The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
Or to put it another way I can't see anyone arguing for a south Yorkshire county council to sit above Don, Roth, Barnsley, Sheffield...
It already exists, embryonically. Dan Jarvis leads it.
Yes.
The buggers are attempting to effectively steal swathes of Derbyshire. Again.
Just think how much more agreeable all our lives would be if the but where TSE lives were still Derbyshire.
I agree that Derbyshire was overreach. I thought that idea was dead.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Sure, safe in the knowledge that the subtitle will be quietly dropped in general/media usage!
There it is again - bunching up the flesh to inject. Obviously what I read about needing to stretch out the skin for a vaccination was wrong.
I've been wondering about that. Wasn't it Scandinavian health experts pointing out the technique needed to get the vaccine into muscle rather than veins?
On my injection in early Feb it was the nurse pointing out that it was intramuscular, as I asked her.
All the vaccines are supposed to be injected intramuscularly. It’s conceivable that inadvertent intravenous injection might be more likely to cause problems, but for obvious reasons this hasn’t been tested.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
I don’t quite follow what you are saying, but I misread your first response anyway.
I thought you were suggesting abolishing metros.
Nah, just don't see the point of having two sets of councils here, if any party proposes North Notts unitary in the LEs I'd vote for them tommorow
I think one of the reasons you (and I) might feel that way is that there is fuck all for two levels to do.
If we devolved more - a LOT more - than then be enough “stuff” to go around.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
Does proper federalism also mean that England cannot be outvoted ?
Proper federalism means that England could not outvote Scotland, Wales, and NI. They would have to convince at least 2 of the other constituent nations to also consent to whatever. Otherwise what's the point of the "federalism" compared to our current system?
That's just ridiculous. Break up the union if we English are going to be asked to pay for everything and simultaneously be told to have no say in what we're actually being billed for.
Well again you've just demonstrated the inherent instability of the British state.
But it just ends up with the Welsh, Scottish and NI senators outvoting the English ones and raising taxes on the English to pay for whatever ridiculous new giveaway they come up with. How is that in any way fair or sustainable? English apathy towards the union is based on footing an endless bill for things we don't have, free tuition, free prescriptions but still being asked to pay for it all. Now you're proposing to make it even worse by giving the three devolved nations the power to overrule England and raise taxes on us. Well fuck that.
Hey I'm not "proposing" anything. I'm merely exploring the advantages and disadvantages of any new setup.
For it to be sustainable a majority of tax would have to be handled by the national assemblies and not by Westminster. Therefore the "senators" could not raise English taxes. I don't know what would fund the federal element though.
Any federal system that doesn't come with near fiscal autonomy is doomed to failure. US states are able to sell bonds but the interest payable for them needs to be paid by local taxation. Spending decisions on healthcare or education is decided by statehouses but the money for anything above the federal baseline needs to come from local taxes. I have no problem with such a system being introduced in the UK and having that level of fiscal autonomy being given to the four nations with Westminster essentially setting a baseline on spending and tax then having additional local rates for local spending decisions.
What we can't have is Scotland voting for England to pay for it's free tuition like we did under Labour.
Yeah I agree with you.
Surely the split has to be national things and international things, with UK Govt handling the former.
I mean, I am not aware that Schleswig-Holstein or even Bavaria has an input into German Defence policy.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
One historical analogy to the “England is too big” argument might be Prussia.
I believe that Prussia essentially ruled the German Empire until 1918. Various Prussian entities held de facto national, rather than state level, power.
It didn’t end well, though.
One key reason Bismarck was anxious for a separate Austria.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
I don’t quite follow what you are saying, but I misread your first response anyway.
I thought you were suggesting abolishing metros.
Nah, just don't see the point of having two sets of councils here, if any party proposes North Notts unitary in the LEs I'd vote for them tommorow
Is there much demand for rule from Mansfield in Bassetlaw ?
I suppose it might be the one thing that unites Retford and Worksop.
