England expects everyone to do their duty, and vote Leave

There are two very straightforward reasons why the people of England should vote to leave the EU on Thursday of this week:

1. If you vote to remain in the EU, you are voting for England and the UK to be increasingly governed as part of a pan-European political union that is set up to evolve into a federal European superstate. It will gradually do so, individual policy measure by individual policy measure, beginning with: fiscal union among the Eurozone countries; TTIP (the trade agreement with the US, which could lead, among other things, to the dismantling of the UK’s various NHSs, the ground for which was prepared by the last government’s Health and Social Care Bill, which had not been put to any English voter); and an EU army. The prime minister’s boast that he has secured a UK opt-out from the EU’s project to bring about ‘ever-closer union’ is meaningless if the EU does evolve into a federal state: we’ll still be part of a federal system that will be effectively the main power in our land.
2. Voting Leave is the only way, short of independence, to secure the future of England as a polity: a political nation. Even in the EU as it is now, before it evolves into the federal state that so many of its proponents are driving it to become, there is no scope for an English-national tier of governance. The EU principle of subsidiarity – that government should be devolved to the appropriate level for the issues concerned – completely bypasses England: it goes from the EU (matters of Europe-wide significance), to member states (the Westminster government: UK-wide matters), to regions and then localities. Where is England in this? Apart from the fact that the Westminster establishment appears hell-bent on ‘devolving’ every potential national-English policy area to regions and city regions (almost as if in tacit compliance with the EU governance model), it is hard to see how an English parliament and government could deal with the consequences of unfettered immigration from the EU, with no control over population growth and a consequent inability to design English public services and planning regimes focused on the needs and priorities of English people. Such matters would have to be handled by the UK government in ‘partnership’ with the EU; and policies in these areas would effectively become joint UK-EU policies that explicitly acknowledge continuing mass migration to the UK (and mainly England), and which design an ‘appropriate’  response that factors in rapid population growth, including financial assistance to support public services and infrastructure development. And as we know, EU financial assistance always comes with a trade-off in terms of accepting an enhanced EU role in additional policy areas.

Ultimately, the choice comes down to this: Do you want be part of a European polity or an English polity; a citizen of Europe or an English man or woman? England, the choice is yours – for now, at least.

EU referendum: A battle for the (English) soul of Britain

It is funny how, when supporters of the campaign to remain in the EU seek terms with which to criticise the supposedly narrow, nationalistic focus of the Leave campaign, they resort to the dismissive language of ‘Little England’, to which a UK remaining part of the EU is deemed by contrast to be a ‘Great Britain’. On Tuesday of last week, Prime Minister Cameron made this very contrast in the head-to-head with Nigel Farage on ITV.

Similarly, on Thursday of last week, in the same channel’s debate between three politicians on either side of the argument, one of the Leave campaigners Amber Rudd also dismissed the ‘Little Englander’ mentality of the Leave side – only to then tie herself up in knots as she referred to the country post a Remain vote as “England”, to which she then had to hastily add “Scotland” and “Wales” given the presence on her side of the studio of the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon! It is as if there is a core of traditional national feeling and identity within ‘Britain’ that is instinctively designated – and usually disparaged – as ‘English’.

The EU referendum is indeed a battle between two competing British identities: a national (and at core English) Britain versus an international Britain (European, multi-national and multi-ethnic). The debates around governance, control of migration and even trade ultimately centre on questions of identity. Is your Britain essentially a projection and extension of an English identity rooted politically in the historic English traditions of Church, monarchy, Parliament and common law? Or is it a ‘modern’ Britain that no longer sees itself as having English roots but views itself as essentially European, grounded in the Western liberal-humanist-rationalist tradition, and as offering a civic identity that transcends ‘narrow’ national identities, ethnicities and creeds? Both of these latter aspects of the modern Britishness are also encapsulated in the magic term ‘British values’.

The table below compares the longer-term future for the governance of England and Britain under the scenario of either a Leave or Remain vote. My assumption is that, following a Leave vote, the UK would necessarily be thrown back on to its historically English constitution and forms of governance, and that ultimately Scotland, Northern Ireland and possibly even Wales might eventually split off, leaving the English form of government to apply in fact to England alone. Following a Remain vote, on the other hand, the UK – and with it England – could increasingly be absorbed into the process of European political union, creating pressure to abolish the English constitution (and with it, effectively, England) altogether.

Leave	Remain
·     Reassertion of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and of Parliament as the seat of English government	·      Transfer of further ‘international’ governmental powers (e.g. borders, security, military, foreign policy, pan-European matters) to the EU, with transfer of Parliament’s national (i.e. English) powers down to ‘regions’ and cities, resulting in a hollowing out of the English-national layer of government
·     The Church of England remains as the established Church and official religion of the land	·      As government is increasingly viewed as having a purely secular-humanist character (in keeping with the EU Treaties and practice), the pressure becomes irresistible to disestablish the Church – meaning the UK loses a foundational element of its grounding in the history of England as a Christian nation
·     The constitutional monarchy is preserved, safeguarding a line of succession that reaches back into England’s deepest history. The monarch remains the temporal head of the Church of England	·      As the Church has been disestablished, and as politics has shifted away from Parliament up to Brussels and down to ‘the regions’, the monarchy is seen as increasingly irrelevant and anachronistic. Eventually, as an elected EU presidency is established, and the European Parliament acquires genuine powers of legislation and scrutiny, the UK decides to replace the monarchy with an elected – and itself largely ceremonial – president
·     The supremacy of English and UK law is re-established, based around parliamentary statute and common law, with the Supreme Court in London as the ultimate instance in the justice system	·      The areas of application of EU law and regulation are increasingly extended, and a more integrated EU justice and policing system is developed. The English legal and justice system are slowly subsumed into the EU’s Civic and Roman Law-based system, and the European Court of Justice grows in power as the ultimate instance
·     A new Scottish independence referendum is held and is won by the nationalists. Brexit also catalyses a project to unify Ireland, with enough moderate unionists supporting this as a way to get Northern Ireland back into the EU (with EU protections for Protestant-minority rights) to ensure a majority in favour. Brexit also gives Plaid Cymru in Wales a massive boost, with traditional Labour supporters now seeing independence as the best means to get Wales back into the EU and free her from English dominance. If Wales does opt for independence, the English constitution now applies to England alone. (That does not mean it cannot and is not reformed and modernised over time – but then it is England’s constitution, not that of a polity that denies nation status to England.)	·      The redistribution of power to the EU and the English ‘regions’, along with the other changes outlined above, are consolidated in a new ‘British Constitution’, establishing a new ‘Republic of Britain’. This recognises Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Cornwall as historic ‘nations’ with parliaments or assemblies to manage their own regional affairs (these areas also largely correspond to European ‘regions’). England, however, ceases to exist as either a historic or a present-day political nation, and is broken up into its constituent Euro-regions. There is no Parliament dealing with exclusively English matters, as ‘English’ matters are now regulated by the regional assemblies. ‘England’ is also no longer officially a Christian nation, as the Church of England has been disestablished. No more ‘Kingdom of England’, either, since no king. No more English law, since that is incorporated into European law. As Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have achieved much of what they wanted from the EU (a ‘progressive’ politics and nullification of a once-dominant England), demands for independence and Irish unification fall away. ‘Britain’ becomes the civic nation to which all former constituent UK nations and British citizens originating from across the world all belong, without any distinction between them. The unity of the once-UK has been preserved, but at the price of England’s abolition.

