Parliamentary sovereignty won’t protect us from the EU, because it’s already dead

So I didn’t call it right: I thought David Cameron would at the very least call a referendum to give a Conservative government the mandate to re-negotiate some of the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU. In the event, today, he merely committed to a pledge that there would be a referendum over [...]

The Conservatives must support a referendum on EU membership

For me, support for a referendum on whether, or on what basis, the UK remains a member of the EU is the only viable option for the Conservative Party in the event of the Czech Republic ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, as now appears inevitable. This conclusion is based on a logical reading of the Party’s [...]

Could a vote for the BNP be a good thing?

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not a BNP supporter. I despise their racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia. However, I agree with some of their key policies: restrictions to immigration, withdrawal of the UK from the EU, withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, and more accountable local and regional democracy. Yes, those last two items [...]

The Labour Party will never fulfil its calling with Gordon Brown at the helm

This article is cross-posted from Labour Home. Accordingly, it is orientated towards Labour Party members and sympathisers. I am not myself a member of the Labour Party. But I would like to see the Labour Party evolving into a movement focused on the needs of English society and people, which it has clearly failed to [...]

Calman Report: Constitutional reform on a plate

The eagerness of the main unionist parties to seize on the Calman Commission’s report on Scottish devolution, published on Monday, suggests how little they are interested in factoring the English Question into their constitutional-renewal programmes. The report offers nothing for England: it deliberately avoids addressing the West Lothian Question; it urges that the Barnett Formula [...]

Regrettably, I’m voting UKIP

Never thought I’d say that! I don’t consider myself to be politically right-wing and I’m certainly not a Unionist; so UKIP is far from being a natural political home for me. I don’t like UKIP’s simplistic, black-and-white presentation of the case against the EU and open immigration policies, even though I myself am in favour [...]

The governance of England must not be left out of the process of constitutional reform

Over the past week or so, I’ve been attempting to write a rather long post on the implications of the ongoing MPs’ expenses scandal. I started to write it last week, when I was concerned that the initial reaction was tending to ignore the fact that public outrage about MPs’ behaviour was symptomatic of a [...]

The National Conversation For England supports the National Conversation for England

I was somewhat surprised this morning to find that Gareth Young had posted a campaign carrying the name of this blog on the Labourspace forum. Surprised in a couple of ways: first, the theft borrowing of the name, for which Gareth has in any case apologised. Besides which, I nicked the name off the SNP, [...]

English nationalism as a blend of ‘Whig imperialism’ and ‘democratic republicanism’

I reproduce here a comment I made on a post in the OurKingdom blog that was reviewing a presentation by the political historian David Marquand of his new book Britain after 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy. In this book, Marquand analyses British history over the last 90 years as a product of the interplay [...]

Exit the West Lothian Question; Enter the Ulster Question

The Tories look set to establish their own version of the West Lothian Question in the next Westminster parliament. News reports today suggest that David Cameron is trying to forge an alliance or merger with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), with which it was connected in the past. The advantages of this are described in [...]