Changing England’s borders
One of the main reasons there are so many people in favour of separate parliaments for Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland is that England is dominating the UK so heavily.
Just look at the pie chart on the right – England constituted 84% of the UK’s population in 2001.
I therefore decided to investigate some ways of fixing the English problem by changing England’s borders. I’ve mainly used the English Regions for the following maps and figures.
My first idea was to extend Scotland (adding Cumbria and the North-East) and Wales (adding Cornwall and the rest of the South-West), bringing both up to about eight million inhabitants.
It’s nowhere near enough, though – England is still more than big enough to run the show undisturbed.
To make this approach work, I guess Scotland would have to be extended all the way down to the Humber, and Wales would have to encompass the West Midlands, but that would completely undermine the Scottishness of Scotland and the Welshness of Wales.
My second idea was to split England into East and West along a line extending down from the Pennines, but that isn’t enough, either: East England would be able to run the show on their own (but only just – moving a few counties such as Hampshire from East to West would take the East down under 50%).
One might also argue that Cumbria is much more similar to Northumberland than to Somerset, so it might not be a very natural split.
I also wonder whether London would dominate the East so strongly that the genuine needs of the peripheral areas would be completely overlooked.
Another option would be to create a Greater London by merging London with the East and South East of England. This would actually work fairly well – although Greater London would be a lot less populous than the Rest of England, it would probably be able to hold its own given the way London dominates the whole of the UK.
This might also be a very good way for the remainder of England to build up a identity separate from London, perhaps centred around Manchester or Birmingham.
Finally, I tried to recreate the Danelaw. This would actually balance the two halves of England very neatly and would from a mathematical point of view be the best solution. However, it would place London on the border (just south of it, to be precise), and I’m not sure whether that’d be a good or a bad thing.
From the point of view of Danelaw, its economy would be hugely influenced by London (and many people would be commuting from Danelaw into London), but it wouldn’t have any influence on over it.
From the point of view of non-Danelaw England (Wessex?), it would completely dominated by London, although it would be in periphery.
Prime ministerial debates in Scotland
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, NI, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election
The BBC’s Michael Crick can report that “the Leaders’ Debates at the forthcoming election have now been cancelled. Instead, over the past 2-3 weeks they’ve been quietly replaced with Prime Ministerial Debates. It’s a cunning manoeuvre, agreed by the three main broadcasters (the BBC, ITV and Sky) and the three main parties, to exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru leaders from the debates.”
I’ve discussed in the past why the SNP cannot be excluded in Scotland.
It is also very well described in a comment to Crick’s story by DougtheDug:
If it is true that this renaming has been done to exclude the SNP and PC from the debates along with the Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, (The Ulster Unionist Party will be represented via their link with the Conservatives), then it’s a clever ploy but once again done with no knowledge of the rules of the game.
Under OFCOM the SNP is classed as a major party in Scotland along with the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib-Dems. PC has major party status in Wales and the NI parties have major party status in Northern Ireland.
Party political election broadcasting is not worked out on the basis of a party’s UK standing but its standing in each of the constituent home nations of the UK. The debates, call them what you will, are multi-party election broadcasts and unless they are impartial in all four home nations then they will fall foul of OFCOM, the BBC guidelines and the law. The only way they can be impartial in Scotland is for all four major parties to be on the platform at the same time. Similarly for Wales and Northern Ireland.
What the broadcasters are trying to do is to apply the rules of impartiality in England which has three major parties to the four party setups in Scotland and Wales and the four party set up in Northern Ireland. It’s a classic case of the broadcasters thinking that England is Britain is England.
Four nations, one debate?
Filed under: Cons, England, Europe, Lab, Lib, NI, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election, health
It sounds like such an obvious idea to have a televised debate with the leaders of the main parties before the next general election. Indeed, such a debate takes place in many, if not most, democratic countries.
However, as Alex Salmond has now pointed out, it’s not as simple as that.
In England, the three main parties are the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems. Yes, there are other parties, e.g., UKIP and the Green Party, but they’re not standing in all constituencies, and it’s well-known that they don’t have a chance to gain more than a couple of seats.
However, in Scotland the largest party is the SNP, and of course they would feel disadvantaged if they were excluded from the main event in the election. However, including the SNP wouldn’t make much sense for viewers in the rest of the UK.
For Wales, something similar can be said about Plaid Cymru, except that they’re not the largest party.
And finally, in Northern Ireland none of the British parties contest the election, in which only by local parties take part. A debate between Clegg, Cameron and Brown would therefore not really put any parties at a disadvantage, it just would seem a bit irrelevant, perhaps.
Add to this mess that the subject matters that are devolved vary from nation to nation.
For instance, I’m sure English viewers would want to see the party leaders discuss schools, hospitals and policing, but all of that is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, so the debate on these areas would be of no interest to Scottish viewers.
Perhaps the best solution would be to have one debate about devolved subject matters including only the English party leaders, and broadcast this only in England, and another debate about reserved matters, such as the EU, Afghanistan and terrorism, and to include the SNP and Plaid Cymru in this one.
Anti-terrorism legislation and Northern Ireland
There’s an interesting difference between the recent attack by the Real IRA and all the previous incidents in Northern Ireland: This one took place in a post-9/11 world.
