CEP Press Release: Brown to balkanise England

Campaign for an English Parliament

NEWS RELEASE

29th June 2007
For release 30th June 2007

Brown to balkanise England

“We will not sit idly-by and see our country balkanised”

The new UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has signalled his intention to balkanise England.

Appointing Ministers for each “region” of England, Mr. Brown has shown that he wishes to revive regionalism in England- the idea of which many thought had been killed-off with the public’s strong rejection of a North East regional assembly in a referendum in 2004. Despite the severe lack of public support, Gordon Brown intends to press ahead with the regionalisation project which even John Prescott could see was dead and buried.

Gordon Brown signed the Scottish Claim of Right, acknowledging “the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs”. And yet he is content to deny this right to the people of England. Support for an English Parliament continues to grow, and yet Gordon Brown- unaccountable to a single English voter, will ignore this and instead impose unwanted and unpopular regions on England.

CEP Chairman, Scilla Cullen, said, “Where is our right to determine the form of government best suited to our needs, Mr Brown? The so-called English MPs that have become “regional ministers” should be treated with the contempt they so richly deserve.”

Ms. Cullen added, “We will not sit idly-by and see our country balkanised just because it suits the political career of an ambitious politician.”

CEP Vice Chairman, Tom Waterhouse, said, “Gordon Brown’s plans to balkanise England is not just undemocratic, it is outrageously arrogant and demonstrates his utter contempt for the people of England. You have no idea how angry people are about this.”

Campaign for an English Parliament

National Council

CONTACT:

Scilla Cullen (Chairman) 01438 833155
Mike Knowles (Media Unit) 01260 271139
Tom Waterhouse (Vice Chairman) 07900633811

Links: http://www.thecep.org.uk/news/

A company limited by guarantee. Registered in England number 3636739.

Conservative MP: Brown has no mandate in England

Wednesday 27th June 2007 was Tony Blair's last day in office. I think anyone that saw him complete his final session of Prime Minister's Questions will agree that there was a real sense of history about the whole occassion. Those final moments and the words "that's it, the end" will be replayed over and again by any televsion programme looking back over the Blair era.

Wednesday also meant that we have a new Prime Minister. Exactly what the CEP thinks of an an MP representing a Scottish seat becoming Prime Minister in a post-devolution UK is well documented. Not least from our recent press release (see post below).



One Conservative MP was so annoyed at coronation of Mr. Brown that he held his own protest outside Downing Street on Wednesday.

David Amess, Conservative MP for Southend West, grabbed a few members of staff from nearby colleagues' offices, russled up a few placards and marched down to Downing Street.

The main message was for Gordon Brown, who Mr. Amess made clear has "no mandate in England".

A Conservative call for an English Parliament

Janice Small from the Conservative Actions for Electoral Reform (CAER) calls for an English Parliament:

"Where we have devolution it is working for the Tories - it’s just the English that are being denied democracy and a say in their voting system. David Cameron needs to provide clear blue water between him and Gordon Brown. Just promising English Votes for English MPs isn’t enough. We need an English Parliament, a forum where the English can discuss their laws, their future. It will not cost the ridiculous sums of money that Edinburgh and Cardiff did as we have our own Parliament building and the existing civil servants can take care of the running."

Wonderful news.

Get onto Our Kingdom, read her article and give her comments your support.

The case for an English Parliament...

THE MAN WHO NEEDS TO SCOTCH HIS OWN BROTH

An excellent article by Professor Arthur Aughey in this month's Parliamentary Brief.

In particular, Prof. Aughey makes a very important point about the importance of the party system to Unionism:

"... in his brilliant book Understanding the United Kingdom, written in the early 1980s as a Unionist riposte to the break-up of Britain thesis, Richard Rose argued that what acted as the major integrative element in politics was the party system.

"The major parties (Northern Ireland excepted) helped to translate regional and national concerns into the common language of British politics. However, that party competition today could have the opposite effect."



Prof. Aughey also mentions the case for an English Parliament:

"Certainly, the case for an English parliament is being made intelligently and for such an intelligent case one need look no further than Tom Waterhouse’s Devolution in the United Kingdom: Answering the English Question."

A strong endorsement- let's hope the magazone's readers at Westminster will take note.