You'd be better off asking for the Doncaster border to be pushed a mile southward.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
Does proper federalism also mean that England cannot be outvoted ?
Proper federalism means that England could not outvote Scotland, Wales, and NI. They would have to convince at least 2 of the other constituent nations to also consent to whatever. Otherwise what's the point of the "federalism" compared to our current system?
That's just ridiculous. Break up the union if we English are going to be asked to pay for everything and simultaneously be told to have no say in what we're actually being billed for.
Well again you've just demonstrated the inherent instability of the British state.
But it just ends up with the Welsh, Scottish and NI senators outvoting the English ones and raising taxes on the English to pay for whatever ridiculous new giveaway they come up with. How is that in any way fair or sustainable? English apathy towards the union is based on footing an endless bill for things we don't have, free tuition, free prescriptions but still being asked to pay for it all. Now you're proposing to make it even worse by giving the three devolved nations the power to overrule England and raise taxes on us. Well fuck that.
Hey I'm not "proposing" anything. I'm merely exploring the advantages and disadvantages of any new setup.
For it to be sustainable a majority of tax would have to be handled by the national assemblies and not by Westminster. Therefore the "senators" could not raise English taxes. I don't know what would fund the federal element though.
Any federal system that doesn't come with near fiscal autonomy is doomed to failure. US states are able to sell bonds but the interest payable for them needs to be paid by local taxation. Spending decisions on healthcare or education is decided by statehouses but the money for anything above the federal baseline needs to come from local taxes. I have no problem with such a system being introduced in the UK and having that level of fiscal autonomy being given to the four nations with Westminster essentially setting a baseline on spending and tax then having additional local rates for local spending decisions.
What we can't have is Scotland voting for England to pay for it's free tuition like we did under Labour.
Yeah I agree with you.
Surely the split has to be national things and international things, with UK Govt handling the former.
I mean, I am not aware that Schleswig-Holstein or even Bavaria has an input into German Defence policy.
Of course. However the amount of "national things" surely depends on the level of federalisation?
For example, how much does the Danish government do for Greenland?
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Coventry would be angling to get back into Warwickshire even more so than it already is!
Actually, I *would* put it back into Warwickshire.
Analysis of commuting patterns show that Warwickshire county is pretty much Coventry’s catchment area. It doesn’t really have much to do with Birmingham next door.
Yes - Coventry is much more naturally Warwickshire than the mutant 'West Midlands' county it got chucked into with local govt organisation. Fortunately there are no West Mids councillors...
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
How about naming after houses? (Fictional or real).
So Cliveden, Hever, etc could all be suitable candidates
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
I don’t quite follow what you are saying, but I misread your first response anyway.
I thought you were suggesting abolishing metros.
Nah, just don't see the point of having two sets of councils here, if any party proposes North Notts unitary in the LEs I'd vote for them tommorow
Is there much demand for rule from Mansfield in Bassetlaw ?
I suppose it might be the one thing that unites Retford and Worksop.
You'd be better off asking for the Doncaster border to be pushed a mile southward.
There's certainly a demand for the council tax bills to be as relatively cheap as Doncaster
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Coventry would be angling to get back into Warwickshire even more so than it already is!
Actually, I *would* put it back into Warwickshire.
Analysis of commuting patterns show that Warwickshire county is pretty much Coventry’s catchment area. It doesn’t really have much to do with Birmingham next door.
Yes - Coventry is much more naturally Warwickshire than the mutant 'West Midlands' county it got chucked into with local govt organisation. Fortunately there are no West Mids councillors...
Would the west midlands have been better with Coventry and Meridien constituency being kept in Warwickshire, Solihull constituency being merged into Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield being taken out of Birmingham and kept as a district within Staffordshire ?
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
Does proper federalism also mean that England cannot be outvoted ?
Proper federalism means that England could not outvote Scotland, Wales, and NI. They would have to convince at least 2 of the other constituent nations to also consent to whatever. Otherwise what's the point of the "federalism" compared to our current system?
