Peter Davidson,

I too am going over old ground but you must realise how bitterly disappointed many in the Cornish Assembly campaign were by the lack of support from practically all quarters.

"I’m assuming you would concur with these goals?"

Of course and it seems to me a shame that a stronger working relationship does not exist between UK wide democratic reformers such as Unlock Democracy and the majority progressive elements in the Cornish movement.

Philip

I did use the words "it is vital that nothing should be off its agenda from the outset" and I meant it.

If a convention of this kind was established (which is doubtful of course but we can only keep up the pressure through groups like Unlock Democracy), it would be up to ordinary citizens to organise themselves in order to make their voices heard.

I think I am repeating myself when I say that I believe the shape of the current official English Regional map is a contributing negative factor in driving antipathy towards the concept of English Regional devolution.

Many here on OK complain (some in order to fulfill their own agenda) about the lack of connection, historical and cultural relevance displayed by some of the current official Regional boundaries and I would agree with them in a quite a number of instances.

One such Region is the nebulous South West Region, which has very few fans outside official circles.

For me a Citizens Convention should focus on four distinct areas of concern:

1. The shape and extent of power dispersal across the UK

2. The way in which in we elect representatives to accountable institutions of governance (of course this would include the voting system)

3. The role and identity of the UK's head of state

4. Creating a written constitutional statement.

I'm assuming you would concur with these goals?

A referendum on an English parliament, even if lost, would be a victory as far as I am concerned because it would be recognition of the sovereignty of the people of England and England's status as a nation.

It's interesting that the Scottish people, the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government all believe that there should be a referendum on Scottish independence - even if they do have different agendas and timescales for this to happen. Gordon Brown, meanwhile, whose signature on the Scottish Claim of Right endorsed the sovereignty of the people of Scotland, is opposed to a referendum under any circumstances.

So much for listening to the people. So much for listening to Parliament. So much for a new style of government!

"I believe that only through some form of meaningful engagement (not a consultation with a pre-determined outcome) with ordinary citizens can an equitable and sustainable constitutional settlement (for the entire UK) emerge"

Would this mean we would have to collect a new petition calling for devolution to a Cornish assembly?

In such a citizens convention if the majority in England demonstrated a desire for an English parliament would Cornwall, which also has a sense of national identity and interest in devolution, be heard and accomodated or simply ignored as has been the case so far?

OK: "it has merged into unlock Democracy which calls for a bottom-up constitutional convention."

To derive legitimacy constitutional reform must remain citizen (bottom-up) inspired. Through the dialogue contained within OK I have come to appreciate another subtle facet of the failed Labour inspired English Regional strategy (during 2001-2004) and that is its perception as a top-down process, driven by political expediency and notions of short term electoral advantage.

Following their recent electoral reverses, (Nu)Labour must now realise that any particular fiefdom of power is open to future change. Labour do not have a divine right to govern in the North any more than the Conservatives do in the South. That right must be earned by delivering appropriate policies appealing to core voters rather than pandering to corporate interests.

I believe that only through some form of meaningful engagement (not a consultation with a pre-determined outcome) with ordinary citizens can an equitable and sustainable constitutional settlement (for the entire UK) emerge.

A citizens convention in the form now advocated by Unlock Democracy (an organisation I belong to) fits this profile - it is vital that nothing should be off its agenda (including the potential for an all-England political institution) from the outset.

Since England was imperialist before the Union, as was Scotland (unsuccessfully), it's hard to see how Britishness was cooked up to justify something that was already happening.

I suspect Cameron will be portrayed as a Scot, because his father is from Huntly. For the benefit of all the geographically confused readers - that's one of many places between Aberdeen and Inverness. Has a big castle. Nice place...

If Blair or Betty Battenburg can be considered Scots by the English media, I suspect they will consider Cameron one.

As for the English vs British question - I hope that will be one resolved in the next generation. The sooner people realise that Britishness was basically something cooked up to justify imperialism, the better.

Apols for short bank-holiday break. To continue my exchange with Gareth. We seem to agree. Charter 88 was created by accident 20 years ago, ten years before the CEP was founded. Its ten demands are no longer advocated and it has merged into unlock Democracy which calls for a bottom-up constitutional convention. This would have to be open to how England governs itself. Indeed, England has to be sovereign for any democratic settlement to work. It could choose NOT to be self-governing (as could Scotland) in a referendum - but it must have the choice.

