It's official: Conservatives still bonkers

agentmancuso · It's official: Conservatives still bonkers

Lulled into a false sense of security by Dave's Compassionate Conservatism? Forgotten the nightmare pre-devolution years? Remind yourself what a bunch of paranoid xenophobes the Tories really are by reading the comments on Cicero's excellent blog by Newmania, a Tory activist from Sussex. This bug-eyed loon will soon put you right:

Alasdair

parts of that could've been written by the SNP 20 years ago Shocked

William_Cleland

Who the nutters are on this is a matter of perspective. Trying to place Sussex on a par with Scotland suggests to me that Cicero has a tenous grip on reality and a very shaky grasp of what federalism actually means. Spain is not a federation because the autonomy of the likes of Catalonia, the Basque Region and Galicia is based on legislation similar to the 1998 Scotland Act, which could theoretically be reversed by the Cortes at any time. It is simply another example of devolution in other words. Genuine federalism involves a sharing of sovereignty between the federal institutions on the one hand and the member states on the other. In a UK context, separate legal systems would be required for each subnational unit in order to derive an answer for the WLQ because Scotland needs to be comparable to the other members of the federation in terms of the overall separation of powers to prevent a situation in the federal parliament where Scottish MPs are voting on the domestic affairs of England. How much demand is there out there for a Sussex legal system?

The three separate legal systems of the UK apply to Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales. The only credible split of England and Wales that I can see in terms of legal systems is Wales doing its own thing. There is no credible demand for anything more substantial than a county council elsewhere as John Prescott quickly found out during his attempt to push devolution in the English regions. That means to have genuine federalism rather than Spanish style devolution there would have to be a separate English legislature and a federation in which over 80% of the people live in one of the federal units. Examples of that being done successfully are few and far between as is obvious by contemplating this map of federal states.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikip...ns/6/69/Map_of_federal_states.svg

Federalism might have worked a century ago in a British Isles context under that sort of scenario if the Irish Home Rule debate hadn't been tied into religious sectarianism, given the progress that was made in that regard in the Dominions of the Empire, but in the modern context of an increasingly federal Europe you have to ask what's the point in having two federal tiers rather than just dealing with Brussels directly? Scratch the surface a bit and I think you will find that Cicero is at heart a British nationalist and that his approach on this isn't about improving governance and civil society from the standpoint of liberalism but is more about saving "the country". He would also maybe do well to ponder the fact that what underpins the current system in Spain is the question of what the Spanish Armed Forces would get up to fulfill their role as guardians of the constitution, which talks about the indivisibility of Spain, if there were ever a move to hold an independence referendum. Remove that from the equation and Catalonia and the Basque Region would have been long gone by now.

Holebender

It is my experience that those who suggest federalism for the UK invariably have absolutely no understanding of the concept and haven't the first clue what federation means in practice.

agentmancuso

Hmm. So here we have:

Holebender

It must be a terrible disappointment when people fail to follow your agenda.

William_Cleland

Who is this "you lot" in his post, I wonder? I am part Scottish part Ulster Protestant so if I were to view constitutional politics in purely emotional terms I would probably be most comfortable with British federalism as the longterm constitutional settlement. When I look at the matter rationally, however, I can see glaringly obvious reasons why it wouldn't work.

As things stand right now with the addition of a few extra powers Scotland would arguably have the best of both worlds. Most of the substance of having independence but with some of the key risks minimised or eliminated. Hence, why the pragmatic majority favour "more powers". The extent to, which, that is a viable longterm option will be determined by whether people in England see "the country" as being England or the UK, in my opinion. If they see it as the latter then the WLQ will be seen as the price that has to be paid to keep "the country" together just as Castilians view giving in to CiU's disproportionate leverage in the Cortes when they hold the balance of power as the price that needs to be paid to ensure Spain's stability. If they see it primarily as the former the Union probably won't survive another prolonged spell of Conservative rule as the answer that will be provided to the WLQ will probably mean that the status quo is no longer providing the Scottish electorate with the best of both worlds. That added "push" factor will shift the numbers to a point where a referendum on independence is actually winnable for the SNP.

Seems to me that Cicero and this supposedly bonkers Conservative are being guided by their differing emotional loyalties regarding "the country" then and neither has a rational and well-thought through position as yet. I wouldn't use the word bonkers for either of them, personally. Both are struggling to make sense of the abnormal and arguably bonkers nature of the UK in constitutional terms (in the new post-1997 status quo people in England can no longer envision England and Britain as being interchangeable in the manner in which they used to) in an era in which none of the mainstream London based parties are currently providing rational answers on how to move forward where the WLQ is concerned. Beyond that it is the same sense of smug politically sectarian superiority from agentmancuso based on a clear belief that only his sect is right and has all the answers, while all the others are flawed and defective. 100 years ago he probably would have been warbling on about the Book of Life and the sovereign grace with the rest of us having our fate already predetermined according to Rev. 20:15. Smile

Pip

I think the Lib-Dem attitude on this issue is a bit of a shame. It's not unreasonable to want some sort of all-England solution. As it is there's only the Conservatives' rather unimaginative English-Votes-On-English-Measures.

Of course events in Scotland may overtake the situation, which suits me well enough.

Incidentally Lewes is a lovely town, and home to the excellent brewers Harveys. If any Our-Scotland readers ever find themselves there it's worth taking a look at the fresh-produce shop/restaurant Bills; the food there's delicious. There's one in Brighton too.

I'm not sure why the LDs enjoy such out-of-character support there mind you.

Alasdair

Dave Coull

Pip wrote "Lewes is a lovely town, and home to the excellent brewers Harveys. If any Our-Scotland readers ever find themselves there" - I was only in Lewes once. A cousin of mine was a lecturer at the University of Sussex there and we were visiting him and his wife. As it happened we visited in November and I was totally gobsmacked when I saw the Guy Fawkes Night celebrations. It's the big night of the year in Lewes, different parts of the town have their own Bonfire Committees and spend much of the year preparing for it, they devise fantastic costumes and parade through the town dressed as cowboys, injuns, Zulus, spacemen, or any original costume idea that their bonfire committee members may have thought up, with bands playing, carrying torches, to the huge bonfires where they burn effigies of the Pope. Apparently the historical reason for all of this is that Guy Fawkes and co were a Popish Plot and, while folk in much of England and Scotland celebrated the defeat of the Popish Plot, they made an even bigger deal of it in that part of Sussex because Lewes had been the scene of some of the worst persecutions of protestants back in Bloody Mary's day. But nowadays the sectarian origins of it all are to a large extent forgotten, it has just become a big and very colourful local carnival.

Pip