That's just ridiculous. Break up the union if we English are going to be asked to pay for everything and simultaneously be told to have no say in what we're actually being billed for.
Well again you've just demonstrated the inherent instability of the British state.
But it just ends up with the Welsh, Scottish and NI senators outvoting the English ones and raising taxes on the English to pay for whatever ridiculous new giveaway they come up with. How is that in any way fair or sustainable? English apathy towards the union is based on footing an endless bill for things we don't have, free tuition, free prescriptions but still being asked to pay for it all. Now you're proposing to make it even worse by giving the three devolved nations the power to overrule England and raise taxes on us. Well fuck that.
Hey I'm not "proposing" anything. I'm merely exploring the advantages and disadvantages of any new setup.
For it to be sustainable a majority of tax would have to be handled by the national assemblies and not by Westminster. Therefore the "senators" could not raise English taxes. I don't know what would fund the federal element though.
Any federal system that doesn't come with near fiscal autonomy is doomed to failure. US states are able to sell bonds but the interest payable for them needs to be paid by local taxation. Spending decisions on healthcare or education is decided by statehouses but the money for anything above the federal baseline needs to come from local taxes. I have no problem with such a system being introduced in the UK and having that level of fiscal autonomy being given to the four nations with Westminster essentially setting a baseline on spending and tax then having additional local rates for local spending decisions.
What we can't have is Scotland voting for England to pay for it's free tuition like we did under Labour.
Yeah I agree with you.
Surely the split has to be national things and international things, with UK Govt handling the former.
I mean, I am not aware that Schleswig-Holstein or even Bavaria has an input into German Defence policy.
They probably don't, but is that to say it would be bad if they did? Personally I think home nation consent to big foreign policy decisions would strengthen those decisions. I could understand it being a tough sell to a UK PM who wants the power to make Disraelian type foreign policy decisions at the drop of a hat, but even then I think a genuinely brilliant foreign policy initiative would easily pass that test.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Coventry would be angling to get back into Warwickshire even more so than it already is!
Actually, I *would* put it back into Warwickshire.
Analysis of commuting patterns show that Warwickshire county is pretty much Coventry’s catchment area. It doesn’t really have much to do with Birmingham next door.
Yes - Coventry is much more naturally Warwickshire than the mutant 'West Midlands' county it got chucked into with local govt organisation. Fortunately there are no West Mids councillors...
Would the west midlands have been better with Coventry and Meridien constituency being kept in Warwickshire, Solihull constituency being merged into Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield being taken out of Birmingham and kept as a district within Staffordshire ?
Yes to all but with Sutton Coldfield staying in Birmingham, in my opinion.
However wasn't Sutton Coldfield always in Warwickshire?
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
I don't think people in Coventry would be too pleased to be put in a Greater Birmingham council area.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
Not sure I agree. Greater Manchester - the name - has been a massive success, in terms of city branding locally and internationally. There’s a lot in a simple name that highlights the core city. There was a plan in the 1960s to call it Selnec (SE Lancs and NE Cheshire). Thankfully someone saw sense and it became the functional and attractive Greater Manchester.
That's just adding insult to injury for poor Sir Keir: Boris is beating him on 'Tells the truth'...
It is apparently Boris’ Achilles heel. I don’t really get it - I think Starmer lacks charisma and doesn’t have what it takes to beat Boris in a GE, but wouldn’t have thought him a liar, and definitely more likely to be honest than Boris
Not sure why people are surprised. Starmer is a dishonest, slimy lawyer. Not just a stereotype, but on big picture issues. He is more dishonest even than Boris and yes that says a lot, Boris lies about the small stuff, Starmer lies on the big stuff.
He spent years working with Corbyn, serving in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, pushing for him to be PM. Then he gets the leadership and suddenly it is "Corbyn who?" and he's kicked out of the Party.