On the fate of 'The English Question' which most of these comments are about, I don't agree at all the it will "melt away" if and when Cameron enters No 10. For a start, it has two sides: should Scotland vote for independence in the referendum that is increasingly likely to to be held by the end of the decade, obviously the English question will be forced on England whoever is PM. But what if the Tory majority rests on the voting system and there is a Lib-Dem/Labour majority in England along with a Labour wipe-out north of the border (even if the Scots reject independence in a referendum)? Gareth is also implicitely right about this, the english question is here to stay.

Anthony

From a comment on Scoiland on Sunday reviewing the SNPs first year in charge:

'Who would believe 10 years on that the indigenous Tories are 34 percentage points behind the Nationalists in this recent poll! The indigenous Tory Party has paid a terrible price for its intransigence towards Devolution, and could well remain a minority party for a generatiobn?'

The irony of all this being that the SNP's success is because it has done what New Labour promised but failed to deliver - marrying social justice with social entreprenurialist spirit - all in a coherent cultural package.

The point is that, amongst all the cacocophany about Boris commentators have forgoten that the Toris have disappeared North of the Border.

I know you'll think this is boring - but is important - because Cameron - if he suceeds can only rule as an English Tory.

If, as David (Britology) suggests, the English question (whatever that ACTUALLY is) still has potency it will have to be resolved at Westminster, and I cant imagine the Tory grand elite putting up with some devolved English runt parliament after having been out of power for a decade.

Thanks for this erudite commentary Anthony; it succinctly sets out what many of us are thinking now.

Believe it or not I agree with one aspect of Gareth's commentary here and that is the source of pressure for constitutional change.

Reforms of this nature should be driven from the bottom up rather than managed from the top down because in the latter scenario they are routinely controlled to deliver maximum electoral gain for the incumbent political faction rather than lasting social benefit for the ordinary citizen.

Brown is now in a terribly weak position and maybe that situation could be exploited but I don't hold out much hope for meaningful change.

The UK's entrenched culture of centralised power means that an internal putsch inspired by a group of fearful (for their own sinecures) Labour MP's is a much more likely scenario.

Electoral reform (even if it's just AV) will now be perceived as a desperate measure to cling on to power, rather than anything remotely statesmanlike.

How those Labour party tribalists, such as Straw and Prescott, who (all too easily) persuaded Blair to cynically renege upon the 1997 manifesto commitment for a referendum on meaningful change to the UK's arcane voting system must now rue that decision - well they should but they probably won't because most of them will almost certainly retire from politics at the next election to take up various cushy and well paid directorships/consultancies.

The rest of us will just have to pick up the pieces once again and begin the push for real change!

There was also a by election in the North of Scotland on thursday where there was 10% swing from the tories to the SNP with the SNP increasing thier vote share by 15% taking over 65% of the vote. Labour didnt even put up a candidate.

How are 2 Conservative MPs of 59 representing Scotland under a Tory government going to help the Union?

"he prefers to call himself ‘British’ rather than English, which is what he is (English, that is), really."

Surely it's a matter of individual preference?

Mike Small wrote: "I suspect the ‘English Question’ will dissolve like melted snow once Cameron enters Downing Street and people dont have to face the effontery of a Scot in No 10."

Except you're forgetting that the tabloids have depicted Cameron as a Scot, and he prefers to call himself 'British' rather than English, which is what he is (English, that is), really. You could be right that resentment at the West Lothian anomaly and the Barnett unfairness would simmer down for a bit under a new Cameron government, given that it would have been elected mainly in England (albeit by a minority of voters). However, I doubt whether the calm would last much beyond the honeymoon, as the basic injustices would remain in place: current anger about the English Question has much to do with the general unpopularity of New Labour (whether headed up by a Scot or not); equally, it would revive as soon as Cameron became unpopular. English people are prepared to give their minority-elected governments the benefit of the doubt for a while (fair play); but ultimately, the demand for proper democratically accountable governance for England remains a live issue.

I think Mike Small is also right that the momentum towards the establishment of separate English governance would effectively be handed back to Scotland under a Cameron government, as Scottish resentment towards a Conservative UK government resting on electoral support in England would stoke up the pro-independence engine once again.

David, aka Britology Watch

Congratulations Alistair. It would only be fair to remind readers that your party hold only 1 out of 59 Westminster seats in Scotland, and 17 of 129 seats at Holyrood, the generous beneficiries of a PR system they oppposed to a parliament they rejected, wouldn't it?

Is there any precedence for a Prime Minister going to the country late (i.e. after five years, as Major did in 1997) and subsequently winning the election?

I never thought that Brown could win the next election OR deliver meaningful constitutional reform. I have made both points on this blog before. Frankly I'm amused that anyone believed that he could.