Letter published in the Daily Telegraph, 23 June 2007

SIR-

The cracks in the Union are now being hammered wider and wider apart. We are on the road to separation.

The simple fact is that the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are enjoying health and education benefits paid for with English taxpayers’ money, and yet the same benefits are being denied to the people of England on the grounds of cost.

Commentators may blame it on the SNP or the Barnett Formula- which allows England’s money to be used to subsidise the rest of the UK. They are all missing the point. English resentment will continue to grow because there is no political institution that can speak for England.

We already have a Scottish-dominated Cabinet, and Gordon Brown will become UK Prime Minister without the vote of a single person in England. Unless Mr. Brown recognises this, and creates a devolved English Parliament, we will continue on the road to separation.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Waterhouse
Vice Chairman
Campaign for an English Parliament
Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Letter published in the Oxford Mail, 21 June 2007

SCOTTISH TAIL

The tail is wagging the dog and no one seems to care - no-one in a position of power, at any rate.
As Tom Waterhouse pointed out (Oxford Mail, June 13), there is growing resentment among English people about the way they are being treated by the British Parliament (led almost exclusively by Scots).

Now, in the last few days, since Mr Waterhouse's letter, two more iniquities have been dumped on us from on high.

Scottish university students - with students from every other EU country studying in Scotland - no longer have to pay fees, whereas English students, even those attending Scottish universities, are saddled with thousands of pounds of debts, whether they graduate or not.
Secondly, we are now told that the drug Macugen, which could save the sight of up to 26,000 people a year in the UK, is not to be available on the NHS in England, while it is still free in Scotland.

Add this to the growing number of drugs that the Scots get free but the English don't - Aricept, Reminyl, Exelon, for Alzheimer's; Velcade, for bone and marrow cancer; Gliadel, for brain tumours; Alimta, for mesothelioma; Tarceva, for lung cancer; Bonviva, Fosavance, for osteoporosis; Erbitux, for head and neck cancer.

Is this not grossly inequitable, not to say iniquitous?

How are they getting away with it? Because England has no representation, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do.

Without our own Parliament, the English are being wagged more and more by the Scottish tail.
You can't really blame them - they are allowed to get away with it, Scot free!
Surely it's time to demand an English Parliament? We are the only country in Europe - or anywhere else in the West - that doesn't have one.

I suggest getting in touch with the Campaign for an English Parliament at www.thecep.org.uk and the English Democrats at www.englishdemocrats.org.uk

ALAN MYNALL, Radley

CEP News Release, 20th June 2007

NEWS RELEASE

Wednesday 20th June 2007
For immediate release

Gordon Brown must drop his Claim

"How can Gordon Brown, who took this oath, become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?"

When Gordon Brown was an ordinary Scottish MP he signed the declaration of the "Scottish Claim of Right". This document was a public oath committing those who took it to put the interests of the people of Scotland before all other considerations.

Now Gordon Brown is to become Prime Minister for the whole of the United Kingdom, the Campaign for an English Parliament is calling on Gordon Brown to publicly declare that he will not put the interests of any one part of the United Kingdom above any other part of the United Kingdom.

The Claim of Right, signed by Gordon Brown in 1988, read:

We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount.

CEP Chairman, Scilla Cullen, said, "There is another nation within the UK- that of England. Will Gordon Brown extend to its people the right of self-determination that he espoused for his own nation when he signed the Scottish Claim of Right?"

CEP Vice Chairman, Tom Waterhouse, said, "The Claim of Right was a public oath, and those who took it pledged to put the interests of the Scottish people before all others. How can Gordon Brown, who took this oath, become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? He must declare that he will put the interests of the whole of the UK before those of Scotland".

National Council, Campaign for an English Parliament

CONTACT:

Scilla Cullen (Chairman) 01438 833155

Mike Knowles (Media Unit) 01260 271139
Tom Waterhouse (Vice Chairman) 07900 633 811
David Wildgoose (Media Unit) 07970 258 794

Blair: Regional identity simply does not exist

The out-going UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, met with the Commons Liaison Committee yesterday. This committee is quite literally the “mother” of all committees, being made up of the Chairmen of Parliament’s 30 Select Committees.

There was a good spell on devolution, with Sir George Young MP very much on song- asking the Prime Minister about the state of the Union, the West Lothian Question, the Barnett Formula, the Scottish Parliament, tuition fees and English Votes on English Matters. Remarkable, really. The Prime Minister gave rather unremarkable answers to these questions, but when it came to regional assemblies Mr. Blair did say something worth writing down.

