Thursday, February 5, 2009

Unionists and The English Question

Labourspace-
lets you quickly and easily set up a campaign and share your ideas with the Labourspace community. If you start a campaign which gains the most popular support your ideas will be bought to the attention of senior Labour politicians - your campaign could give you the opportunity to change the world!

Or at least influence those who can effect change in our own small corner of the world.

A campaign which should be of interest to Unionists in all four parts of the UK has now been set up on the site:
A National Conversation for England

‘A National Conversation for England’ is a campaign that urges people to engage positively in discussion on the question of England: our national identity, our democracy, our governance, our future. We call for a government consultation of, and for, the people of England, so that we - the people - can determine the form of government best suited to our needs.

What exactly is being proposed:
...an English equivalent of Scotland’s Calman Commission, to be tasked with gathering evidence from around England, with a view to making recommendations to the Government on ‘The English Question’ – the question of how England should be governed. Following on from that an English Constitutional Convention should be established along with a Royal Commission on the Governance of England to bring forward proposals to the UK Government.

The asymmetrical devolution system inflicted on United Kingdom in the late 90s has resulted in the igniting of “The English Question”...the question for Unionists in all four parts of the United Kingdom is how do we propose to address the constitutional and democratic deficiencies highlighted by this campaign?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very Anglocentric, so should suit all the so called Brit/Scots and Brit/Irish. jeezo give you guys a spoon.

Btw there is no bigger English nationalist sympathiser than me. In the spirit of cordiality an independent England should immediately launch a plebiscite in Berwick, and reimburse Scotland for all the sponging she has done, especially over the last 30 odd years.

O'Neill said...

Very Anglocentric, so should suit all the so called Brit/Scots and Brit/Irish. jeezo give you guys a spoon.

My question is directed towards Unionists outside England for a reason. There is a collective "head in the sand" mentality at the minute about the many shortfalls of the present constitutional mess the UK finds itself in. Those shortfalls will have to be addressed/solved one way or another and it is infinitely better that Unionists take the initiative on this rather than leaving it solely up to nationalism.

Unknown said...

Quite right. However, having singularly failed to "slay the dragon" of nationalism by feeding it what it wants, i.e. independent political power, the response of the majority of the Unionist movement is to stoke the fires of English nationalism by never missing a chance to abuse the English simply for being English.

Way to go, fellas!