Alex Massie Alex Massie

Calm down: English Votes for English Laws is a very minor modest proposal

Ed Miliband – remember him? – has just told the House of Commons that the government’s proposals for so-called English votes for English laws (EVEL) are a betrayal of everything for which the Conservative party is supposed to stand. Well, that’s certainly one way of putting it. According to Miliband, EVEL is “not true to the great traditions of the Conservative and Unionist party” but since the foremost of those traditions is a keen and ruthless appreciation of the best interests of the Conservative party I suspect Miliband, not for the first time, misunderstands the Tory party.

“You’re the Conservative and Unionist party”, Miliband said. “This is neither for Conservatism nor Unionism.” There are grounds for disagreement on the latter point but, surely, none on the former. EVEL – even of the modest, watered-down beer type proposed by the government – is entirely for Conservatism. Not just for this parliament but for all parliaments to come. That’s the bloody point of it.

Which, of course, is also why the Labour party hates it. Because it would require a future Labour government to command a majority of English seats in order to legislate for English-only matters. (However – and this is a ticklish point – they are defined.)

Well, so be it. Perception matters in politics and many English people think they’re the subject of some (small, in my view) injustice. The days when the best answer to the West Lothian Question was to stop asking it have, for better – or more, likely, worse – gone. Something has to be done about it. Not because the English are scurrying off to Torches & Pitchforks R Us but because their low-level grumblings are based on a perfectly reasonable argument: if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may, to their varying degrees, legislate on matters pertaining solely to their domestic arrangements it is not so very appalling that the English have the same right to do so.

The SNP, always impressively flexible, now condemn a policy they once supported more keenly than any other party in the country.

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