He was an arch Europhile, leading figure calling for a People's Vote, pushing hard for Labour to back a second referendum. Then he gets the leadership and suddenly he has no interest in Britain being in Europe.
He was pushing hard for Britain to be in the European institutions like the EMA, then the vaccine rollout is a success and suddenly he has no interest in Britain being linked to Europe.
And so on and so forth, could name other issues like his abandoning his republicanism and so on, but those big picture flip flops are what most people know about Starmer. He changes his principles without blinking and acts like nothing has even happened and like we're crazy for thinking he was previously passionately arguing the opposite.
There is something fundamentally dishonest and creepy about that.
To be fair, I knew all that and still nodded along that he was more honest than Boris. You make a good point.
His biggest problem, well one of them, is that he has to be seen as charismatic and likeable whilst being a nagging fun sponge to someone the public think of as much more charismatic and likeable
I don't normally give S KS much credit but he is in a difficult position here. A lot of left wingers don't like him because they think he lied about what he was going to do when getting elected, and has had the temerity to stuff Corbyn. Any figures will look bad when you kill your own base.
Next for the brexiters he is the two faced jan us who wanted constructive ambiguity, also known as riding two horses.
For those in the middle whilst he has been mainly supportive during th pandemic , he has had to pander to those who think he should be putting the boot in. The can come across as being right with hindsight and also dishonest in a way, as people know difficult decisions were made to the best information available.
I think it's wrong to call him creepy, although scheming smarmy lawyer is pretty close. By contrast I don't think Boris is that focused on lying. I think he wants to tell people what they want to hear and be liked. He reminds me of a drunk acquaintance on a night out who chats up the most attractive woman in the bar, tells some great stories, and borrows money off you which you will never see again.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
What other alternative is there apart from federalism if we want to keep the union?
The current settlement is unlikely to be stable and I believe Scotland will keep agitating for independence until a stable settlement is found.
The unitary UK state is all but gone. We have to accept this fact and find a stable settlement.
The logical solution, that should have been done in 1997, is an English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish one.
Logical if you wish to break up the Union.
Why? If it is good enough for Scotland why is it not good enough for England?
An English Parliament under our current setup would be pointless. We would need to change the entire system because otherwise there would be little difference in mandate between the English First Minister and the UK Prime Minister.
It would be a mess of New Labour proportions.
Yes there would, the UK PM would be responsible for defence, foreign policy and major tax and financial policy, while most other domestic policy would be the responsibility of the head of the devolved governments.
Just as is the case in Federal countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, India and Germany.
Your example federal countries don't have one constituent state that makes up 90% of the population.
The English FM would be arguably more powerful than the British PM.
, It could be done at regional level in England instead, with Assemblies for each region similar to those in London, though in Canada Ontario makes up well over a third of the Canadian population, as does New South Wales in Australia
And then we just get back to the problem of breaking up England into (mostly artificial) cantons so that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't feel threatened. Though FWIW they'd probably still moan about being abused and ignored anyway.
There are only three equitable arrangements for the governance of the UK: the unitary state, broadly symmetrical devolution to the four home nations, or give up and get rid of it. Take your pick.
This isn't logical - the breaking up of England into cantons WOULD threaten the other nations - by breaking England up, you build in an English majority that will carry all decisions, again. So there's really no point.
Under my proposal, England stays as one (or two) and for the purposes of these votes, it votes as a nation amongst its peers, like Denmark having an EU veto the same as Germany. They are only voting on the initiatives of the UK Government (not originating their own initiatives), so England doesn't get pushed into anything against its will.
Yeah I think that's a good idea. England gets a veto, but the English will have to be comfortable with Scotland also having a veto.
Unfortunately what you're creating there is something not unlike the European Union - effectively, the Council of Ministers at the top, the UK Government effectively functioning as the executive Commission under it, and a fairly toothless Parliament at the bottom providing some oversight functions.
