Simon Heffer Where Are You?

The good folks at For Argyll have been asking some awkward questions, the type of awkward questions that the press in England ought to be asking the Conservative Party but, so far, have not.

They have followed up their poser to William Hague with the article 'Cameron takes up the England question – badly', which notes that Cameron has "focused on Tam Dalyell’s enduring ‘West Lothian question’ rather than confronting the underlying problem with constitutional structure". In other words, the Tories do not attempt to answer the wider English Question.

Mr Cameron now says that a Conservative administration will block MPs representing constituencies in devolved administrations from voting on matters already devolved and which therefore, in considerations at Westminster, can apply only to England.

He will create a English Grand Committee which will vote on such matters as the Speaker of the day identifies as ‘English-only’.

The membership of this Grand Committee is unspecified but the implication is that it will consist of MPs representing the English constituencies.

This proposition is no more than short term blue tack – in every sense of both of these words.

Its shortcomings are likely only to heighten England’s awareness of the extent to which the current constitutional lean-to discriminates against it; and thereby to generate increasingly focused aggravation.

Quite so. I expect the English press will get around to discussing the English dimension after the Tories release their manifesto tomorrow. In particular Simon Heffer will have something to say about the axing of English Votes on English Laws as a Conservative policy (after ten years of the Tories promising England that EVoEL was the answer) and I imagine that Power2010 will shine the spotlight on the Tories' inadequate proposals too.

I expect that Cameron's Conservatives hope that they can escape discussion of the English Question before the General Election. It is vital that they aren't allowed that luxury. In the realms of a hung parliament the territorial 'nationalist' dimension is of huge democractic importance, and the West Lothian Question is of huge constitutional importance - it's a question that can make or break minority governments.