Constitutional reform: time for new wineskins

“Nobody puts new wine in old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and run to waste, and the skins will be ruined. No; new wine must be put in fresh skins. And nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. ‘The old is good’, he says”. The Gospel According To St. [...]

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 [...]

Devolution as it should (have) be(en)

One of the objections that is often raised to an English Parliament is that it would add a whole new large body of MEPs, as I suppose we’d have to call them (unfortunate clash with the European Parliament), on top of the existing 530-odd (or however many) Westminster MPs representing English constituencies. To say nothing [...]

New poll: What constitutional settlement do you favour for England?

Check out the new poll on the above subject I’ve just added to the Polls section of this site. My preference, by the way: No. 4 – (con)federation with sovereignty – England fully sovereign but delegating responsibility on things like defence and foreign affairs to a new federal British government.
Not that I’m trying to influence [...]

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, [...]

“England is a nation”: now what?

I was bowled over by the government’s response last Monday to the ‘England nation’ petition that I posted on the Number 10 website, and which so many of my readers signed – for which, many thanks.
To remind you, the petition asked: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to state whether he recognises that England [...]

No more Great Britain: A blueprint for a federal UK

The trouble with the UK is ‘Great Britain’. The future of the UK, if it has one, will be settled by coming to a more stable, mature and equitable relationship between the different nations that currently make up that state. Great Britain, and its even more ill-defined cognate ‘Britain’, is the great interloper that stands [...]

Why the government can’t understand calls for an English Parliament

The government’s recent response to an online petition calling for a referendum on English independence – not submitted although signed by myself – doesn’t appear to have provoked much commentary; unless I missed it. First the text of the petition:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to grant the English people a referendum on independence [...]

Scottish Independence: A UK-wide referendum would be required

Below is the text of a post of mine published on the OurKingdom site last week. It stimulated a lively debate, which has led me to think further about the fundamental issues involved. I discuss these below after the copy of the OurKingdom post:
Giving only Scotland a say on independence negates the existence of Britain
[...]