The power would, fundamentally, be exercised by the Council of Ministers - so the whole construct would function de facto as an association of separate allied states rather than a nation state in the traditional sense - and with everything decided by unanimity rather than QMV at that. Two things: (1) The UK would effectively no longer exist as a functioning country, so what would be the point in bothering; and (2) The veto power would induce complete paralysis. What likelihood would there be of, for arguments sake, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Welsh Labour and the English Tories agreeing on anything?
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
Not sure I agree. Greater Manchester - the name - has been a massive success, in terms of city branding locally and internationally. There’s a lot in a simple name that highlights the core city. There was a plan in the 1960s to call it Selnec (SE Lancs and NE Cheshire). Thankfully someone saw sense and it became the functional and attractive Greater Manchester.
100%. It's what Birmingham and Newcastle (the two cities I know the most) miss out on.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
I don't think people in Coventry would be too pleased to be put in a Greater Birmingham council area.
They are already in one. West Mids mayoralty. It’s just got a stupid name.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
I don't think people in Coventry would be too pleased to be put in a Greater Birmingham council area.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
Not sure I agree. Greater Manchester - the name - has been a massive success, in terms of city branding locally and internationally. There’s a lot in a simple name that highlights the core city. There was a plan in the 1960s to call it Selnec (SE Lancs and NE Cheshire). Thankfully someone saw sense and it became the functional and attractive Greater Manchester.
100%. It's what Birmingham and Newcastle (the two cities I know the most) miss out on.
Branding is very important.
The Newcastle situation is absolutely bonkers. Newcastle, Gateshead and the rest of Tyneside should have been formally merged decades ago. And called Greater Newcastle!
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
What other alternative is there apart from federalism if we want to keep the union?
The current settlement is unlikely to be stable and I believe Scotland will keep agitating for independence until a stable settlement is found.
The unitary UK state is all but gone. We have to accept this fact and find a stable settlement.
The logical solution, that should have been done in 1997, is an English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish one.
Logical if you wish to break up the Union.
Why? If it is good enough for Scotland why is it not good enough for England?
An English Parliament under our current setup would be pointless. We would need to change the entire system because otherwise there would be little difference in mandate between the English First Minister and the UK Prime Minister.
It would be a mess of New Labour proportions.
Yes there would, the UK PM would be responsible for defence, foreign policy and major tax and financial policy, while most other domestic policy would be the responsibility of the head of the devolved governments.
Just as is the case in Federal countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, India and Germany.
Your example federal countries don't have one constituent state that makes up 90% of the population.
The English FM would be arguably more powerful than the British PM.
, It could be done at regional level in England instead, with Assemblies for each region similar to those in London, though in Canada Ontario makes up well over a third of the Canadian population, as does New South Wales in Australia
And then we just get back to the problem of breaking up England into (mostly artificial) cantons so that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't feel threatened. Though FWIW they'd probably still moan about being abused and ignored anyway.
There are only three equitable arrangements for the governance of the UK: the unitary state, broadly symmetrical devolution to the four home nations, or give up and get rid of it. Take your pick.
This isn't logical - the breaking up of England into cantons WOULD threaten the other nations - by breaking England up, you build in an English majority that will carry all decisions, again. So there's really no point.
Under my proposal, England stays as one (or two) and for the purposes of these votes, it votes as a nation amongst its peers, like Denmark having an EU veto the same as Germany. They are only voting on the initiatives of the UK Government (not originating their own initiatives), so England doesn't get pushed into anything against its will.
Yeah I think that's a good idea. England gets a veto, but the English will have to be comfortable with Scotland also having a veto.
Unfortunately what you're creating there is something not unlike the European Union - effectively, the Council of Ministers at the top, the UK Government effectively functioning as the executive Commission under it, and a fairly toothless Parliament at the bottom providing some oversight functions.
