are all part and parcel of his being a classic posh Scot.
Freezing council tax in preparation for an income based local government tax is tinkering? Cutting business rates? Even as of today even considering returning the setting of business rates to local councils?
ReplyDeleteDid I vote for home rule? Yes. Half a loaf is better than nothing. You take what is on the table and see if you can get more later.
In 1921/22 in southern Ireland Michael Collins and his supporters realised that they could not get anything better than the deal for a Free State on the table so he accepted it. De Valera did not and provoked the Irish civil war.
However De Valera woke to reality and got into government, amending the state towards something his supporters wanted. He then had it endorsed in 1937 when he inaugurated a new constitution - the one that is in force today.
In 1949, ironically by Michael Collin's party, southern Ireland formally declared itself a republic, having had a President from 1938.
Concerning Irish catholics in the UK army, why did Sinn Fein do so well in the local government elections in late 1919 after most had been demobilised? It partly because your ideological forbears stubborness on this issue had destroyed the credibility of Redmond's Irish Party. Redmond himself died of a broken heart as much because of the intransigance of the Blimps as the rise of militant republicanism.
P.S. I am not or ever have been a member of the SNP.
"Freezing council tax in preparation for an income based local government tax is tinkering? Cutting business rates? Even as of today even considering returning the setting of business rates to local councils?"
ReplyDeleteCompared to independence, yes.
"Did I vote for home rule? Yes. Half a loaf is better than nothing. You take what is on the table and see if you can get more later."
Then this is what you voted for. If you don't like it, then you should have voted against it.
Now that the SNP is the main obstacle to independence, who are you going to vote for next time, and why?
"Then this is what you voted for. If you don't like it, then you should have voted against it."
ReplyDeleteDoes the words "gradual" or "compromise" exist in your dictionary? Rome, let alone the Vatican was not built in a day.
That is politics. You may not have noticed that Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are now setting up a constitutional commission to look into extending powers of the Parliament.
Or is your doctorine "fanatacism all the way"
Further devolution will never get through the only body that can grant it. You'd actually have more (though not much more) chance with an English PM. You'd have absolutely none with either Brown or Cameron. And then what would you do? Vote SNP? That hasn't got you anywhere so far.
ReplyDeleteThe Constitutional Commission met with Brown and Cameron's blessing. Indeed recently London granted more powers to Wales.
ReplyDeleteParliament is Mr Brown's poodle and he is not going to publicly undermine his protege Ms Alexander who initiated the scheme. It would just give more grist to the SNP mill.
Indeed the Tories are sounding more enthusiastic (!) about more home rule than Labour.
It'd never get through Parliament. Indeed, I doubt that it would ever even be introduced there, not least because Brown will never agree with any specific proposal.
ReplyDeleteThe English Nationalist tendency on the Tory benches might be sympathetic, but nobody else would be, least of all Scottish Labour MPs, now the most hardline Unionists in the place, and more or less openly opposed to devolution at all.
And it is, after all, perfectly possible to lose every seat in Scotland and still win a General Election. Not that there's much chance of that in these last days of the SNP, whose core supporters within and without must surely be cottoning on that that party is now a positive obstacle to independence, and couldn't possibly want anything less.
The SNP is just is a device for containing certain categories of voter and thus rendering them harmless. Like every other party in the Commons, in fact.