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Welcome back, England

Wednesday, 16th April 2008

The Spectator welcomes England back

On 19 February 2005 The Spectator’s cover bore the arresting headline: ‘Goodbye England’, and the sombre silhouette of a lone huntsman. The issue attracted much attention, capturing, as it did, the sense of something ancestral and precious being needlessly slaughtered, as hunting with hounds finally became a criminal act. This was a feeling that spread far beyond the hunts themselves: a fear that New Labour’s bizarre fixation with a single pursuit symbolised what Roger Scruton so eloquently describes in his book England: An Elegy as ‘the forbidding of England’: the repudiation of its particular institutions, emblems and customs, usually by municipal authorities and liberal elites.

Much has changed in the last three years, however. All that was written in that issue remains true. But the political and social context has mutated with remarkable speed, to produce a new configuration of pressures and possibilities. This special issue, in celebration of St George’s Day on 23 April, explores this evolving landscape.

The most striking change has been that issues which were once debating points for constitutional theorists — the ‘West Lothian Question’ and the Barnett Formula — are now live political issues. In the 1970s, Tam Dalyell asked the highly technical question: why should a Scottish MP be able to vote on matters relating to England when an English MP cannot vote on matters relating solely to Scotland? In 2008, the English ask, more generally, why the Scots and Welsh have their own assemblies, but not the English; why the government can spend £1,500 less per head per annum on public services south of the border; why, in short, the English voters who made the New Labour electoral coalition possible in the first place in 1997 have been given such a raw deal.

Recent surveys have shown unequivocally that opinion on these matters is hardening and is expressed with ever greater assertiveness. According to an ICM poll in December, 62 per cent of English voters think that Scots MPs should not be able to vote on devolved matters; the fifth Ipsos MORI Audit of Political Engagement, published last month, showed that the West Lothian anomaly is now the constitutional issue over which the public expresses most dissatisfaction (46 per cent). In December, ICM found that 63 per cent of the English think higher spending in Scotland is unjustified.

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John

April 18th, 2008 2:35am

We've been here all the time.

Welcome back, Spectator.

Mark Solomon

April 27th, 2008 6:42pm

There is too much scaremongering and doomsaying about the dismantling of the Union. It is not the all or nothing proposition commonly portrayed, to scare people into backing the status quo. The Union of England and Wales dates from the Middle Ages; Scotland joined in 1707; Ireland in 1803; the southern counties of Ireland left in 1918. So Scotland could quite easily leave the Union if it wanted to, without the UK being dissolved - it would just be a United Kingdom of England,Wales and Northern Ireland instead. If that is what Scotland wants, then us English Conservatives should welcome it-democracy at work, money being saved and political dominance of the remaining UK Labour would have trouble breaking! Scottish Nationalists are Nationalists-ie generally right of centre people and potential allies if the poison surrounding the 'unchanging Union' can be removed from the debate. With no seats up there, what have we got to lose?