The power would, fundamentally, be exercised by the Council of Ministers - so the whole construct would function de facto as an association of separate allied states rather than a nation state in the traditional sense - and with everything decided by unanimity rather than QMV at that. Two things: (1) The UK would effectively no longer exist as a functioning country, so what would be the point in bothering; and (2) The veto power would induce complete paralysis. What likelihood would there be of, for arguments sake, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Welsh Labour and the English Tories agreeing on anything?
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
Not sure I agree. Greater Manchester - the name - has been a massive success, in terms of city branding locally and internationally. There’s a lot in a simple name that highlights the core city. There was a plan in the 1960s to call it Selnec (SE Lancs and NE Cheshire). Thankfully someone saw sense and it became the functional and attractive Greater Manchester.
100%. It's what Birmingham and Newcastle (the two cities I know the most) miss out on.
Branding is very important.
The Newcastle situation is absolutely bonkers. Newcastle, Gateshead and the rest of Tyneside should have been formally merged decades ago. And called Greater Newcastle!
The issue is do you keep the local councils and have a second level, like in London, or do you have one local authority for circa 1m people?
At the very least the City of Newcastle should absorb North Tyneside in my opinion.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
I don’t quite follow what you are saying, but I misread your first response anyway.
I thought you were suggesting abolishing metros.
Nah, just don't see the point of having two sets of councils here, if any party proposes North Notts unitary in the LEs I'd vote for them tommorow
Is there much demand for rule from Mansfield in Bassetlaw ?
I suppose it might be the one thing that unites Retford and Worksop.
You'd be better off asking for the Doncaster border to be pushed a mile southward.
10x better than rule from Nottingham.
And if you have Nottingham, why leave out Leicester, which is as large.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
Not sure I agree. Greater Manchester - the name - has been a massive success, in terms of city branding locally and internationally. There’s a lot in a simple name that highlights the core city. There was a plan in the 1960s to call it Selnec (SE Lancs and NE Cheshire). Thankfully someone saw sense and it became the functional and attractive Greater Manchester.
SELNEC was the name of the bus company which I used to take to school. With a fetching orange and white livery.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
What other alternative is there apart from federalism if we want to keep the union?
The current settlement is unlikely to be stable and I believe Scotland will keep agitating for independence until a stable settlement is found.
The unitary UK state is all but gone. We have to accept this fact and find a stable settlement.
The logical solution, that should have been done in 1997, is an English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish one.
Logical if you wish to break up the Union.
Why? If it is good enough for Scotland why is it not good enough for England?
An English Parliament under our current setup would be pointless. We would need to change the entire system because otherwise there would be little difference in mandate between the English First Minister and the UK Prime Minister.
It would be a mess of New Labour proportions.
Yes there would, the UK PM would be responsible for defence, foreign policy and major tax and financial policy, while most other domestic policy would be the responsibility of the head of the devolved governments.
Just as is the case in Federal countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, India and Germany.
Your example federal countries don't have one constituent state that makes up 90% of the population.
The English FM would be arguably more powerful than the British PM.
, It could be done at regional level in England instead, with Assemblies for each region similar to those in London, though in Canada Ontario makes up well over a third of the Canadian population, as does New South Wales in Australia
And then we just get back to the problem of breaking up England into (mostly artificial) cantons so that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't feel threatened. Though FWIW they'd probably still moan about being abused and ignored anyway.
There are only three equitable arrangements for the governance of the UK: the unitary state, broadly symmetrical devolution to the four home nations, or give up and get rid of it. Take your pick.
This isn't logical - the breaking up of England into cantons WOULD threaten the other nations - by breaking England up, you build in an English majority that will carry all decisions, again. So there's really no point.
Under my proposal, England stays as one (or two) and for the purposes of these votes, it votes as a nation amongst its peers, like Denmark having an EU veto the same as Germany. They are only voting on the initiatives of the UK Government (not originating their own initiatives), so England doesn't get pushed into anything against its will.
Yeah I think that's a good idea. England gets a veto, but the English will have to be comfortable with Scotland also having a veto.
