Has Clarke found the answer to the West Lothian question?

Cassius

What does it matter if we ratify the Lisbon sell-out?

William

How much of the 'greater health spending' in Scotland is down to the Scottish Parliament choosing to spend its budget that way? Presumably at the expense of something else. Education, perhaps. Hasn't Scotland always held its own budget for health (and other departments) and where this was previously administered by the Scottish Office it is now administered by the Scottish Parliament?

Makes you wonder what the Scottish Office does all day. Or I may have understood the budget setup.

Ian C

No more conventions. We need as much that is convention ratified in a formal constitutional document. Too much room for ducking and diving is left to the politicians, who no-one trusts and who have been proven untrustworthy. I speak as a Scot living in England.

John Page

Would there be anything to stop a government guillotining the committee stage?

In any case, doubtless a non-Conservative government would be careful to ensure that every bill contained some small measure affecting Scotland, making the bill a hybrid, and thus not caught by the Clarke convention.

I doubt this would stick.

Hereford

It's so simple. Why does everyone make it so complicated. An English Parliament to mirror the Scottish one. The UK parliament just sits on matters of cross union impact. Why is everyone dancing round this issue trying to find a way that doesn't provide England with a voice. Probably because they're mostly Jocks who want to stick it to the auld enemy.

Faceless Bureaucrat

Enough already! - can nobody in Parliament see how ANGRY English voters are with the current funding set-up with Scotland? As the Economy tightens, English voters will look for scapegoats - and the current deal with Scotland is ready made for being a prime target. Clarke's 'too clever by half' suggestion is simply not going to placate the English voters.

David Lindsay

The West Lothian Question does not exist. If the Parliament of the United Kingdom were to enact legislation applicable in Scotland, then that legislation would prevail over any enactment of the Scottish Parliament. There is simply no doubt at all about this, any one who doesn't like it should have voted No to devolution. I bet they didn't.

At present, it merely chooses not to do so. But it should do so, not least to make the point. After all, hasn't Brown any views about such matters in his own constituency? Well, now he has the chance to give effect to those views. He should take that chance.

Meanwhile, the real Scottish Question in British politics is that David Cameron is a posh Scot. Not a borderline case like Tony Blair or Iain Duncan Smith, but the real deal. His English public school, his Oxford degree, his marriage into the English baronetage, and (these days) his Southern English seat are all part and parcel of this.

Therefore, he simply cannot believe that a state school and Scottish university son of the manse from Kirkcaldy has the effrontery to be Prime Minister instead of him.

And Brown very obviously knows perfectly well that those are his views.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Has Clarke found the answer to the West Lothian question?

No.

TGF UKIP

This would seem to illustrate quite perfectly why so many people on the right fail to share Kenneth Clarke's extremely high opinion of himself.

Incidentally, how long has it taken him to come up with this farrago - eighteen months, two years?

Auntie Flo'

David Lindsay said:

"Meanwhile, the real Scottish Question in British politics is that David Cameron is a posh Scot."

David Cameron was born on 9 October 1966 in London... His mother was born in Berkshire(Wikpedia and his biog)

Tell me, Lindsay, what part of London and Berkshire are in Scotland?

Twit.

Auntie Flo'

Brown...a son of the manse?

Brown was the son of a, privately educated, trust funded company director who married in silk and tiara - during the post-war rationing period.

Brown's wealthy maternal Souter family were old money from many generations back - merchants, land owners, farmers, builders, builders' merchants, ironmongers, timber merchants with a sawmill, electricians, masons and plumbers. They were even the village undertakers and in the 60s employed around 70 people - the most important and biggest employers in the town.

Gordon's mother was sent by her father to be privately educated at the posh and highly privileged Aberdeen High School for Girls, founded in 1874 for the daughters of gentlefolk. Her father was so determined that her privileged education should not be interrupted that a clause in his will stipulated: "If at my death the education of my daughter Jessie hasn't been completed, I direct my Trustees as far as necessary to pay the expenses from the estate and not to be deducted from her share."

Gordon's namesake uncle was Chair of his local Conservative Association and Provost - mayor - of Insch - the town he and Brown's mother's family practically owned. They even owned the town's undertakers.

"Thanks to his mother's family money and an income she received for being a director (albeit a silent one) of the family firm, baby Gordon's first breaths took place in the select and private ambiance of the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home - the Queen Charlotte's of Glasgow, and in its time just as costly. His elder brother, John, had also been born there in 1948." Rather naughty of Gordon to suggest his parents were too poor to pay for private health care then?

That wee manse? Was the sort of rambling detached Rectory which sells for millions now. Am I correct in thinking it has been converted into a luxury hotel?

Gordon's father had a very nice car for a poor church minister. Yet wasn't he Rector (Head) of the 420 odd year old Kirkaldy High School where Gordon was educated? There is some suggestion that Gordon's father may have come from a long line of high flying, and highly privileged, clerics and government apparatchiks, though that needs to be confirmed.

Fortunately, the Souter's name is not so common - it means COBBLERS by the way, which seems to be what the wee fairy tale about Gordon being a poor son of the manse amounts to.

