Morning Constitutional

[steepholm]

I've been banging on about the necessity of English devolution for years, without ever getting the sense that it figured on any (non-racist) party's political agenda. Could this be about to change? Not imminently, I think, but at least some people are talking about it, and the Scottish referendum and its fall-out may concentrate minds further.

Meanwhile, the Euro crisis is over, according to President Hollande! Rejoice! I do hope someone has brought the good news to the young people of Spain and Greece, though - they could do with cheering up.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Hollande's reaction is typical- the French have spent an age trying to convince themselves of the old adage 'crisis? What crisis?' driving partly EU based civil servants like my other half nuts in the process.

He's fooling no one but himself!

The danger I see in English devolution is the potential for a yawning north-south divide.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The danger I see in English devolution is the potential for a yawning north-south divide.

We already have one of them, don't we? I suspect that we would have regional devolution anyway rather than treating the whole of England in one lump - which may mitigate some of those concerns.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

What I meant was rather that the privileged south (for which read London) would do its damndest to keep the wealth in the Square Mile and places like Westminster and spend the best of its time spying on anyone who thought things should be other with help from our esteemed US spymasters. :o(

Law abiding people have nothing to fear from the septics and that's official.............

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Actually, regional devolution has been official Liberal Democrat policy for some years. The article I've linked to there is from 2000, and I suspect it's something the party would want to re-debate if a realistic prospect of getting anywhere with the issue arose. (I don't think the present coalition government presents any such prospect; and sadly I think the same of a Lib-Lab coalition). But I would always expect a majority of Lib Dem opinion to back this, because it is a natural fit with the basic liberal principle of devolving decision-making to the lowest possible level, so that the people who are most affected by it are the most directly involved in the process.

English devolution en bloc isn't party policy, but that didn't stop Simon Hughes calling for it as recently as last year (in the specific context of debates around the Scottish independence referendum).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected - I didn't know it was party policy (though I wouldn't have been surprised to hear about individual LibDems supporting it).

From what you say it's unlikely to happen until the LDs have a parliamentary majority, which probably isn't imminent exactly, but the landscape may look very different in a couple of years' time. If either of the other parties think it may be to their advantage, they'll no doubt discover that that's what they believed all along.

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

The news has not reached the young people of Spain.