Alexander is the LibDem on the coalition committee dealing with this. As it is not in the original coalition agreement, it needs committee approval for any ne government action.
Perhaps, but it doesn’t stop Cameron making political capital out of the issue. We are only a few months from the lower slopes of the General Election(if we are not there already). It really is only a matter of months before the Tories and Lib Dems are on full war footing against one another. Whatever Danny Alexander’s views are on the matter they will soon be next to irrelevant with regards to Tory policy.
You’ve been around long enough to know how biased the Guardian is.
With regards to the Ashcroft poll and issue of generational shift. Its worth pointing out that from the age groups of 35 upwards the vote breakdown for each subset was either very close or decisively No. The age group of 35-44 year olds went 53-47 in favour of Yes. This age group in no way feels the same affinity to the Union as the 65+ group. Yet it’s attitude towards independence was heading the same way as over 65’s, certainly in comparison to younger voters. I think its impossible to say whether this is entirely due to a generational shift or simply due to voters becoming more conservative(with a small c) as they get older. I think it more likely the latter.
Probably a bit of both, I would think. But to the extent that it’s attributable to the conservatism of older age, you’d expect the NO vote to creep upwards a bit over the couple of decades, for demographic reasons.
IIRC 16 is the age of majority under Scots law, and it’s now the voting age for all elections in Scotland save UK general elections.
Scotland voted against change, not for change… It would probably be for the best if this guy has as little to do with the process as possible, as he appears to not know the result of the referendum.
My point was that there will be no legislation before the election. Of course Cameron can make political capital (and I think that that is just OK) but there will be no formal move on rights of MPs on English legislation until after May next year. Then it will depend on who is in government and by what majority.
All newspapers are biased in one way or another. My view is that if a serious newspaper makes a statement of fact and its is not denied by the party concerned and there is no evidence against it, then that is about the best you are going to get from the media.
I have just realised that I confused Danny and Douglas Alexander (Labour and LibDem) above. It is Danny Alexander.
Now here is the Telegraph on the same story. Is that Telegraphed suddiciently biased in your direction for you to accept it?
“Danny Alexander has said that Liberal Democrats will ensure the Conservatives do not attempt to link Scottish devolution with banning Scottish MPs from voting on English issues.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury insisted that there would be “no ifs and no buts” over Scottish devolution, saying “the process for Scotland is free-standing and not linked to anything else.”
The Liberal Democrats would be key to achieving English votes for English laws (EVEL) as Labour has refused to back the plans. Ed Miliband used his speech to party conference to reject growing calls for home rule, calling the Conservatives’ plans a “Westminster stitch-up”.
Danny Alexander and Alistair Carmichael – both Scottish Liberal Democrat MPs – will attend the first meeting to set out the government’s plans for devolution today.
The Cabinet subcommittee, headed by the leader of the House of Commons William Hague, will discuss the government’s plans for devolution.”
It will creep up a bit, but note what I have posted above about the generational change between pre-boomer and boomer generations. There is no way that the Boomer generation in old age is going to be as conservative as the pre-boomer generation. They came through a world war and its aftermath, we had Rock and Roll, Teenagers, the sixties and so on.
16 is the age of capacity in Scotland but 17 is the age for driving and 18 for buying alcohol and cigarettes. Most other rights except voting in elections other than the referendum is 18.
ENgland is somewhat different with the Children Act covering offspring until they are 18, and English law being more restrictive about 16 year olds entering into contracts for business or marriage.
Yesterday all parties in the Scottish Parliament called for voting from the age of 16, and the Labour party and LibDems in England support that.
I suspect it will happen next year!
Um. The baby boomer generation was born between 1946 and 1964, by the conventional reckoning. They are currently aged between 50 and 70. They are the conservative element that has tipped the balance in favour of the NO side this time around.
People who were born after 1964, and who came to political awareness in the 1980s or later, are the backbone of the YES vote. I suspect we can thank Margaret Thatcher and like-minded associates for this.
As time goes on we’ll have new generations of voters who have no direct memory of Thatcher or the post-Thatcher years. It remains to be seen whether they’ll break for YES to the same degree. (Looking at today’s Tory party I see no reason why they wouldn’t, but maybe that’s my political prejudices showing through.)
You rigidity continues to amaze me.
The UK has a coalition government and part of the agreement is that any legislation entered into that was not in the original agreement must have support of both coalition partners. The LibDems have a lock on whether any legislation to change the voting in the Commons was a Government Bill or not.There is no way that the Conservatives could actually raise enough votes to pass such legislation in the remaining six months, or whether they would attempt such a partisan action alone. Not to mention the possibility that The Lords would delay it easily if the Labour, LibDem, Crossbench majority there wanted to.
Scotland did not vote against change; it voted against independence. The debate in the Scotish Parliament yesterday showed all parties making plans for a further serious devolution of powers from Westminster to Holyrood. The feeling of the Scottish people is that further devolution is desirable- no-one has said that the status quo is desirable.
The referendum was based on the principle that it would decide whether full independence should occur, leaving open the question of further devolution (which has been proposed since the Calman commission from 2007. There was no proposal to maintain the status quo in the agreement, and the Vow given by the party leaders reinforced to case for immediate and unconditional devolution of further powers to Scotland. Every party in Scotland and all major parties in England (even the Conservatives) have stated that further devolution will follow without being tied to English votes for English matters.
Your view on what a Government minister in his capacity as a member of the coalition should do is immaterial. The facts are otherwise than you believe.
16 is also the free age of marriage in Scotland. (It’s 18 everywhere else in the UK.)
The people who tipped the balance were the people between 65 and the grim reaper. Check the Ashcroft figure. When they drop off the perch then the matter may look very different.
55-64 voted 43 YES 57 NO
64 up voted 27 YES 73 NO
Which is what I said. Age of capacity covers ability to enter into contracts whether financial or marriage.
The point is, a majority of the baby boomers voted NO. The only two age cohorts, all or the majority of whose members were baby boomers, are also the only two which broke for NO.
In other words, your hopes for a YES vote do not reside in the baby boomers, but in the generation which follows them.
As the baby Boomers replace the older cohort, even though they are marginally NO, they still produce a majority for independence as the younger still cohorts are disproportionately YES. It does not require the Boomers to die first.
My point, Pjen, is that the older cohort (the over 55s) is already dominated by baby boomers - everbody up to 70 is a baby boomer, and life expectancy in Scotland is currently about 80. Consequently whatever effect the baby boomers are going to have on the votes of the older cohort is already reflected in the 2014 result to a substantial degree.
Yes, the baby boomers will make up a still larger proportion of the over-55 cohort in another ten years or so. On the other hand, in another ten years or so a larger fraction of baby-boomers will be in receipt of, and significantly dependent on, the old age pension, and I suspect this concentrates the mind wonderfully. Unless by then National Insurance is already a devolved matter, their propensity towards YES may be correspondingly weakened. So I wouldn’t be banking on a huge shift in the voting preferences of the over-55s associated with baby-boomers moving into their seventies.
The real issues, to my mind, are (a) whether the strong YES vote in the younger age brackets - the Gen-Xers, basically - will hold up as they move into their 50s and beyond, and (b) whether those who are currently under 16 will, when in their 20s and 30s, be as strongly pro-independence as the Gen-Xers currently are. That, to my mind, is where the next independence referendum will be won or lost.
Baby boomers are currently aged 58-68 (born between 1946 and 1956. Most are in the younger cohort (under 68) rather than the older cohort (over 68), thus few baby boomers are in the older cohort and most are in the younger cohort. They are also almost double in number the children born between 1936 and 1946.