Ever since the creation of the Scottish Parliament, there apparently has been an ongoing debate regarding the role of Scottish members of the U.K. Parliament. In other words, if Scots look to their own legislature, whose members are all elected from Scotland, for internal legislative questions, then why should Scottish members of the U.K. Parliament have a say in questions that do not affect Scotland, for examples, issues that might be considered England-only questions. I recently learned that this controversy is known as the “West Lothian Question.”
Pretend that the solution to this question is one of these:
The creation of and English Parliament as a counterpart to the Scottish Parliament to handle issues internal to England, or
Scottish members of the U.K. Parliament would be barred from voting on issues that do not affect Scotland.
My question is this: Would this basically give overwhelming control of English politics to the Conservative party? Does the Labor party depend on Scottish M.P.s to stay competitive? If so, how long would such Conservative dominance be likely to last?
And a side question: How are seats in the U.K. Parliament allocated to England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland? Is it by population?
Here is the breakdown of constituencies of the UK with the results from the election of 2005.
As you can see, the bulk of the UK is in England. These results are all at the BBC web page: BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Results
As you can see, in this election, the Conservatives did not have a majority of the English “delegation” to Parliament.
650 100% Constituencies
529 81% England
59 9% Scotland
40 6% Wales
18 3% Northern Ireland
England
286 54% Labour
193 36% Conservative
47 9% Liberal Democrat
1 0% IKHH
1 0% Respect
Scotland
41 69% Labour
11 19% Liberal Democrat
6 10% Scottish National
1 2% Conservative
Wales
29 73% Labour
4 10% Liberal Democrat
3 8% Conservative
3 8% Plaid Cymru
1 3% Independent
That’s interesting. I gathered (perhaps incorrectly) that the Labor party was resisting the creation of an English parliament because it perceived that it would not be competitive politically. So why did Labor go for the regional parliament route (now stalled, I understand) instead?
It certainly wouldn’t help Labour. If you look at the share of the vote in the last election, it was 35.4% Labour, Conservative 35.7% (yep, higher than Labour despite the seat count), LD 22.9% .
A Conservative government might well tinker with constituency boundaries to make those results a bit more proportional, and then it would be even harder for Labour to control an England-only parliament.
Actually, I believe SNP MPs have voluntarily abstained from votes on English/Welsh questions. However, in a coalition government that they supported, they would be unlikely to continue abstaining.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the Con. party is not the monolithic behemoth it might wish to be. There are your anti-Europeans who would like to pull the UK out of the EU, there are extreme free-market enthusiasts, and there are modernisers like Cameron who want to appeal to a centre-right audience in order to get elected. Not all of these people are on the same page all the time, but they were seemingly willing to keep disagreements mostly under wraps provided Dave walked the election. He didn’t.
As for an English parliament, the outcome rather depends on whether elections utilised the first-past-the-post system or some type of proportional representation. Support for PR seems quite strong in England although the Tories are historically opposed to it, mainly because it is highly likely to deprive them of absolute power. With a PR system the Tories might find borderline Conservatives defecting to the LibDems, since such a vote would be likely to contribute to the election of a representative rather than simply thrown away. Of course, other disaffected Conservatives could also vote UKIP. The English would have to make like Germans (and Scots and everybody else) and become adept at stable minority/coalition governments. Oh, the horror.
With an FPTP system Conservatives might well dominate an English parliament. How long would this last?
a) until internal disagreements caused the party to implode. This would be exceedingly cool but unlikely to happen with a leadership that actually delivered majorities.
b) until middle-class English people see the Tories taking the hatchet to social programmes dear to their hearts, such as the NHS and child tax credits.
An English parliament would be quite a spectacle. With PR I could see it breaking into a spectrum of right-wing parties including BNP, UKIP, and English Democrats. It would also provide an excellent forum for the airing of regional grievances, because it would take no time at all for the rest of England to tire of hearing from Southerners about how they pay for the whole country.
I will be watching through binoculars safely across the border.
It would also provide an excellent forum for the airing of regional grievances, because it would take no time at all for the rest of England to tire of hearing from Southerners about how they pay for the whole country.
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I think the rest of the country is already tired of hearing from southerners full stop.
Much the same can be said of any large party in our system. Labour, Conservative, even Lib Dems, they’re all coalitions of various factions. FPTP leads itself to “big tent” parties, where the coalitions are within the parties rather than between them.
