Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): Gordon Brown, The Bard of Britishness, these days more of a Clown Prince, has been waiting and waiting for the Conservatives to play the English card so his backbenchers could scream 'nasty party' and accuse the Tories of 'fanning the flames of English nationalism' or 'breaking up the Union'. But it hasn't come, the Conservatives understand that Brown's Scottishness has dealt them a great hand and they intend to keep raising while the Mail and Telegraph go out to bat on their behalf. Gordon so desperately wants to paint New Labour as the 'Party of the Union' but right now it doesn't seem like much of a party, and even less of a union; the Barnett Formula is now coming to be seen as a tax on being English, and the West Lothian Question waits ominously in the wings while the Democracy Task Force delays its report from Spring to Summer to Christmas.
Even worse is the fact that in Scotland Gordon is widely reviled for his pathetic attempts to curry favour with the English, whilst in England he is just a mealy-mouthed Scot peddling a hollow - HistoryLite - version of Britishness in a vain attempt to cover up both his own Scottishness and a botched asymmetric constitution. It was never meant to like this. Backtrack to his 1975 Red Paper on Scotland and we see that his understanding of Scottish nationalism was that it was less a desire for Scottish independence and more a desire for Socialist emancipation; a Scotland free from the political constraints imposed upon it by the politics of Middle England:
"We suggest that the rise of modern Scottish nationalism is less an assertion of Scotland’s permanence as a nation than a response to Scotland’s uneven development … the discontent is a measure of the failure of both Scottish and British socialists to advance far and fast enough in shifting the balance of wealth and power to working people."
In a sense this dream has been realised because the Scottish people have ditched New Labour and voted in their droves for the socialist SNP, a party that can promise the Earth content in the knowledge that the English will blame Brown for the resulting inequities and their empty wallets. On the positive side, despite backbench Tory jibes, David Cameron has no plans to revise the Barnett Formula - that can wait until he is in Government. Just like Brown, and Tony Blair before him, Cameron sees the Formula as a small price to pay to keep the Union together. Barnett is the glue that binds Scotland to England - a bribe to keep Scotland British - and the prospect of a Conservative government with no Scottish MPs to draw upon is one that must fill Cameron with dread: 'Bought and sold for English gold' should be the mantra of the Shadow cabinet. More than that the Formula is an essential part of Cameron's plans, any move towards fiscal autonomy for the devolved nations leaves England as the exception and it would be unconstitutional for a UK Executive and Parliament containing non-English members to decide how England spends its money; there has to be accountability. In short, fiscal federalism demands political federalism. Or, to put it another way, no Barnett Formula means that English Votes on English Matters is simply not good enough.
For Cameron and Brown England is Britain in matters political and financial, and the devolved Governments and their budgets are but semi-autonomous parts of Greater England. That unionist conflation of England and Britain, and the manifest unfairness that it has resulted in, is under attack from the Tory and Lib Dem backbenches without either frontbench having to explicitly tackle the issue themselves. The English Question is no longer the preserve of academic tomes or the English nationalist bloggers, it is a live political issue that could well be the defining issue of this parliament, and even the satirists are having a field day at Gordon's expense.
Gordon is in a tricky position, the Bard of Britishness finds himself in a pincer movement, caught between England and Scotland. Increasing English spending to match that of Scotland would bankrupt Britain, and besides which it would result in a subsequent windfall for the SNP Government. Reducing Scotland's share could cost him votes in his own backyard and leave him open to accusations that he is tightening the purse strings only because it is the SNP and not Scottish Labour that is in power. No, the English just have to accept that preferential treatment for the Scots, in terms of both financing and voting privileges on English affairs, is a price worth paying for the continuance of the Union, and it falls to a Scottish PM and his poodle Chancellor to explain this to England. Alex Salmond will be working around the clock to ensure that they are made to do so. This is not fair dealing and the English won't accept it. Whereas before devolution we were - for all intents and purposes - a unitary state, the UK is now no longer one nation. Given that the Scots now enjoy autonomy in areas such as Health it is not unreasonable for the English to demand that they also assume financial autonomy. The social contract between the English and Scottish people has broken down undermining the basis of the Union's welfare state, and that particular loss of confidence is one almighty nail in the coffin of Britishness.
Roger Davies (not verified) said:
Fri, 2007-10-26 14:16The situation that Brown finds himself in is of his own making and he is now damned whatever he does, even if he does nothing.