I’d heard a while back that the UK government were thinking of scrapping English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), but my reaction to the sudden news yesterday that they’ve actually gone ahead and done it (and without a vote, apparently) was “that’s a bit casual, isn’t it?” It’s the right decision in principle, but the fact that such a complete reversal was done so quickly and easily is a timely illustration of how a Tory government can simply reshape the constitution at a whim. We need to get out of the United Kingdom because the Scottish Parliament is not safe within it. Promises and conventions are utterly worthless, as has been demonstrated time and again over the last few years.
The main argument against EVEL was that legislation was being wrongly certified as “English-only” when in fact it had implications for the whole UK. It may sometimes have been primarily English, but that’s not the same thing. It’s quite difficult for a UK Parliament to pass laws that don’t affect the whole UK to some extent, especially when there are things like Barnett consequentials to consider.
But we can safely assume democratic fairness is not the reason the UK Government have changed course – it’ll be more to do with the dreadful optics of what happened on the morning after the independence referendum. David Cameron and Gordon Brown had spent the entire campaign promising that a whole new thrilling world of enhanced devolution would open up for Scotland the moment we voted No, but instead the message was “right that’s quite enough about Scotland, time to talk about England”, just as soon as Scottish voters had been duped into rendering themselves powerless. People have long memories, and even if they don’t remember that episode it’s easy enough to remind them as soon as the next campaign gets underway. Yesterday’s tactical retreat will only repair a small amount of that damage.
* * *
I was asked the other day if I was going to write about the recent controversy over the franchise for any future indyref. My view is that we should stick to the principle that applied last time – ie. we should use the same franchise that applies to local government and Holyrood elections (albeit that franchise is now wider than in 2014, because it’s recently been extended to cover non-EU and non-Commonwealth citizens, and also some prisoners). That’s the right thing to do as a matter of principle, because the people who have most at stake are the people who live here. If there was such a thing as Scottish citizenship, there might be a case for also including Scottish citizens who live elsewhere, especially if they haven’t been gone long. But there is no Scottish citizenship, and it’s laughable to suggest that we should create an ad hoc pseudo-citizenship for the purposes of a single vote just because the Tories think it would be helpful to bring in English-domiciled Scots who might be more likely to vote No.
On the other extreme, though, there are also pro-independence bloggers trying to come up with justifications for stripping Scottish residents of their right to vote because they originally come from England and would be probable No voters. Apart from the anti-democratic nature of this proposal, I’d suggest it’s extremely naive from a strategic point of view. In the unlikely event that a referendum occurs via an agreed Section 30 process, we won’t be able to rig the franchise. If we go ahead with a unilateral vote (as we should), we can choose any franchise we like, but drawing a circle around likely Yes voters and excluding everyone else will simply lead to the result being safely disregarded, both by the London government and the international community. Any vote that isn’t scrupulously democratic will be a monumental waste of time.
It’s also worth making the point that it would be very difficult to devise a rule for excluding English people in Scotland that wouldn’t also exclude a lot of EU citizens – and the latter would probably vote overwhelmingly Yes in the hope of Scotland rejoining the EU.
* * *
Donations made to the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser until the end of this week will be put towards our next opinion poll. If you’d like to donate, please click HERE.