What shouldn't be discounted is the prospect of constitutional reform - or at least electoral reform - in order to try and save Brown's bacon. I wouldn't put it past him digging up that old commitment to look into PR now that the Labour Party is thankfully - at long last - on its knees.

As I've also said before, on this blog, all attempts at constitutional reform by Brown should be resisted because his motivations are not the correct ones for building a constitution.

@ Robert

I think both Macmillan (1959) and Major himself (in 1992) went to the polls at or near the last possible moment and won. And they had both assumed the PMship mid stream, just as Brown has done. but I am willing to be corrected. However, the circs of the handover were slightly different - neither Eden nor Thatcher managed Blair's graceful exit.

I don't think there is an example of someone being elected, serving the full five years themselves, then going on to win.

Jon

er? Gordon Brown 'genuinely popular'?

I don't think so.

More like people couldn't bring themselves to say they would vote Tory when asked by the pollsters. Brown was being carried by support for his party.

It is a sign of just how awful he is that less than a year after staging his coup to become PM, he is now the nomimal leader of a party that is in very real danger of going the way fo the Whigs or the Liberals.

And worse for Labour is the reality that they can no longer scare voters with the ghost of Thatcher or the years of Major slease, because they as a party are far more sleazy - and worse, they are corrupt.

Gareth:

"all attempts at constitutional reform by Brown should be resisted because his motivations are not the correct ones for building a constitution".

This is another form of the personalisation of politics. My view is that any attempt at constitutional reform by anyone should be exploited on their merits if possible - whatever the motives.

One assesses proposals for reform in terms of whether they release democratic energy or not, whatever the wishes, motives, desires or intentions of whoever proposes them.

Thus the motives of those who pushed through a Scottish parliament (not least Gordon Brown's) were to kill demands for independence. Should those who want democracy in Scotland and England have opposed a parliament because of this?

That said, I suspect you are right that Brown may go for AV - he has certainly been toying with the idea. But altering the voting system has to be seen as legitimate and not another fix.

The fact that you have made a point on this blog does not mean it is necessarily right, you know, although it is always welcome as you are pithy and clear. In the case of Brown and electoral reform I suspect you are also right as well - he will go for changes that reinforce his central power rather than assist greater democracy, in which case this should be resisted!

Anthony

"For this ambitious “Britishness” agenda to succeed as Brown conceived it, it needed to be consensual, overseen by him as the revered father of the modern nation."

It was never going to work. Responding to nationalism with (drum roll) nationalism is like penguins fighting over a shrinking iceberg.

Browns lucky there wasn't an election in Scotland. Was up in the North east of Scotland for a bi-election. Tories got drubbed on the very day of Camerons amazing results. Scotland will not react well to being governed once more by a party that the vast majority of its population clearly reject and they now have a pretty vast institutional base from which to vent thier dissatisfaction.

Anthony,

I have great respect for the work that you have done over the years in pushing for constitutional reform. However, I think a lot of the problems we have are a result of piecemeal top-down changes, and I fear that that's all we are going to get from Brown and Straw. Better nothing than more sloppy cackhanded reform with no coherent or worthwhile ideology underpinning it.

The pretense that Gordon Brown and Jack Straw make at meaningful reform provides a good opportunity to push the envelope, but ultimately you are grabbing at thin air because they are charlatans.

You'd be better off refusing to acknowledge their authority. They have no mandate for Scotland, they have no mandate for England; it's the people that should decide. Their white papers have curiosity value, but that;s all.

Thanks for the respect Gareth - it means a lot and I quite accept the implicit warning that it is at risk of being lost.

I agree with this: "a lot of the problems we have are a result of piecemeal top-down changes, and I fear that that’s all we are going to get from Brown and Straw." I'd put it more strongly (I know you would too!). The British constitution needs to be replaced. There has to be a new settlement. This need not mean a bloody revolution - it does mean more than piecemeal additions and subtractions. It also means, naturally, a grown-up written constitution. The most important question is how we get there, the process will shape the outcome. Larger discussion needed. In terms of the national question there are two possibilities:

a) national parliaments and executives within a democratic federation

b) the break-up of Britain.

For various reasons, including the role and influence of Charter 88, the New Labour governments have made this assertion part of, how can I put it?, the discourse of possibility, whereas previously to talk or argue like this was so marginal as to be "mad" ie outside the realm of reality.

Tragically, instead of embracing the route of modernisation that pointed towards democracy, as John Smith might have done, Blair and Brown embraced high-intensity globalisation with its attachment to old-fashioned sovereignty. But at the same time their reforms had opened Pandora's box.

They could not dump her box (as the Tories will try and do) so you can see their reform agenda as an attempt to close it. Mine is to put my fingers in the gap to: a) ensure it is not shut and b) lever it open as much as possible.

