I disagree that the Tory argument is not powerful (however immoral and false it is).
I expect the Tories to
1/ Stay in number 10 as long as possible, trying to form a government, possibly even to a Queens Speech? Claiming all the time that they are the only legitimate government.
2/ If at any stage it is removed and replaced by an opposing government it will use the Tory press to run campaigns to fan the flames of English nationalism and anti-Scottish sentiment claiming that the government is illegitimate.
Those are all things that happened after the coalition had formed. But you were saying the lib dems got a raw deal because they ruled out forming a coalition with Labour too early.
It doesn’t make sense – negotiations about how the coalition was formed in the first place is one thing, what happened afterwards is another.
But I will agree with you that what happened after was the lib dems became the whipping boys. And the tories definitely didn’t play fair on AV (it wasn’t just a matter of promoting the other view they actively misrepresented the AV position).
I disagree with parts of this. The Tories and DUP have been partners of sorts for a long, long time. A Tory DUP alliance is not news. Of course Labour have every right to organise a coalition with the SNP. However, Labour opponents also have the right to condemn such an alliance. It’s not the “right” of such an alliance that will be controversial but any perceived political wrangling surrounding it. The only advice Labour need to listen to before coalescing with the SNP is; Labour had better look as if they are playing hardball with the SNP. If the English electorate perceive Miliband as being weak with the SNP then he will suffer at the polls in years to come.
Article after article in the last few days have pointed to Cameron’s appeal to English nationalism-
English votes for English laws to hamstring Labour Governments
Persistent briefing that a Government in any way dependent on Scottish votes of the SNP would be illegitimate
Teresa May on the biggest crisis since the abdication
Etc.
I have no dog in this fight. We either get a further Conservative minority government from which all Scottish MPs bar a couple possibly are purposely excluded or a Labour minority government which will almost certainly introduce further federalism and fair votes. Both governments will be likely to rely on SNP positive or negative votes.
None of that has to do with English nationalism, it is an attempt to keep the Union functioning. Any English nationalist would be welcoming anything that helps Scotland leave, not trying to stop it.
You can call it English nationalism or English regionalism. It is a latent force. Just because it’s not at the fore right now does not mean that will always be the case. An English electorate thinking the SNP are getting a sweet deal will resent it. And to be honest, Tory and UKIP politicians(and the media) have every right to stoke up the resentment. Every political party has its nasty side. Labour do use class as a weapon(think Cameron as a posh Etonian); the SNP uses Scottish nationalism. English nationalism is waiting to be tapped into. Im not saying it’s a positive, but it is there. Politics being politics it will be exploited.
Being old enough to have campaigned for Wilson in 1965 and for Thorpe in both 1974 elections and for Ashdown in 92and seen the low majority parliaments that followed, I see problems ahead for both major parties.
It is likely that the government party in the first months of the Parliament will lose MPs to sickness, scandal and situations over the first years of the government. The fixed term parliaments act will make it likely that transfer of power will be by resignation rather than calling an election.
There’s no English nationalism in either of those. The first wants England to be treated as a region in the same way as Scotland within the Union, and the second wants the Union preserved.
I’ve not seen any politician, ever, campaign on the basis that England should be an independent nation, and I suspect that the majority of English people have never given it a thought, and if they were to, would think it was absurd.
English votes for English laws has nothing to do with nationalism, it has to do with giving England parity with the other members of the Union, rather than having less power as it currently does. Do you seriously think it’s right that a Scottish MP can affect laws over England, when an English MP cannot affect similar laws in Scotland?
I have no problem with an English Parliament within a federal structure with a Federal Parliament and rules about the relations between the various bodies.
EVEL is simply a way to maintain Conservative vetoes over any non Tory government.
EVEL anyway stands no chance. If we have a minority Labour Government they will not introduce it. If we have a minority Conservative Government the LibDems and DUP will stop it. Even a majority Tory government would have to get it through the Commons and convince the Lords which take a dim view of party political manipulation of the constitution and in which the Tories are a minority with Cross bench, lab, LibDems and others (don’t forget that hundreds of SNP Lords will be required by convention after the election.)
There is a convention that the Lords should have an approximate balance of party MPs with the commons. If the SNP end up with 8% of the MPs that would require the creation of some eighty SNP Lords.
If a party is using fear of the SNP to whip up anti-Scottish feeling and feed a message of England for the English to exclude all Scots from government, then that is using English nationalism.
You’re forgetting a couple of countries, and confusing Unionism with Nationalism. Anti-SNP feeling is not anti-Scottish feeling, and Unionism is what the majority of Scots support.
I just hope the majority of Scots who oppose the SNP and independence get their act together and vote for whoever can beat the Nationalists, for the sake of both Scotland and the Union. And I say that even though it will likely mean a Labour government and all the problems that will go with it.
The only way any of this is to do with England is with attempting to bring it up to being an equal partner in the Union.
There is no indication that a majority of Scots are committed unionists. There is considerable evidence that Scots are not happy with the current settlement.