 

I say that this is a battle for the ‘soul’ of Britain, as well as a battle between different identities and governance models, because what is at stake is whether we are ultimately a Christian nation (England – or Anglo-Britain insofar as the other nations of the UK are governed through the same historically English constitutional system) or whether we are part of a merely secular, international political union (the EU).

This is also what is at the heart of the discussion around sovereignty. Do we wish to be part of a polity in which sovereignty ultimately derives from divine sovereignty (political power exercised in obedience to the divine will via the God-given authority of the monarch as instantiated in parliamentary sovereignty), with the principles of individual freedom and conscience also deriving from the idea of the sovereign will answerable ultimately to God alone, over and above earthly political authority? Or do we wish to be part of a polity where authority is vested in a ‘rational’ law-making body (the Commission) acting in accordance with a liberal-humanist set of principles (the Treaties), and whose decisions and regulations are accepted by the collectivity with little or no dissent, because the collectivity (the ‘Union’ in an abstract sense) fundamentally subscribes to the principles and objectives that are embodied in the laws?

Fundamentally, this isn’t even an issue of one system being more or less democratic than the other. Both systems have their critics. On the one hand, many Remainers criticise the inadequately democratic character of the Anglo-British system, because of the very ‘absolute’ (and ultimately, divine) authority on which parliamentary sovereignty rests. The objection on this fundamental point is expressed in terms of criticism of aspects such as: the fact that sovereignty is indeed vested in Parliament rather than the people; the existence of a hereditary monarchy; the unelected House of Lords, with its historic origins in an aristocratic class system underpinned by monarchy; the established nature and privileges of the Church of England, including the fact that its diocesan bishops are guaranteed seats in the said House of Lords; and the elective dictatorship that is constituted by governments elected without a popular majority, owing to the disproportional voting system, but whose authority rests – precisely – on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty as opposed to the ‘popular will’.

By contrast, Leavers regard the fundamental principles of EU governance as suspect in that basing power on an elite, ‘rational’ authority (the Commission), unchecked by either an appeal to a ‘higher power’ (God and moral conscience) or popular mandate, is seen as laying the foundations of dictatorship and autocracy.

A stark choice indeed confronts us on 23 June: a Britain that retains its deep roots in the historic Christian kingdom of England and in English identity (albeit often popularly conflated with ‘British’ identity itself); or a modern Britain containing no fundamental connection with England or Englishness – but instead being multi-national, secular and part of a pan-European governance system.

It’s not just in or out, remain or leave: it’s whether England itself remains, or whether we leave England behind.

European Union: A latter-day Unholy Roman Empire

Boris Johnson was right the other week when he somewhat haplessly linked the European Union to previous attempts to bring about a Europe-wide polity, stretching back to the Roman Empire via Napoleon and Hitler.

Napoleon’s and Hitler’s attempts to ‘unify’ the Continent through conquest did harp back, quite consciously, to the Roman Empire, many of whose symbols, iconography and self-descriptions they associated with their own political projects: Napoleon’s ‘Empire’ and cult of the Emperor’s personality, and the idea of France as the modern embodiment of a superior, rational, ‘classical’, pan-European civilisation; Hitler’s ‘thousand-year empire’ that passed the flame of imperial Rome on – or back – to a ‘pure’ European race (the Aryans or Teutons) that were supposed ultimately to have originated it.

Of course, the project that is the EU (founded, significantly, by the Treaty of Rome) does not seek its realisation through conquest (although the EU does have aspirations to being a military superpower), nor does it embody ideas of European racial superiority (although it does see itself as the flag bearer for a distinct, essential, and inherently valuable European culture).

But the idea of Europe that the EU seeks to bring about is inspired by Ancient Rome; that is, the pre-Christian and anti-Christian (one might almost say ‘Antechristian’) Rome: the ‘Unholy Roman Empire’, as opposed to the subsequent unification of Western Europe around Roman Catholic Christendom and the various incarnations of the Holy Roman Empire.

Ancient Rome provides the template for the idea of a European polity that underlies the EU – one based on the humanist ideals and achievements of the Greco-Roman world (as viewed through the modern lens), including qualities such as: rationality; Enlightenment; arts and culture; technological advancement; republicanism and democracy; human and citizen rights; engineering excellence; military prowess; social progress; and law.

Never mind that the Roman Empire extended its reach through military conquest, not consent. Or that imperial rule was autocratic and bureaucratic, not democratic. Or that the rights of Roman citizens applied only to citizens, and to some extent freemen and -women, while creating an underclass of slaves with no such rights or dignity. Or that imperial Rome, up until the 4th century AD, persecuted Christians and fed them to the lions.

Roman Law, while one of the finest achievements of Ancient Rome, relied on the workings of an elite class of legislators and legal experts. In its turn, EU law – much reviled by supporters of Brexit – draws heavily upon Roman Law via the Civil Law tradition that informs many of continental Europe’s legal codes. In accordance with this long tradition, EU laws are elaborated and executed by an elite civil service (the European Commission), along with the EU’s Supreme Court, the European Court of Justice. This is in stark contrast to the traditions of English Law, built on the pillars of statute (laws initiated and passed by the democratically elected Parliament) and Common Law (laws shaped and modified by precedent established through judgements in court at every tier of the judicial system, and not just handed down by the supreme authority).

It is not only national traditions of parliamentary democracy, judicial independence and Common Law that are overridden by EU law making and giving, but also the Christian foundations of EU member nations and, in particular, those of England. Throughout most of the Christian era, the nations of Europe were founded on the ‘divine right of kings’: the belief that the absolute rule that monarchs exercised was a duty entrusted to them by God, which needed to be fulfilled in obedience to the divine law and will. While few if anybody now advocate absolute monarchy, this belief in the Christian foundations of political power (meaning literally that power should be exercised in obedience to Christ) lives on in the British monarch’s status as temporal head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith throughout the realm.

