Campaign for an English Parliament

I was interviewed at short notice on LBC (radio station in London) this morning on the subject of an English Parliament and Scottish funding in response to yesterday’s IPPR report.  I was on air along with the Labour MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn.

The presenter was quite hostile and declared within the opening 30 seconds that he thought devolution was a disaster.

I agreed there was resentment but stuck to the core message which is that MPs elected in other countries – primarily Scotland – were able to vote on English-only matters which are devolved in their own country and for which nobody can hold them accountable.

He used the “more politicians” argument to which I replied “not more politicians, different politicians”.  I explained that there are over 650 British politicians and if an English Parliament takes away three quarters of their work then there need not be more than 150-200 of them with an English Parliament taking up the slack.

Jeremy Corbyn, who supports regionalisation even though he admitted we don’t want it, spoke at length without interruption offered no justification for not devolving power in England.  The presenter said that if we voted against regional government why would we want an English Parliament.  I explained that the regional assembly was nothing like a national parliament and that what was proposed was little more than a glorified county council and that support for regionalisation according to the IPPR (jeremy Corbyn claimed not to know what level of support there was now despite the “debate” being prompted by the IPPR report) was stagnant at 15% and had been for over a decade.

It was a difficult interview and I was interrupted an awful lot (quite often arguing with something I hadn’t even said!) but hopefully I managed to put across a positive case for an English Parliament.