UK Politics

In Opposing EVEL, Labour Struggles To Defend The Indefensible

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Saltire Downing Street BBC EVEL constitutional reform scotland

 

It’s mighty hard to defend the Labour Party’s current position on devolution and constitutional reform.

Most normal people would not call loudly for a United Kingdom constitutional convention unless they had a brightly shining idea – hell, at least a rough approximation – of what they wanted to come out of it.

And if the concept of EVEL – English Votes for English Laws – is one of those acceptable outcomes, why not simply say so and sidestep all of the criticism now coming their way from the Conservative Party, the media and the general population?

But the Labour Party was silent or dismissive of EVEL during today’s parliamentary debate on the ramifications of the Scottish independence referendum decision precisely because they intend to use a UK constitutional convention (or rather, the distant prospect of one) as a convenient means of burying EVEL forever and maintaining their already heftily unfair electoral advantage in perpetuity.

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Defection of Mark Reckless to UKIP Serves Notice To The Establishment

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

mark reckless nigel farage ukip defection 3

 

A little less conversation, a little more action.

With the pumped-up remix of the classic song ringing in their ears, UKIP delegates to the party’s 2014 conference in Doncaster stood and cheered and welcomed their latest high profile parliamentary defector: now ex-Conservative MP Mark Reckless.

Say what you want about UKIP’s policies, internal contradictions and some of their wackier personalities, but this does not look like a party of economically left-behind losers or over-the-hill retirees caught up in nostalgia for times past.

As Mark Reckless himself noted, to thunderous applause: “The only nostalgia I see is that of the European bureaucrats as they cling to their fading 1950s vision.”

And in a political landscape where talk is cheap and real progress is rare, all of the action and momentum right now is with UKIP.

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Labour Party Fails To Find Its Soul In Manchester

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

 

The 2014 Labour Party conference may be a rapidly receding memory, brushed aside in the news cycle by UKIP’s conference and Parliament’s vote to authorise military action in Iraq (again) – but it will take months for the stench of misplaced smugness, moral superiority and directionless, crusading fervour left in Labour’s wake to fully dissipate from the Manchester Central Convention Complex.

The bland, ambitious, vaguely telegenic personalities were the same.

The toe-curlingly bad speeches were the same.

The policy announcements (where they existed) were the same.

The delegates milled around, congratulating themselves for being the only ones in Britain who care about the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. So much the same.

They called themselves “brother” and “sister”, and talked about “solidarity” as though they were still engaged in some kind of real, urgent, principled struggle.

But it was all an act.

Today’s Labour Party, increasingly under the New Labour era of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – and now reaching its dismal nadir under Ed Miliband – is nothing but an orchestrated pretence, an amateur dramatic society production of Labour’s Glory Days, with Ed Miliband playing the part of Clement Attlee and introducing Andy Burnham, in his first dramatic role, as Nye Bevan.

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With Constitutional Reform, Labour Puts Politics Before Country

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

ed miliband devolution

 

The idea that Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs should no longer be able to vote on matters affecting only England when devolution prevents any English reciprocity is the only reasonable, logical viewpoint for a British citizen to hold – particularly in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum.

One might expect that a political party so self-avowedly obsessed with promoting “fairness” would recognise this universal truth, and work swiftly to ensure that the new reality comes to pass.

But Ed Miliband’s Labour Party has many priorities, and advancing this most fundamental form of constitutional fairness is very far down the list. Indeed, it is almost universally viewed as a threat.

The status quo keeps alive the possibility of a future Labour government in Westminster, while ensuring that a Conservative UK government is prevented as much as possible from interfering with any left-wing policies that take shape in the devolved assemblies.

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The United Kingdom’s Last Stand

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Scotland UK Unity Rally Trafalgar Square London semipartisansam

 

In the darkest days of our nation’s history, when Britain confronted the Nazi menace alone and the United Kingdom was all that stood between the free world and fascism, a series of daily concerts were held at the mothballed National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square. These concerts, organised by the pianist Myra Hess, served to lift the spirits of war-weary Brits and demonstrate a positive public response in the face of the most trying circumstances.

Trafalgar Square has played host to many rallies, concerts and protests since those bleak days in the 1940s. But there have been none so important as the rally which is scheduled to take place later today, on Monday 15 September in support of the United Kingdom, and in opposition to a “Yes” vote in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence.

The circumstances of the new existential threat we face may be quite different, but make no mistake: the survival of our country in its current form has not been at such great a risk since Hitler’s Luftwaffe threatened to clear the way for a German invasion.

A democratic, peacetime split may is clearly not the same as invasion by a foreign power, but it would be traumatic in its own way. No, there will not be an occupying army or columns of tanks on the street if the Scottish people decide to secede from the United Kingdom when they go to the polls on the 18th of September. As following a bereavement or divorce, life at its most banal will continue largely as usual. But something precious will have been lost, something irretrievable. The greatest, most successful country in modern history will have ceased to exist, fractured into a small, euro-centric social democracy to the north and a bewildered, diminished rump to the south.

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