Similarly, the other surviving monarchies of northern Europe reserve a religious, if somewhat ceremonial, role for the king or queen as representatives of their countries’ traditional Christian values and as reigning by the grace of God. By contrast, the Catholic countries of Europe have largely got rid of their monarchs, and enforce a separation of church and state. And often, those that have confined the church most forcibly to the margins of political life are those that have styled themselves at some point along the lines of imperial Rome, conquering all of Europe and North Africa before them: the above-mentioned Napoleon and Hitler, to which one could add Generalissimo Mussolini.

The equation here is irresistible: if you reject a Europe of many nations united by a shared Christian faith, under the custodianship of the Catholic Church or of national-Protestant monarchs, the model for a united European polity you look to is inevitably that of pre- or non-Christian Rome. Accordingly, the EU aspiration to end the division of Europe into many, historically frequently warring, nations by uniting them in a new pan-European polity goes hand in hand with the desire to terminate the historic role (admittedly, at times more aspirational than actual) of the Church and of Christian faith as the focus for unity and the foundation of political authority. If you no longer have Christianity as the unifying force, there is only the force of political union.

And so the EU does belong in the line of post-Enlightenment political projects that, like the Rome they mimicked, sought to banish Christianity from the public square in the name of a secular-humanist order harking back to Europe’s would-be ancient roots and core identity. The EU is both anti-national and anti-Christian in its fundamental mission and philosophical underpinnings. And that means specifically that EU membership runs counter to any sort of project to reassert England as a self-governing and (I would say) Christian nation. Christianity and ‘little’ nations no longer belong in the EU’s pan-European-universal-humanist new order.

At root, I believe any true supporter of – one might even say true believer in – the EU project (as opposed to lukewarm, pragmatic supporters) wants to bring about pan-European political union and a secularised society; or, if they are Christians, they are either naïve about the extent to which the EU is counter-Christian or are prepared to accept the marginalisation of Christian faith from political discourse and institutions for the sake of the ‘greater good’ of European unification.

But if you do not want this, and if you want there to be an England in future (whether with a Christian head of state and established church, or not), there is only one option: to vote to leave the EU. The EU is indeed a latter-day Unholy Roman Empire that has set its sight on being the power in our land.

British values, English society and Islam

Recent examples of, and thinking about, young ‘British-Asian’ Muslims who have been radicalised, and gone to fight and die in Syria or Iraq, have suggested that one of the main reasons for their actions is the need for a stronger sense of identity and belonging. The young people in question are said to feel isolated from and rejected by ‘British’ society, being cast as ‘Pakistani’, for instance, even if they are from a second- or third-generation ‘immigrant’ background, i.e. they were born here. But if they go to visit their families in Pakistan, they are frequently dismissed as ‘English’. So they feel they neither belong in Britain nor in Pakistan.

Joining extremist Islamist organisations such as IS, so the argument goes, makes these young people feel as though they belong to a greater community and movement, and indeed to a ‘state’: a trans-national ‘caliphate’ that serves a higher purpose and unity than existing, established nation states, and which in turn enables them to justify treasonous and violent acts against those states, whether the UK, Syria or Iraq.

Media and political commentary frequently articulates astonishment and dismay that such people could have so comprehensively rejected ‘British values’, as if it were obvious what these values are and that every British citizen should automatically subscribe to them. Attempts to enumerate these values usually include general qualities such as tolerance, respect for the rule of law, a sense of fair play, civic liberties, and non-discrimination along the lines of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or creed.

How could such youngsters, who’ve enjoyed the benefits of a society that embodies these values during their upbringing, turn their backs on that society and seek to destroy it? By implication, those minority-ethnic young Muslims should jolly well be grateful that they’ve enjoyed the benefits of British tolerance, law, fairness, and protection for their freedoms and minority rights, and should be grateful for what this country has given them, not turn against it.

But such an assessment of the phenomenon seems grossly incommensurate to the scale and nature of what those youngsters are embracing: not just an adolescent-type rejection of their parents’ decent values and moderate lifestyles, but a movement that actually celebrates barbarity, genocide, philistinism, and the rape and enslavement of women in the name of a self-consciously medieval reinterpretation of Islam. ‘Sorry, mum and dad, I reject your “British values” as inconsistent with Islam; and so I’m going to go and behead people who disagree with my interpretation of Islam, and commit sundry acts of slaughter, rape and pillage for the glory of Allah’. Or, ‘sorry, mum and dad, I don’t want to be married to a nice respectable Bradford small business owner, so I’m going to hitch myself to a psychopathic IS warrior and become his chattel for ever more’. This just doesn’t seem to add up, which is why it leaves the commentators flummoxed.

Perhaps the problem is in part the very ‘British-Asian’ identity that’s being offered to such young people: a hybrid, schizoid identity that is neither fully British nor fully Pakistani (or Bangladeshi, for example). This certainly does not denote an integrally Muslim identity, let alone a ‘British-Muslim’ or, dare I say it, even an ‘English-Muslim’ identity. One of the motivations for these young people, clearly, is that they are seeking an identity and sense of belonging that have a religious (i.e. Islamic) foundation; and, at the same time, they evidently don’t feel they belong in English society. I say ‘English’, rather than ‘British’, deliberately: the Muslims we hear about in the news invariably come from English cities and, as far as I know, there isn’t much of a problem of radicalisation of Scottish Muslims.

So the young people in question wish to affirm their identity as Muslims, over and above their merely British nationality or citizenship, and over and above their ‘Asian’ ethnicity. And, at the same time, they’ve grown up feeling alienated and estranged from the modern English society and communities around them, which are also increasingly secular and irreligious.

The solution, it seems to me, is to seek to foster the inclusion of Islam within English society, as opposed to the adoption of ‘British values’ by, or the imposition of those values on, Muslims living in England, as the latter approach merely partakes of the alienation and non- or counter-Islamic narrative those young Muslims are reacting against. At the same time, the adoption of an increasingly English identity by Muslim communities in England is what would really help overcome their alienation from British identity. This is because once you are, and are accepted as, English, then you truly become an integral part of the British political and cultural landscape in a way that mere acquisition of British nationality or citizenship cannot bring about.

What would such an ‘English Islam’ mean? It certainly doesn’t mean the ‘islamisation’ of England, as some people fear. What I’m thinking of is an opening up of Muslim communities to English civic society, and an embracing of Muslim communities and individuals by English civic society.

For example, Muslim communities and mosques could get involved in existing English community activities and charitable events, or create new ones open to all comers and benefiting the whole community, along typically English lines. These could include things like jumble sales, fêtes, sponsored runs, charity fundraising events, voluntary work, charity shops, etc. Conversely, Muslim communities could be invited to participate in such activities organised by churches or non-church community groups and organisations. In the light of the terrible atrocities being perpetrated by organisations such as IS in the name of Islam, it is sometimes hard to accept the proposition that Islam is a religion of peace and charity. Getting involved in ‘English’ charitable activities and events would be a powerful way to enact that truer form of Islam and demonstrate a counter-narrative to IS.