Blair's attempt to close it was to ignore it and spin it as insignificant. Brown understood that the set of issues, especially as reshaped by the Power Enquiry in terms of collapse of trust and public engagement, needed to be addressed. If only all the better to seal the damn thing shut.

It can't be. What we are debating is how to develop a politics of real democratic change in which, as you put it, "the people decide". Where I think we disagree is when you say "refuse to acknowledge their authority". What does this mean? To whom is this "refusal" addressed, and by whom? This relates to the problem many find with the Campaign for an English Parliament. However noble the cause its language seems airless and claustrophobic to many. I think it is very important to retain a grasp, as you do, of the fundamentally archaic, pre-democratic and in this sense illegitimate nature of politics in the UK, from its electoral system, its executive dictatorship (e.g. the huge, immediate issue of the creation of the database state), its military integration with the United States, its lack of national self-determination. But this must not disable us from any political engagement.

We need to open the way from here to there.

Anthony

[...] state of British politics. Yesterday, in the heat of Labour’s electoral disaster, he wrote a succinct account at Our Kingdom of why Brown can’t win the next election which I suspect will hold up to [...]

Browns 'the next Kinnock' only in that he's hated for not being English. The combined bile of Gilligan and the massed ranks of the media against Brown are having impact.

Scott is right to say that though this is seen as a great sea change for the Tories, they still flatline in Scotland. Boris might have been elected Rector of Stirling University as a joke but these people arent respcted any more in Scotland.

I think this is hugely embarrasing for London and for England and will utlimately be good for Brown.

Paradoxically, the Labour recovery starts today. Today doesn't mark the end of New Labour but the final cultural schism in the Union.

For the record, Boris Johnson stood for the Rectorship of Edinburgh University, but came THIRD after Mark Ballard (Scottish Green Party, ex-list MSP) and Magnus Linklater. Even the Yahs and Hooray Henriettas couldn't win the day there...

Canon Kenyon Wright 'who said that the UK had to be considered as a whole'. Hmm. Nobodys seen or heard of Kenyon Wright in a decade. An affable well meaning churchman who's committee did a good job, but hardly an authority on anything.

We'll see a Scottish Republic before the British State is able to meaningfuly 'reform itself' (read any speech by Tony Benn in the last half century on how power collects itself).

I suspect the 'English Question' will dissolve like melted snow once Cameron enters Downing Street and people dont have to face the effontery of a Scot in No 10. For all the jumped up inclusiveness of the Union its a very reactionary place.

English political culture seems locked into a deferential mindset and political elite - Boris & DC - that seems to attract supplicants. It so unhealthy.

The CEP can't hope to address these things, but I do think the CEP sees itself as part of a wider movement, and possibly the bearers of the most popular grievance that will ultimately make radical sweeping change unavoidable.

When that time does come, and I think it will, there has to be a body to speak for England - a point that was raised from the audience in response to Canon Kenyon Wright who said that the UK had to be considered as a whole. The need for a body that considers England's interests before those of the UK as a whole is why we believe that there needs to be an English Constitutional Convention. Our problem with Charter88 is that it failed to consider England as a constituency unto itself.

Whilst I agreed with many, or most, of the things you advocated I felt you put the cart before the horse by leaving England out of the equation. Issues like an elected House of Lords and parliamentary reform are completely altered by the creation of an English parliament (or even rendered irrelevant), and the creation of an English parliament - creating as it does an unbalanced federation - makes a written constitution absolutely unavoidable. With the House of Lords you risked replicating the West Lothian Question in the upper chamber when it becomes elected and territorial, and seemingly no consideration was given to the role of the House of Lords in the event of a unicameral English parliament.

Viewing the English parliament campaign as a reactionary thing means that a great opportunity is being missed to overturn the applecart. The West Lothian Question is the most popular constitutional grievance, and the wider English Question is becoming more and more salient, but I think constitutional campaigners have failed to grasp the massive potential of the issue.

But as I say, these are not issues for the CEP, we cannot preempt the structure and politics of the UK after the creation of an English parliament. Our task is to convince the people of England that they should be sovereign and self-governing.

There was a Conservative by-election win in Scotland on Thursday. Abbey Ward in Dumfries and Galloway was held by the Conservatives, although Labour increased their vote.

Abbey Ward is in the Dumfries and Galloway Westminster constituency currently held by Russell Brown for Labour. Peter Duncan is the Conservative candidate and is anticipating joining David Mundell as a Scottish Conservative MP.

Alex Fergusson (Conservative, now Presiding Officer) increased his majority in the Scottish Parliament elections last year.