When asked by Dr. Phylis Starkey MP whether he wished he had been more bold and imposed elected regional assemblies on England, the Prime Minister said:

“The problem we found in the North East, because we tried to do a regional assembly there, if it was going to work anywhere it was going to work in the North East because of the coherence of the North East, but truthfully we found when we got into the campaign and the referendum that Teesside did not feel the necessary link with Tyneside, that County Durham did not necessarily want to be in the same place in terms of government as Newcastle and even Newcastle and Gateshead did not”.

There you have it. According to the Prime Minister himself, “regional identity” simply does not exist. Even in somewhere like the north-east of England, where the Government thought, of all places, their scheme was most likely to work, they found that people did not identify with their “region”, but with more local identities; with Teesside, Tyneside, County Durham, Newcastle, Sunderland, Gateshead.

This is surely the finishing touch to the argument that regionalism, no matter how you dress it up, is dead and should not be revived. And yet the BBC still promotes regional identity, the media still refers to “north east MPs” when talking about politicians from Newcastle or Sunderland, and parties like the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and to a lesser extent Labour still cling to the idea. They should listen to the very people they are trying to force regionalism onto, and take this advice:

Regionalism is dead. Stop trying to dance with the corpse.

Letter published in the Oxford Mail, 13 June 2007

NATIONAL HOLIDAY ON SAINTS' DAYS

Dear Sir,

So the Labour Government suggests that we have a "British Day" to celebrate our British identity.

Such an idea would sound acceptable if it came from anyone else but this Government, which has done more than any other in living memory to undermine what it means to be British.
Other people have highlighted how this Government's policies on ID Cards, detention without trial, uncontrolled immigration, political correctness, limits on free speech and banning protest outside Parliament are examples of their attacks on British culture, values and way of life.

To this, I would add the growing resentment among English people about the way they are being treated compared with their British countrymen in Scotland and Wales. More and more people deliberately choose to identify themselves as English, not British - a direct result of having Britishness rammed down our throats while being starved of our equally important English identity.

So to the idea of a British Day - which Gordon Brown says must not be a Bank Holiday but just a celebration - I say let's have a national Bank Holiday for St George's Day in England, and one in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for St Andrew, St David and St Patrick.

Better that than some contrived day of Britishness cooked up by the people that have done so much to destroy our culture, values and way of life.

Tom Waterhouse
Campaign for an English Parliament
Oxfordshire branch

Labour Deputy Leadership candidates: don't mention the "E" word!

The Labour Deputy Leadership candidates were recently asked on OurKingdom, “What should be done, if anything, to give England more representation or ‘voice’?”.

The answers were, predictably, abysmal.

The CEP's view of their repsonses has been put up on the OurKingdom website. Have a read of it at OurKingdom or read it below, but don't forget to add your own views.


It is interesting that the candidates, when asked what should be done to give England fair representation within the Union, immediately start talking about Scotland, Wales, the Union or even the “Regions”. They would rather talk about anything other than the “E” word.

Their response is, sadly, not surprising. This Labour Government has done more than any other to undermine England and the English way of life. The plans to balkanise England into regions failed when it encountered that annoying little thing called “democracy”: in the only referendum to be held on a regional assembly in the north east of England, the idea was emphatically rejected by 78% to 22%. Despite this, regionalisation in England has continued. It’s undemocratic, it’s unwanted, it’s unfair. That the candidates said nothing of this does not bode well for England in the near future. It certainly shows that talk of “re-engaging” with voters and the public is just as false as it was in 1997.

What the Labour Deputy Leadership candidates must realise - indeed what all Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians must realise - is that the public want an English Parliament. Successive opinion polls have shown this: 68%, 61%, 67% in favour. Therefore their arguments about regions or the Union are irrelevant. As Labour MP Frank Field said recently, an English Parliament “is what voters want and what justice demands”. It cannot be said more simply or more powerfully than that. The fact that England’s voice is ignored by our political masters is evidence enough of why we must have an English Parliament.

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UPDATE 15 JUNE: Tom Griffon of The Green Ribbon covers this, adding an importnat point about the sheer uselessness of regional assemblies. Worth a read.