Similarly, churches and mosques should invite each other’s members to experience their worship and community life, and learn about each other’s faith, as guests. This doesn’t mean being made to participate in the other religion’s acts of worship and other observances, but rather it involves witnessing, and witnessing to, each other’s faith, religious practices and communities. This could only help build a deeper and more affectionate sense of mutual understanding and belonging in a shared community (beyond the narrow confines of each other’s churches or mosques), to which both faiths have a duty of care as fellow servants of the one true God.

It could well be that, as a result of such an extending of the hand of friendship across the religious divide, some Christians might convert to Islam. But equally, some Muslims could be drawn to Christian faith. That’s a challenge that would test the friendship and co-operation between the faith communities. But in resolving those tensions, a more solid and enduring mutual acceptance would surely be forged. In any case, Christian and secular English communities will either have to draw closer to the Muslims in their midst, or the present divisions and mutual distrust will continue to fester and generate recruits for IS. There is, ultimately, no positive alternative to this coming together of English and Muslim communities in a shared, renewed and plural Englishness. And at the same time, it is in reality a religious obligation for both Christians and Muslims to extend that hand of friendship to brethren beyond the church or mosque wall.

Similarly, I would say that Christian and Muslim schools should be open to children from Muslim and Christian backgrounds respectively, and indeed to children from any religious or non-religious background. Indeed, I wonder whether there shouldn’t be quotas to ensure the multi-faith composition of all such schools with, perhaps, 50% drawn from the religion or denomination to which the school claims to belong, with the other 50% representing roughly the religious / non-religious make-up of the remainder of the school’s local community.

The schools’ assemblies and other events should also reflect this diversity with, say, Muslim schools putting on nativity plays and Christmas carol concerts ahead of the Christmas holiday, alongside their celebrations of Muslim holidays and festivals, in which all of the schools’ pupils would be encouraged to take part. I went to a school where around 40% of the pupils were from Jewish backgrounds. Although there were separate assemblies for Jews and non-Jews on some days, on other days there were joint assemblies and prayers, and we had some wonderful Jewish speakers, which really helped me to gain an understanding and respect for the Jewish faith and post-war experience.

These schools, which would effectively be multi-faith, would in fact be an embodiment of the kind of plural English communities we need to be striving for: Muslims, Christians and others living, studying and working together, and sharing each other’s faith and experience. It’s hard to imagine a young Muslim brought up in such a school and community rejecting an Englishness that had been so inclusive, welcoming and friendly towards him or her and the Muslim faith: if there’s no conflict in such a young person’s mind between Islam and Englishness, then his or her Islam will not be used as a pretext to turn violently against England.

In other words, it’s shared Englishness that will bring about a sense of belonging to Britain on the part of young Muslims, not a British identity and set of values that are often not seen as compatible with Muslim faith and practice, and indeed are often advocated as a means to mitigate, control and relativise that Muslim identity. If Muslims feel that they and their faith are accepted as integral members and a valued feature of English civic society and communities, then it will make no sense – either religiously or psychologically – to turn against England. But conversely, we English will need to open our communities, civic society and hearts to Muslims and Islam.

We either love our neighbours as ourselves or make enemies of them. The choice is ours.

Vote UKIP: the English national party in British-nationalist clothes

Let me put one thing straight: I don’t think UKIP is an English-nationalist party, by any stretch of the imagination.

Page 61 of the party’s 2015 general election manifesto, for instance, makes it abundantly clear that it is British-nationalist. This page talks of Britain as a “strong, proud, independent, sovereign nation” – in its own right, that is, rather than as a union of nations. It commits the party to promoting a “unifying British culture, open to anyone who wishes to identify with Britain and British values”, which in practice always tends to mean denigrating Englishness and subordinating it to Britishness. And it states support for “a chronological understanding of British history and achievements in the National Curriculum, which should place due emphasis on the unique influence Britain has had in shaping the modern world” – not caring to mention that this curriculum and Britain-centric version of history would apply to English schools alone.

That said, I would still maintain that UKIP should be viewed as an ‘English national’ party and as the default choice for English nationalists at this election. By this, I mean that UKIP speaks to a culturally English, British patriotism: an England-centric imagining of ‘Britain’ that is virtually indistinguishable to the great majority of English people from what is understood by ‘England’ itself. Most ordinary English people, I would say, are still stuck in this traditional Anglo-British mindset, and would talk of ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ as fully interchangeable terms. To put it in fancy psycho-babble, the ‘Symbolic’ (formal discourse or language) used by UKIP might be British, but its ‘Imaginary’ (imaginative and emotional associations) is English: UKIP talks British but speaks to the English.

Indeed, I would argue that the explanation for UKIP’s rise to the level of support it enjoys today (consistently polling around 12% or 13% UK-wide – higher in England) is that it has tapped in to the groundswell of English nationalism and the increasing identification as English of those living in England. UKIP is the default English national party, in the same way that the SNP is the Scottish national party and Plaid Cymru is the party of Wales. That is to say, it places the concerns of those who wish to preserve the integrity of England as a nation and defend the interests of English people at the heart of its policies, even if they are couched in British terms.

There are many examples of pro-English policies in their manifesto, which most actual English nationalists would readily agree with, such as:

• the demand for a referendum on the UK’s EU membership, and support for withdrawal, or ‘BREXIT’

• insistence on much tougher limits on immigration, including via proper border controls (made possible by BREXIT) and an Australian-style points system; reducing the access of foreign nationals to public services and social housing

• reduction of the UK’s overseas aid budget – reinvesting the money in English public services

• focus on building houses in brownfield sites, as opposed to concreting over England’s green and pleasant land with unsuitable and unwanted development

• scrapping the Barnett Formula and allocating spending on a genuine needs basis, which in reality means less money for Scotland and more for deprived English areas

• scrapping HS2, which is a vanity project driven by EU dreams of a pan-European high-speed rail network, and which threatens to devastate vast swathes of precious English countryside

• resisting the Labour and Lib Dem push for various forms of unwanted local or regional devolution in England

• improving social care provision in England

• preserving the English NHS as a publicly funded service, free at the point of use; using the redistributed Barnett funds to abolish parking charges in English hospitals

• reintroducing grammar and technical schools in England to improve the prospects of bright students from poorer areas, and to enhance vocational training.

However, one area where the UKIP manifesto is seriously deficient is the question of an English parliament: the manifesto doesn’t raise this at all. The only commitment that is made towards enhancing English-national democracy is that of English votes on English laws, despite the fact that this is an unworkable policy. For instance, after the election, it’s quite possible that there could be completely different English and UK parliamentary majorities: the Tories winning a majority in England, while the only workable UK-wide majority would be formed by Labour in partnership – formal or informal – with the Lib Dems and the other ‘progressive’ parties, including the SNP.

