my politics

Reading through the blog you might believe that the author is a fully paid up, card carrying, flag waving member of the SNP … you’d be wrong.  What I am is an ardent supporter of Scottish independence and believer that Scotland could and would be better governed by a parliament which represented the interests of Scotland in the first instance.

Unionists will argue that Scotland is served by Westminster, yet the ‘democratic deficit’ which many argue has existed in relation to England since devolution has existed and continues to exist in relation to Scotland thanks to the make up of the primary law making authority in Westminster.

Westminster consists of 646 MP’s of which 59 represent Scottish constituencies, that’s 9% of the total.  Effectively allowing the English majority to make decisions as they wish.  It certainly puts the notion of a Scottish Raj presiding over England into perspective.  I agree that Scottish MP’s shouldn’t be voting on ‘English only’ matters, but the parliament that these things are decided in is not an English parliament, it’s a UK parliament.  It’s not specifically wrong that Scottish MP’s vote on matters arising in the UK parliament, it is wrong that matters effecting ‘England only’ are settled in the UK parliament when they would be best served in a devolved adminatration.

I don’t believe that the UK can be maintained in it’s current form, devolution in Scotland was only ever designed as a device to meet two ends.  First of all to ensure that New Labour maintained a foothold in power regardless of what happens in Westminster and secondly to subdue (or at least divert) growing calls for Scottish Independence.

New Labour failed to deliver a form of devolved governance in England that would be acceptable to the people of England and so another democratic deficit was created through what has been widely labelled as ‘asymmetrical devolution’.  This has led to a number of calls to curtail the power of Scottish MP’s, in effect creating a two tier Westminster when what is really required are devolved administrations of equal authority in each ‘home nation’.

This, however, beggars the question as to what to do with Westminster, could a federal UK operate effectively representing all of the people equally where the current Westminster has failed to do so?  I don’t believe it could … could England (and it’s 55,000,000 population) accept that it should have equal representation and authority at a federal level as Scotland (and it’s 5,000,000 population)?  It would have to were a federal system to be acceptable to the people’s of the smaller nations involved.

Whatever happens to the UK in the longer term, the current failures of governance presents the greatest risk of division between the people’s of this small island and until these failures are resolved through what seems to be the only logical and appropriate course of action available the tensions are only likely to increase as small-minded bigoted twats on either side of the border/s make largely emotive claims against one another.

Unlike those who believe that the dissolution of the old United Kingdom would lead to increased hostilities amongst the people’s I believe that it would provide a firm footing for a solid and positive relationship to be developed based on mutual respect for the others right to govern themselves as they see fit, rather than the current set-up that seems to set one against the other.