Should Scots rule England?

The interests of Englishmen are not threatened with impunity: and the danger of molesting them does not disclose itself till the threat has been uttered, and their enmity has been irrevocably incurred. They have a habit of sleeping up to the very moment of danger, which is equally embarrassing to their champions and their assailants.

So wrote Lord Salisbury in 1873. He was echoed a century later by Enoch Powell, who observed that one of the ‘peculiar faults’ of the English was their ‘strange passivity in the face of danger or absurdity or provocation’. The question which ought now to be troubling Tony Blair, but almost certainly isn’t, is whether the English will remain passive as they watch sweeping changes to the health service in England pushed through with the help of Scottish and Welsh MPs. On Tuesday night, the government would have lost the vote on the Bill to introduce foundation hospitals in England but for the support it received from Scotland and Wales, yet English MPs enjoy no reciprocal rights when it comes to arrangements north of the Tweed or west of Offa’s Dyke.

This is plainly unjust. It is also quite plainly Tony Blair’s fault. His irresponsibility is breathtaking. Like some cowboy builder, the Prime Minister rips down parts of the beautiful, functional and adaptable edifice which is our constitution, without any idea what structural function the bits he is demolishing might serve, and without any adequate conception of what he is to put in their place, except that it should be more ‘modern’ than the boring old timbers which he is hurling into his skip.

The hereditary peers? Chuck them out, without the faintest idea of a legitimate principle on which to elect their successors. The Lord Chancellor? Chuck him out, without even knowing what he does.