The answer, obviously, is separate UK and English parliaments; but UKIP are unwilling or unable to acknowledge this elephant in the room. This may be because they are still intent on positioning themselves as a party for the whole UK, rather than an overtly England-centric party or – heaven forbid – and English-nationalist one. But England-centric they undoubtedly are: addressing priorities and grievances that are either solely or primarily those of the English.

It is for this reason that I am recommending that all English nationalists vote UKIP at the election tomorrow. Sadly, owing to our First Past the Post voting system, a vote for the English Democrats is a wasted vote – assuming they’re standing in your constituency at all: they’re not in mine. Many would say that voting for UKIP is also a waste; and indeed, because of the electoral system UKIP are generally not expected to win any extra seats at the election, despite being the third-largest party in terms of share of the vote.

However, in reality, there is only a minority of seats where people’s votes make any difference at all, i.e. the marginal seats that might actually change hands. The constituency where I live is a very safe Conservative seat, so voting UKIP won’t make any difference in terms of the overall election result. The point of doing so is merely to register support for the types of English national policies I’ve outlined above.

If, on the other hand, you live in a constituency where your vote could help swing the result, I would argue that you should vote in such a way as to minimise the chance of a Labour-controlled government. This is because Labour, of all the parties, is most committed to local / city / regional devolution in England – whether or not the people affected have voted for it. Labour’s manifesto avoids almost any reference to ‘England’ other than in the sections where it discusses its wish to see devolution to so-called ‘county regions’ (whatever they are) and a Senate of the Nations and Regions (and you know what that means) to replace the present House of Lords. Labour is also, of course, obsessed with avoiding a referendum on the EU and can be relied upon to do nothing whatsoever about immigration, other than perhaps to increase it.

Accordingly, if you live in a Tory-Labour marginal, I’d say vote Tory. If you live in a Labour-Lib Dem marginal (like the Cambridge constituency near my home), I’d say gird your loins and vote Lib Dem, to prevent Labour from amassing the seats it may need to form a government.

But ultimately, if your vote, like mine, will make very little difference – or if you have no truck with the sort of tactical voting scenarios I’ve just described – vote UKIP: the English national party in British-nationalist clothes.

TV leaders’ debate: no show for England

Well, it was a pretty poor show at the end of the day, the much-heralded TV leaders’ debate: two hours of three women and four men point scoring, and talking at and past each other, in a repetitive and circular fashion. Hardly worthy of the name ‘debate’, really, as there was no clash of contrary positions or setting out of opposing visions for ‘the country’, such as one would expect from a traditional debate.

In fact, there was and is no real vision for the country on the part of Britain’s party leaders: if the country is England, that is. It was noteworthy that the two leaders who did articulate any sort of coherent vision for the type of society they want their countries to be were the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood; and the countries they were talking about were Scotland and Wales respectively. Incidentally, Nicola Sturgeon also referred to England quite a bit: for instance, when setting out the SNP’s intention to vote down English health or education legislation that might adversely affect the funding or shape of Scottish services.

By contrast, as far as I can remember, the word ‘England’ did not issue one single time from the lips of either David Cameron, Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg. This was despite the fact that the debate moderator, Julie Etchingham, did somewhat surprisingly make a point of explaining that Westminster’s responsibilities in health care relate only to England.

The UKIP leader Nigel Farage mentioned England, but only when referring – justifiably – to the relatively poor deal the English are getting in terms of spending on public services in comparison with Scotland, and the need to abolish the Barnett Formula. And in general, the whole discussion on social matters such as the [English] NHS, [English] education, [English] housing, [English] apprenticeships, [English] social care, and immigration was reduced and subordinated to the economic arguments around funding: the balance of economic growth, taxation and borrowing that would be required to fund the services and benefits that we might be able to afford over the next five years.

It was all about the numbers, in fact: how many billions more for the [English] NHS; how many more doctors, nurses and midwives; how many targets missed in A&E and cancer care; how many more new schools and houses [in England]; how much could be saved by withdrawing from the EU and cutting overseas aid; how many immigrants; and how much the deficit could and would be cut by.

All important stuff, but essentially just an argument about money: how much of it will be available, where it’s coming from and how it will be portioned out, including to each of the UK’s nations. What’s missing is any attempt to set out a vision for the sort of society we want England to be and, within that context, what sort of health, education, social care, housing and welfare systems we want; and how they should be sustained economically in the long term through work and industries that provide both a decent income for individuals and families, and generate sufficient revenue for the government to pay for it all.

The starting point for politics, and for political debates, should really be different visions for the country and society, and economics should be subordinate to that: ‘this is the sort of national community we want to be, and the social values and systems that will bring us together as a nation; and consequently, this is the type of economy we need in order to realise our potential as people – and as a people – and not just generate economic growth and wealth as ends in themselves’.

The four male leaders, at least, were unable to articulate any bottom-up, people-centric policy vision of this sort. And it’s not altogether clear whether they’re incapable of doing so as a by-product of a refusal to offer government for a nation called England, whose name they’re unable to utter; or whether their absence of vision of and for England is merely an offshoot of their ideological incapacity to place nation and society in general – and English society and nationhood in particular, in this case – at the heart of policy making.

The female leaders, on the other hand, do seem to understand the importance of society and – in the case of the nationalist leaders – of nation. Indeed, of all the ‘English’ party leaders, Natalie Bennett came closest to articulating a policy vision centred on social values of care for each other and the environment, although she studiously avoiding calling that society ‘England’. But in a way, it was an obvious linkage: she stood on the podium as the English counterpart to the ‘progressive’, female leaders of the Scottish and Welsh parties. Maybe she’s missing a trick there.

Perhaps one can push the gender analogies too far: the women of the respective national households being more concerned about giving the children a rounded education and life skills; health- and social-care provision for the young and elderly of the family; decent job prospects and homes for the children; and protecting the environment for future generations. Meanwhile, the men are focused on the world outside the home: business, money and big, abstract numbers that can be hard to tie down to the actual impact they have on the lives and work situation of real people. Macho economics as much as macro-economics.

Be that as it may, if the family is England, its name and needs were not uppermost in the minds of any of our British political leaders last night. England is indeed poorly served by the British political system. It’s a poor show when England goes missing from a debate dealing with so many issues of national importance to England alone.

Women bishops in the Church of England: The sadness of hope deceived

It may have passed you by, but on Monday of this week, the Church of England ordained its first female bishop: Libby Lane, the new suffragan Bishop of Stockport. What was clearly a momentous day in the history of the Church of England was evidently just a minor story in the British national news, and most people were probably unaware of the event.

