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.
Political honeymoon
YouGov have measured the popularity of the new government (PDF here).
The overall approval rating of 60% (vs. 33% disapproval) is perhaps not great.
However, what I find astonishing is that it seems to be popular in the entire country:
- Both sexes (men 62%, women 57%)
- All ages (18-34 61%, 35-54 56%, 55+ 61%)
- Both social grade bands (ABC1 65%, C2DE 53%)
- All countries/regions (Scotland 58%, London 55%, South of England 70%, Midlands/Wales 58%, North of England 49% [vs. 44% against])
In fact, the only group against the government is Labour voters, who naturally enough disapprove (25% for, 68% against).
Both Tories and LibDems approve (by 87% and 69%, respectively).
I dare say this is very positive.
I’m sure a Tory-only government wouldn’t have been that popular in Scotland, for instance.
Hopefully the new government will make good use of its honeymoon with the voters!
The LibDems have a duty to make it work
I’ve already argued that the LibDems made a huge error when they decided not to explore the possibility of a coalition with SNP in the Scottish Parliament and with Plaid and the Tories in the Welsh Assembly:
This is ridiculous! If they want to work only with Labour, why don’t they join Labour?
The same now applies in Westminster.
The LibDems keep saying that proportional representation is needed, and this will of course lead to many more coalition governments.
Because of this, the LibDems have a duty to demonstrate that coalitions can work.
To be concrete, they should do their very best to try and form a coalition with the Conservatives.
This is probably the only realistic option, given that Labour don’t have a majority together with the LibDems.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they should enter a coalition with the Tories no matter what the terms are.
The important thing is that a coalition is explored thoroughly, and if it fails, it has to be because the Conservatives wouldn’t agree to reasonable terms, not because it’s easier to stand on the sidelines.
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.
Two-party Britains
Filed under: Cons, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election
For many years, the Conservatives and Labour divided almost all of Britain between themselves.
Under IDS, there seemed to be a possibility that the LibDems would replace the Tories as the main opposition to Labour, and now there is a possibility that Labour will disappear.
So I asked myself which constituencies the LibDems would have to win to become the main opposition party.
To find an answer, I used Electoral Calculus’s user-defined prediction, and I fiddled around with the parameters until I achieved two big parties and a very small third party (30-40 seats). I didn’t do anything about the SNP or other parties.
I did this for three scenarios: Labour-Conservative Britain, Liberal-Conservative Britain, and Labour-Liberal Britain.
The first one is very similar to the 2005 election, just with fewer yellow dots. Labour is strong in Scotland, Wales and the big cities, and the Tories rule the rest.
The second one is perhaps what we’ll see in 2014. Labour are holding on to a few seats in Wales, Scotland and the big cities (e.g., Glasgow North-East, Rhondda and West Ham), but apart from Scotland and Cornwall, the LibDems are now dominating the cities, with the Tories dominating the rural seats.
The third scenario is now totally unrealistic, but just a few years ago it would have seemed likely. The Tories are holding on to places like Richmond and Buckingham, but otherwise the LibDems have taken over most of the countryside, with Labour mainly holding on their current seats.
Married, but not allowed to live together
When the current Danish government got into power in 2002, one of their first actions was to introduce the so-called 24-year rule, which means you can’t bring your lawfully wedded husband or wife to Denmark from outside the EU if you’re younger than 24.
Although theoretically introduced to reduce the number of forced marriages, it has had lots of negative consequences for young married couples that actually are in love.
It seems that the UK has now introduced something similar, only with a limit of 21 years instead, and as the article shows, this is already having disastrous consequences, in this case for a Welsh-Canadian couple.
However, the EU can help such couples to a certain extent:
But Adam and Rochelle do have one chance – they can move to any other European Union country and they will be allowed to live together as man and wife and get work.The only place they cannot is Adam’s home – Britain.
“It’s insane”, he says. “We can go anywhere except my home country, where we got married, and where they gave us permission to get married.”
Danish couples are doing this, too, typically by moving across the Øresund to Sweden.
Will young British couples now start to emigrate to Ireland?
Who will this benefit?
We got this political ad in through the door the other day.
It’s quite a nice way to make people understand that Brown’s government is borrowing money like there’s no tomorrow.
However, it has one big problem: There’s no indication of who to vote for instead of Brown.
If you flip it over, you’ll find out it’s from the Tories, but many people won’t realise this, and anyway it’s not integral to the message, so it doesn’t stick in the mind.
This is the kind of negative campaigning that works well in a two-party system. You just need to make people hate your opponent, and they’ll have to vote for you.
But the UK has a three-party system, and Scotland and Wales have four significant parties.
So in very large parts of the country, the main opposition to Labour is not the Conservatives, but the LibDems, the SNP or Plaid Cymru.
Why don’t they understand that in a multi-party system, you have to do positive campaigning?
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.