Souces: Mail online http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-465259/Gordon-Browns-Tory-family-revealed.html ,1841-1901 censuses and directories for Insch.

Andrew Cadman

As Mark Steyn so masterfully puts it about his native Canada, Westminster conventions don't stand up to biker gang tactics. How many conventions, such as the use of the Parliament Act, have the Blair-Brown government ridden roughshod over the last few years?

Even if in practice the convention was observed, it will still appear to the English that Scottish MPs can vote on English matters. Politically that will mean that the festering resentment is bound to continue. Only a political insider cut-off from reality could think that the English will be satisfied with this. What a farce.

Now we see the truth of Iain Duncan-Smith's adage about Clarke: 'Ken doesn't think at all'.

Nick Kaplan

I completely agree with Ian Dale, I don’t understand why Scottish MPs need to retain any influence over predominantly English matters. There has always been the argument that any policy created in England has the potential to affect the budget and thus affect spending levels in Scotland implying that Scottish MPs need some say, but this is itself an argument against devolution. Surely any changes in Scotland also affect the budget for England thus meaning (by the above logic) English MPs need a say on all Scottish issues too.

Herbert Thornton

This idea would do no more than paper over the cracks - and the loopholes pointed out by John Page are too big to be so concealed.

Steve

There really is only one way out of this. 4 local parliaments each with a set of identical powers, and a UK parliament, presumably dealing pretty much just with defence and foreign policy. None of the other alternatives will really work. Kens proposal is simply incomprehensible to most people outside of the Westminster village. and the recent floted idea of only English MPs voting on English matters, will inevitably lead one day to a position where you have (just for example) Labour holding a UK majority, and the Conservatives an English only majority. I can't see how that set up would last. Would we have different PM on a daily basis according to what is being discussed, how (and who) would frame English only legislation, etc etc.

Davie08

MPs ignore a parliamentary convention? Dearie me. English MPs have been running roughshod over the treaty of union for 300 years and now that there is a mild corrective in the form of devolution you have a collective hissy fit. All very amusing but there is a simple solution lets end this pointless union.

Paul Danon

Very silly. Once you secede law-making powers, you've disrupted, if not destroyed, the union. Best to go all the way and let Scotland (and its MPs) leave.

Gareth Young

Nick Kaplan: "There has always been the argument that any policy created in England has the potential to affect the budget and thus affect spending levels in Scotland implying that Scottish MPs need some say, but this is itself an argument against devolution."

No, this is an argument against the Barnett Forumla, or FOR financial independence.

The unknown quantity is the Barnett Formula, because at present there are English-only bills whose outcome determines the block grant to Scotland (and Wales and Northern Ireland).

It would be unconstitutional to prevent non-English MPs from voting on legislation that affects the spending on the concommitant ares up in Scotland, even though those MPs have no say in that concommitant legislation.

In the event of ‘fiscal federalism’ or 'fiscal autonomy’ or whatever you want to call it, this problem is overcome because Scottish MPs at Westminster no longer have any justification to vote on English legislation because that legislation no longer determines the monies due to the people that returned them to Westminster.

However, when Scottish MPs no longer have that mandate, then there is absolutely no justification for them to vote on English legislation. No justification at all, no matter what stage of the bill they are voting upon.

Somehow I doubt that the Democracy Task Force will go into this aspect. They’re likely to be light on the detail because their rationale is to undermine Brown and New Labour.

David Lindsay

Auntie Flo, being born in the Home Counties while in fact having his main home in the Isle of Jura is classic posh Scottish stuff on Cameron's part. He has practically said so himself, several times. The Scots understand this perfectly, and it is high time that the English did, too.

As for Brown's background, even if what you were saying were true (and a lot of it isn't, even leaving aside the fact that the manse wasn't his father's to sell), it wouldn't begin to come close to Cameron's background.

No one ever got into the Bullingdon Club unless he was absolutely at the top of the tree socially. The fact of ever having been let into it is proof beyond all reasonable doubt that one was, and is, absolutely at the top of the tree socially.

Herbert Thornton

David,

Cameron is only at the top of a tree in the sense that some people perceive it as the top of the tree. I'm sure that a great many people with equal claims regard the Bullingdon Club with distaste.

In that way, parts of British society are very much like parts of American society. In Hollywood for example, the equivalent of Bullingdon Club status is called "Real Tinsel". The two have, I suggest, a great deal in common.

Fin

Has Clarke found the answer to the West Lothian question?

No he bloody hasn't!

I'm with Ian Dale on the "half baked" and "dog's breakfast" lines. I would also add that it has been dreamt up by a politician seeking to provide a clever, "political" solution and who has a little too much self regard for my liking. It will not wash with an, increasingly angry, English electorate.

I have English, Scottish, Welsh & Irish ancestry & have always regarded myself as British but I would sooner the Union ended than see a continuation of the current Scottish, socialist cartel running the country as a whole and the current situation of English tax payers subsidising (through the Barnett formula) advantages in Health & Education enjoyed solely by a Scottish minority.

The whole thing reeks!