While many supporters of women bishops like to say that the consecration represented a brave new start for the Church and a great day for womankind in general, society at large seems largely unaffected by this Good News. It is not clear that having women at the helm of the Ship of the Church will in itself significantly enhance its work of spreading the gospel, nor has it been primarily talked of in such terms. And there would appear to be many more, and much more serious, examples of inequality, violence, exploitation and poverty faced by women throughout the world.

Clearly, though, the significance of the ordination in terms of gender equality was mainly symbolic: removal of one of the last bastions of patriarchy and a kind of ultimate recognition – at symbolically the highest level: the Church as representative of Christ – of the equality of women and men.

That’s all well and good, and I won’t go into the many arguments around the difference between equality and sameness, and between authority and power in the Church; and the reasons why the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches have not yet instituted female bishops.

This latter fact is one reason why Monday’s ceremony was an occasion of sadness for me personally. The Church of England has now severed the universal basis for its claim to have the ‘apostolic succession’: the unbroken line of succession linking today’s bishops directly back to the first Bishop of Rome, St Peter, via the laying on of hands during episcopal consecrations.

According to traditionalists who maintained until Monday that Church of England bishops were still in this succession – and hence were authentic bishops – the succession was broken by Monday’s ceremony. On this point of view, not only was the consecration of Libby Lane invalid (as she cannot be a true bishop by virtue of the unbroken tradition of male bishops linking back to St Peter and the original, all-male Apostles) but the episcopacy of all the bishops who laid hands on her has also been cancelled out, as they have been involved in a heretical consecration that directly subverts the principle – the apostolic succession – that confers validity to their own episcopacy.

This is why the part of Monday’s ceremony in which numerous bishops gathered round to lay hands on Libby Lane put me in mind of one of those murder mysteries in which a group of people all take part in a murder in order to assume collective responsibility. This was indeed a case of the bishops in attendance making sure they all participated in the act, and that if any one of them was going to jeopardise their episcopacy, they were all going to. Would it be too unkind to suggest that, having left the murdered corpse of the Church of England (as a member of the Church Universal) lying in the Cathedral, the Church of England is now marching on, zombie-like, to a marginal future as the Church of liberal progressivism or of British Values?

Even if you do not accept the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church’s previous claim to have the apostolic succession – which I do not, in fact – the Church had at least retained a form and basis of ordained ministry consistent with that of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and had maintained it intact ever since the Reformation. I had hoped, in fact, that the Church of England might one day be reconnected to the universal apostolic Church as part of a renewal of faith in the land. Maybe this will still happen – everything is possible to God – but the Church of England has just made its journey back into the fold that much longer and bumpier.

In essence, the Church of England can no longer really claim to be a catholic Church, other than in the non-episcopal sense of sharing in the universal faith in Christ that unites all Christians. The Church of England has become a Protestant denomination. For some, that will be no bad thing. But for me, the Church of England is becoming increasingly irrelevant as it remodels itself on the image of modern secular society.

For me, therefore, Monday’s event brought only the sadness of hope deceived.

The leaders’ debates and the failure to imagine England

In the row about what format if any the party leaders’ debates in the upcoming general election should take, one factor that has consistently been ignored is the England-specific framing of the discussion. By this, I mean not just that the possibility of an England-specific debate – focusing on the type of ‘English matters’ on which many have recently advocated that only English MPs should have the right to vote – has simply not been considered; whereas separate Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish debates have been offered. But also, the fact that the whole frame of reference for defining what constitutes ‘major UK parties’ is effectively English – or at least Anglo-British – has failed to be acknowledged.

Take the statement yesterday by the Green Party’s Australian-born leader Natalie Bennett claiming that the Green Party (of England and Wales) was one of the five major parties “in Britain”. Well, no, it’s one of the five largest parties in England. If you really mean ‘Britain’, or the UK, then you’d probably have to rank the Greens as sixth, with the SNP clearly in third place, both in terms of party membership and likely parliamentary representation after the general election.

Then you get into meaningless semantics about what constitutes a ‘national’ party: whether it means standing candidates in every single British, as opposed to UK, seat – leaving aside the fact that the Greens, Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems all have separate ‘Scottish’ parties, so that, technically, UKIP is the only major UK-wide party that qualifies. Unless, of course, by ‘national’ you mean every English seat. Because that is what, in this debate about the debates, ‘national’ effectively does mean: it’s whether parties are standing everywhere in England that counts, and hence whether their leaders’ performance in the debates are of relevance and interest to an English TV audience.

Of course, this is not being acknowledged, and cannot be acknowledged, as politicians and media would then have to admit that, in this supposedly UK election, involving UK-wide issues, there are really multiple elections: those in the devolved nations, where the issues properly concern only policy areas reserved to the UK government, and where nation-specific parties need to make their respective pitches about how they intend to look after the interests of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people within the London parliament; and then, in contrast, there is the election in England, where both reserved matters of great importance such as the economy, the EU, security and immigration are at stake, along with England-only matters such as the NHS, education, social care and cuts to local government – among many others.

Instead, politicians and the media are seeking to maintain the pretence that there is a single UK electorate, and single set of policy issues of equivalent importance and relevance to that ‘national’ audience: the NHS alongside the economy; education alongside immigration; social care and housing alongside welfare. There is of course a single national audience affected by the parties’ positions in all of these areas – but it’s the English audience, not the British one. And the ‘English’ parties – in my sense – certainly shouldn’t make a pitch to viewers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the (English) NHS, education system and local government, as if they were of equal relevance to viewers in those countries as those parties’ policies on the economy, defence and immigration. In fact, to do so is tantamount to fraud, as those parties wouldn’t be able to do anything in devolved policy areas if people in those countries voted them into power in Westminster.

The only way to be fair and proportionate about this is to split the debates into reserved and devolved matters; to have separate debates in all four of the UK’s nations on the latter; and have one or more debate on reserved policy areas involving, in some way, all the major parties of each nation. Then, by all means, the Green Party of England and Wales should be included, at least in the separate English and Welsh debates; and the Scottish Greens should be included in the Scottish debate.

The way I’d split it, to keep it manageable and useful to voters, is as follows:

• A first debate, aired UK-wide, featuring just David Cameron and Ed Miliband: as the PMs in waiting. This would deal only with reserved matters, given its UK-wide transmission

• A second debate, aired UK-wide, featuring the leaders of all the parties that could end up as coalition partners to the Conservatives or Labour, or as holding the balance of power, i.e. the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the DUP. This debate should also be on reserved matters only and should exclude the Tories and Labour in order to counterbalance the potential bias from limiting the first debate to them. Although only UKIP and the Greens are ‘national’ (i.e. English) parties, it would be relevant to English voters to have the leaders of the main nation-specific parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland appearing on the platform, as these parties may form part of UK governments legislating for England. The debates would therefore give voters in England a chance to find out whether these parties would ally themselves with Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament; and what their stance on matters such as English votes for English laws, constitutional reform for England, and other issues of concern to English people such as immigration and EU membership would be. That might make a real difference to voting intentions

• Four further nation-specific debates should also then happen, including UKIP and the Greens in England, and the single nation-specific parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England, the debate should reasonably deal with both England-specific and reserved matters, but with a greater emphasis on English issues, as reserved issues would have formed the focus of the previous two debates. Devoting a limited amount of time to reserved matters would enable, say, Nigel Farage to debate the EU and immigration with David Cameron, and Natalie Bennett to debate energy policy alongside the environment (England-only) with the other leaders.