The Westminster Parliament has enacted lots of anti-terrorism legislation, all with Islamist terrorism in mind.
I wonder whether these laws will now be used in Northern Ireland.
Will we see suspects detained for a month before they see a judge, for instance?
At least the US are now backing away from torture, or perhaps we would’ve seen members of the Real IRA sent to Morocco for torturing?
If the anti-terrorism legislation is not applied to Northern Ireland, I guess that could be seen as racism.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
The British Parliament
Filed under: England, NI, Scotland, Wales, economics, health, independence
Although I’d prefer Scottish independence, if I can’t have that, I’d prefer a fully federal system in the UK. That would mean that the federal parliament should only deal with foreign affairs, macroeconomics, defense and a few other things.
Such a parliament should give ample representation to the smaller nations. The only reason that the English are allowed to dominate Westminster so heavily is that it is also their national parliament. As soon as the English had their own parliament to deal with schools, hospitals, traffic and so on, there would be no basis for this any more.
I think the fairest solution would be using the square-root of population figures.
I also think this would be a good opportunity to enfranchise the areas under the British Crown that are not part of the UK.
Given the current population figures, the new British Federal Parliament would look as follows:
| Nation | Population | Seats |
|---|---|---|
| England | 50,762,900 | 71 |
| Scotland | 5,116,900 | 23 |
| Wales | 2,958,600 | 17 |
| Northern Ireland | 1,710,300 | 13 |
| Jersey | 89,300 | 3 |
| Isle of Man | 80,058 | 3 |
| Guernsey | 65,573 | 3 |
| Bermuda | 64,482 | 3 |
| Cayman Islands | 46,600 | 2 |
| Gibraltar | 28,875 | 2 |
| Virgin Islands | 21,730 | 1 |
| Turks and Caicos | 21,500 | 1 |
| Anguilla | 12,800 | 1 |
| St Helena | 6,563 | 1 |
| Pitcairn | 67 | 0 |
| 61,013,215 | 147 |
EHS, SHS, WHS (GIC) and NIHS
There is no single health service in the UK. People speak about the NHS, but it’s actually four different organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I think using the same name is unhealthy. It means the English find it illogical that they aren’t getting the same treatment in England as is provided by NHS Scotland.
So the four services should be renamed. They already have different logos, so surely that wouldn’t be too hard.
The West Lothian question
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, NI, Scotland, Wales, election, health
The West Lothian question – that is, the problem that lots of areas are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, but the Scottish MPs can still vote on these issues when they concern England – seems to have found two bad solutions:
- The Tories seem to prefer excluding Scottish MPs for voting on issues affecting only England. While this sounds really attractive at first, it leads to problems with laws that contain parts that apply to Scotland, and even more importantly, if there was a situation where Labour was the largest party when the Scottish MPs were included, but not when they weren’t, what would happen to the areas that are devolved? In other words, would there be a Labour prime minister but a Tory health secretary? Or would the Labour health secretary be unable to pass legislation?
- Labour seems to prefer devolving power to the English regions. Apart from the problem that the people of England don’t seem to have any appetite for this at all, I fail to see how this would solve the West Lothian question. As far as I know, only fairly limited powers would be devolved to them. The Scottish Parliament, on the other hand, has far-reaching law-making powers, so there would still be many areas that were devolved to Scotland but handled by Westminster for England.
The only real solution would be creating an English Parliament, and letting the UK Parliament deal only with UK issues. There would still be a problem with Wales, though, because fewer areas are devolved to the Welsh Assembly than to the Scottish Parliament – perhaps joint sessions of the English Parliament and the Welsh Assembly would be needed.
Of course the remaining UK Parliament could be cut down in size a lot, and perhaps it would be best to let the Scottish, English, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments/assemblies send delegates to it, rather than electing it directly.
House of Lords
Now that the Commons have voted to create a wholly elected House of Lords, perhaps I could suggest another solution to prevent two almost identical chambers?
What about letting all councils (county councils, district councils and unitary authorities) appoint one representative each, and then add representatives from the parliaments/assemblies of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, and finally add all the UK members of the European Parliament.
In this way, the Lords would provide a very different view from the Commons, and it would be a strong guardian against the centralising instincts of government.
Scottish Overseas Territories
Following up on my posting about whether Scotland or England should get Northern Ireland, I started thinking about the British Overseas Territories. If Scotland and England divorce, I assume at least some of them should become Scottish.
Any takers for the Scottish Virgin Islands? 
United Kingdom of Scotland and Northern Ireland
One aspect of Scottish independence that I’ve never seen discussed is the “problem” that Ireland joined the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1801, nearly a hundred year after Scotland and England formed a union. As far as I can tell, this means that it’s not obvious whether England or Scotland gets Northern Ireland if Scotland becomes independent again.
Everybody seems to assume that the two resulting countries would be the Kingdom (or Republic) of Scotland and the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, but wouldn’t it just be interesting if instead we ended up with the Kingdom of England and the United Kingdom of Scotland and Northern Ireland?
In many ways it would make sense, since Northern Ireland is culturally and linguistically much closer to Lowland Scotland than to England.