But I strongly doubt that a truly equitable solution such as this will be adopted: equitable to the people of England, that is, rather than to the purported national-UK parties that are in fact no such thing.

National parliaments with a regionally elected federal parliament: a new constitutional model for the UK

The following is the outline for a new federal UK: a modest contribution to the ongoing debate about options for the governance of England and the UK as a whole. I offer this despite thinking that the ‘federal moment’ has perhaps already passed, primarily because Scotland has embarked on its own journey of reinvigorated democracy, and is growing into an independent-minded polity, even though the cause of full independence has been lost, for the time being at least.

For this reason, any new federal model for the UK constitution would need to offer a considerable measure of autonomy to Scotland – and, similarly, to all of the UK’s nations, as all must be treated equally – in order to satisfy the powerful aspirations towards real self-government to the north of the border with England and, indeed, to its south.

My model can be stated succinctly: four national parliaments (preferably elected using the AMS proportional system presently used in Scotland and Wales) to deal with devolved matters, and a UK-wide, federal parliament, elected on a ‘regional’ basis, to deal with reserved matters. As observed above, the policy areas devolved to each national parliament would be substantial and could include – in addition to the types of matter that are already devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – the majority of income tax, corporation tax and some other taxes; most of welfare and social security; all of transport policy; national infrastructure and major planning projects; energy; considerable primary-legislative powers; and all of justice and policing. Some of these powers are already enjoyed by Scotland (e.g. a separate justice system and major planning projects), so these responsibilities should be devolved consistently to all four nations.

Accordingly, the reserved policy areas would be narrowed down to: macro-economics (i.e. overall fiscal policy co-ordination and monetary policy); residual taxation and welfare responsibilities (e.g. a UK-wide state retirement pension); defence and security; immigration and citizenship; foreign policy; and possibly, science, research and development.

I imagine the regionally based federal parliament (which would also replace the House of Lords as a revising chamber for legislation passed by the national parliaments) as being elected via a similar PR system to the present European Parliament elections, with each ‘region’ forming an electoral college. However, the UK federal parliament would not necessarily adopt the Euro regions, many of which have no basis in English history or local identity. Instead, my concept is one of ‘elective regions’, which could be built up from the bottom upwards from counties, cities and unitary authorities.

In other words, individual counties, cities, etc. could decide to group together to form ‘regions’ based around shared economic, social and environmental challenges. It would be up to the people in each prospective region to approve its formation in a referendum. These regions could straddle national boundaries, e.g. there could be a ‘Borders’ region to the north and south of the Anglo-Scottish border, or a ‘South Wales and Avon’ region encompassing, say, the area including Cardiff, Newport and Bristol (just for argument’s sake). In reality, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be more likely to constitute ‘regions’ in their own right for the purposes of the new federal parliament – although something like a Highlands, Islands and Lowlands split in Scotland is easily conceivable, just as is a split between South Wales and Welsh-speaking West and North Wales. Similarly, the formation of a Cornwall region would be highly likely.

This is not devolution to the regions. Indeed, any intra-national devolution down to ‘regional’ or local level would be a devolved responsibility of each of the national parliaments, in keeping with subsidiarity principles. In fact, my proposal is partly intended as a means to channel and fend off the potentially centrifugal and divisive drive towards regional devolution in England in the form of Euro regions or new ‘city regions’, as typically supported by Liberal Democrat federalists and Labourites respectively.

The new regions would have a powerful voice in the federal parliament, and would be able to forge alliances – including across borders – to help co-ordinate the economic-development plans produced by the national parliaments and, if necessary, to block legislation they felt was contrary to their interests or to those of the UK as a whole. And electing the federal parliament on a regional, rather than national, basis provides a counterbalance to the individual nations and a means to prevent England in particular from assuming a dominant position across the new federal polity – a fear which is routinely adduced to counter demands for an English parliament, i.e. that it would be too big and powerful, and would destabilise any UK federation.

The new regions could also push for more devolved powers – but as stated above, decisions about whether to grant them should be the responsibility of the national parliaments, combined with referendums in the regions concerned.

So this is my draft blueprint. I think this could be an effective way to satisfy aspirations for national self-government, and decentralisation to regions and local authorities, while preserving a strong UK-wide government. But as I say, it may already be too late, as the Scottish genie is already out of the bottle – and England, too, increasingly demands a say on its own government.

EVoEL made simple: two simple solutions to the West Lothian Question

By now, anyone with even a remote interest in British politics will know what the West Lothian Question is, and will be aware that one of the answers proposed to it is ‘English votes for English Laws’ (EVoEL).

Should anybody need a quick reminder, however, the West Lothian Question relates to the fact that, following devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is possible, on occasions, for MPs elected from those countries to have a decisive say on legislation pertaining to England only, whereas English MPs have no such say on bills on similar matters affecting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, because those matters are devolved to the parliament and assemblies of those countries respectively.

EVoEL is one remedy proposed to this imbalance and – in the view of many – injustice. EVoEL says that, on occasions such as those described above, only English MPs should be allowed to exercise the decisive vote (or, by extension, only English MPs should have any say and / or participate in debates) on such bills, including in all or just some of the stages of such bills’ passage through the Commons.

In practice, it is highly complicated to implement EVoEL, for a number of reasons that have been well documented and argued about elsewhere, two of the main ones being that:

1) On the basis of current bill-drafting practices, there are in fact very few England-only bills, either in whole or in part, so that even if a bill ‘primarily’ relates to England, it may not be justifiable to exclude non-English MPs from voting on it given the direct or indirect effects it may have on their constituents

2) One of those indirect consequences is the financial impact via the infamous Barnett Formula, whereby funding for the devolved nations is linked to the English budget allocation in such a way as to effectively guarantee a higher level of spending per head of population in those countries than in England. The fact that many England-only or England-mainly bills involve decisions about spending in England has therefore been used as justification for non-English MPs to continue voting on them. Even the SNP, which generally exercises a so-called ‘self-denying ordinance’ (i.e. doesn’t vote) on non-Scottish matters, does vote on mainly or exclusively English bills that affect Scotland in this indirect way.

I want here to suggest two non-mutually exclusive, ‘simple’ ways to implement EVoEL, or rather to solve the problem EVoEL is intended to solve without in fact preventing non-English-elected MPs from voting on ‘English’ laws. Of course, the most clear-cut solution is a separate English parliament, which comprehensively redresses the asymmetry of New Labour’s devolution settlement in that, by definition, only English-elected representatives would vote on England-only bills, in an England-only parliament.

But assuming that the present UK parliament is retained, for a time at least, as the legislative body for England, my simple solutions to the West Lothian Question would run as follows:

1) Introduce proportional representation (PR) for UK general elections. This would effectively eliminate the political dimension to the West Lothian problem, if not the national and constitutional aspects to it. The political dimension derives from the differential parliamentary representation of Labour and the Conservatives across the UK’s nations: Labour generally – but for how much longer? – winning most of the seats in Scotland and Wales (and therefore, when in government, being keen for its MPs from those countries to vote on its ‘English’ bills), and the Conservatives being more likely to win parliamentary majorities in England that are insufficient to form UK-wide majorities, owing to the party’s lack of seats in Scotland and Wales (and therefore making it necessary to form coalitions with parties whose numbers are in part made up by non-English MPs, who also vote on English bills – something which the Conservatives have been perfectly willing to go along with as part of the present coalition with the Liberal Democrats).

With PR, there would be very little difference between the state of the parties UK-wide and England-only, owing to the sheer demographic dominance of England, which has around 85% of the UK population. Accordingly, in 2010, the Conservatives won 40% of the popular vote in England only and 36% UK-wide. Similarly, Labour won 28% in England and 29% UK-wide, and the Lib Dems won 24% and 23% respectively. If these vote shares had been translated into shares of seats, the coalition between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems would have had 63% of English seats and 59% of the seats UK-wide. In general, it would be unlikely that any UK-wide coalition necessitated by PR would not also command a majority of English seats, and it would certainly be politically unwise to put together a UK majority that failed to deliver an English majority.

By introducing PR, then, you could avoid having to ban non-English-elected MPs from voting on ‘English’ matters: you would not need to make any changes to existing parliamentary procedure, in fact, as the ruling coalition would depend on the loyal support of its English MPs to pass any of its bills, England-only or England +.

It would still be theoretically possible, though arithmetically unlikely, for ‘English’ bills to fail to obtain the support of most English MPs but still be passed owing to the support of Scottish and Welsh MPs. However, a fairly substantial rebellion by the coalition parties’ English MPs would be required, and this would present a bigger political problem to a coalition government than it did for the New Labour government that introduced foundation hospitals and university tuition fees in England despite a majority of English MPs rejecting the measures. This is because the English MPs voting against the government would be likely to be from only one of the coalition parties, rather than both (or all), meaning that any such rebellion would represent a direct challenge to the coalition’s very survival. Accordingly, rebellions on this scale would be more likely to be nipped in the bud.

2) All bills to require a majority of both England-only and UK-wide MPs. The two main parties are unlikely to embrace PR as an answer to the WLQ, despite the simplicity and elegance of the solution, as this would involve relinquishing their ambitions to win outright parliamentary majorities, pretty much for good. This fact reveals just how much the obfuscations and disingenuousness around the WLQ and EVoEL are bound up with narrow party self-interest: Labour’s ambition to govern being tied up with continuing to allow its Scottish and Welsh MPs to vote on English matters, and the Conservatives lust for power being bound up with denying the selfsame right to Scottish and Welsh members.

So an alternative ‘solution’ to this conundrum (although it could also be introduced in tandem with PR) would be to introduce a simple rule that all bills and clauses should require the support of a majority of both English MPs and all UK MPs to be passed. This again requires no modification to any parliamentary procedure – no ‘two classes of MPs’, and no endless disquisitions as to the geographical extent of bills or clauses – and simply ensures that no bill can be passed without procuring the support of a majority of England’s representatives.

The justification for this approach is based on a view about the relationship of Parliament to England, which is as stated in a previous blog about the televised leaders’ debates: that it is not so much that only some laws are English-only (and hence, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs should putatively be excluded from debating and voting on them) while some are UK-wide; but that in reality, all laws are English, while some also extend to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (or to one or two of the above).

I can’t think of any legislation in recent years, other than the actual devolution legislation, that has not applied to England. The UK parliament is therefore the de facto English parliament: the English legislature. So if EVoEL is ostensibly a means to give England a voice, and to create something of a distinct English parliament within the UK parliament (as opposed to a separate body), then it seems fair that legislation should always be required to command a majority of English MPs.

I can hear the howls of indignation in certain quarters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: that this ‘discriminates’ against their MPs. But it does no such thing, really, because any legislation – even fully England-only bills – would still be required to obtain the support of a majority of MPs from across the UK under this rule. I.e. if a bill is supported by most English MPs but not by a majority of all UK MPs, then it is not passed – just as would be the case today.

There would, of course, be implications for the forming of governments, i.e. the need to ensure – where possible – that any incoming government enjoyed both a UK-wide and England-only majority. However, here again, not much would need to be changed. The process, as now (assuming PR had not been implemented), would be that any party winning an outright UK majority would normally form the government on their own, unless they failed to win a majority in England. In that case, they might wish to enter a coalition with another party with sufficient English MPs to make up an English majority – or alternatively, they could just work with other parties to secure English majorities for their bills on a case-by-case basis.

If no party won an outright majority, the process, as now, would be to find the single party or coalition that commanded the largest number of seats UK-wide: preferably, but not necessarily, a majority; and preferably, but not necessarily, the largest number / a majority of English seats. In the absence of a UK-majority (and English-majority) government, the same rule about getting English bills passed would apply: the government would just have to collaborate with other parties, which is probably a good thing for England’s governance, in any case.

In reality, it would be extremely unlikely for a party or coalition with a UK-wide majority to fail to secure an English majority. This has not happened in the post-war era: contrary to popular misconception, every single Labour majority government since 1945 has also succeeded in winning a majority of English MPs. The only two post-war Labour governments that have failed to win an English majority also failed to win a UK one: those elected in 1964 and February 1974.

If this dual-majority rule for votes in Parliament were introduced together with PR – which it could be – then the chance of a UK majority failing to deliver an English majority, or vice-versa, would be witheringly small.

The two answers to the West Lothian Question outlined here do not provide an answer to the ‘English Question’, which is: who governs England, and in whose name? If one or both of my proposals were implemented, the answer to that question would still be: the UK parliament and executive govern England, in the name of the UK. There would still be no properly English parliament: no English voice or recognition as a sovereign nation, with a right to determine the government of its own choosing.

But what would be achieved, if my proposals were adopted, would be a parliament more fitting to serve, even if only provisionally, as England’s legislature: properly accountable to the people of England; more accurately reflecting the priorities of English voters; and leading to the formation of governments that could not use their support from other parts of the UK to override the views of England’s elected representatives.