Unfortunately what you're creating there is something not unlike the European Union - effectively, the Council of Ministers at the top, the UK Government effectively functioning as the executive Commission under it, and a fairly toothless Parliament at the bottom providing some oversight functions.
The power would, fundamentally, be exercised by the Council of Ministers - so the whole construct would function de facto as an association of separate allied states rather than a nation state in the traditional sense - and with everything decided by unanimity rather than QMV at that. Two things: (1) The UK would effectively no longer exist as a functioning country, so what would be the point in bothering; and (2) The veto power would induce complete paralysis. What likelihood would there be of, for arguments sake, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Welsh Labour and the English Tories agreeing on anything?
Best just to get rid and be done with it.
Past my bedtime, but the Council of the Isles would not be generating anything - that would be for the UK Government. It would merely 'seal the deal' and give an added legitimacy to the big foreign policy and defence decisions taken by the UK Government.
I have not proposed that individual nations have a 'veto' power - I shouldn't have mentioned vetos, all I meant was that it's not uncommon for nations of vastly different sizes to exercise similar voting weights. Voting would be a simple majority vote.
UK Government proposes entering into a new Treaty
Voted on by: England London Scotland Wales NI
Or
UK England Scotland Wales NI
Majority vote carries the day.
If we go with solution 2, the UK Government needs to win the support of two of the home nations to get its treaty through. If a treaty is so unpopular that it is opposed by three home nations out of four, what business has the UK Government entering into it in the first place?
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
What other alternative is there apart from federalism if we want to keep the union?
The current settlement is unlikely to be stable and I believe Scotland will keep agitating for independence until a stable settlement is found.
The unitary UK state is all but gone. We have to accept this fact and find a stable settlement.
The logical solution, that should have been done in 1997, is an English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish one.
Logical if you wish to break up the Union.
Why? If it is good enough for Scotland why is it not good enough for England?
An English Parliament under our current setup would be pointless. We would need to change the entire system because otherwise there would be little difference in mandate between the English First Minister and the UK Prime Minister.
It would be a mess of New Labour proportions.
Yes there would, the UK PM would be responsible for defence, foreign policy and major tax and financial policy, while most other domestic policy would be the responsibility of the head of the devolved governments.
Just as is the case in Federal countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, India and Germany.
Your example federal countries don't have one constituent state that makes up 90% of the population.
The English FM would be arguably more powerful than the British PM.
, It could be done at regional level in England instead, with Assemblies for each region similar to those in London, though in Canada Ontario makes up well over a third of the Canadian population, as does New South Wales in Australia
And then we just get back to the problem of breaking up England into (mostly artificial) cantons so that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't feel threatened. Though FWIW they'd probably still moan about being abused and ignored anyway.
There are only three equitable arrangements for the governance of the UK: the unitary state, broadly symmetrical devolution to the four home nations, or give up and get rid of it. Take your pick.
This isn't logical - the breaking up of England into cantons WOULD threaten the other nations - by breaking England up, you build in an English majority that will carry all decisions, again. So there's really no point.
Under my proposal, England stays as one (or two) and for the purposes of these votes, it votes as a nation amongst its peers, like Denmark having an EU veto the same as Germany. They are only voting on the initiatives of the UK Government (not originating their own initiatives), so England doesn't get pushed into anything against its will.
Yeah I think that's a good idea. England gets a veto, but the English will have to be comfortable with Scotland also having a veto.
Unfortunately what you're creating there is something not unlike the European Union - effectively, the Council of Ministers at the top, the UK Government effectively functioning as the executive Commission under it, and a fairly toothless Parliament at the bottom providing some oversight functions.
The power would, fundamentally, be exercised by the Council of Ministers - so the whole construct would function de facto as an association of separate allied states rather than a nation state in the traditional sense - and with everything decided by unanimity rather than QMV at that. Two things: (1) The UK would effectively no longer exist as a functioning country, so what would be the point in bothering; and (2) The veto power would induce complete paralysis. What likelihood would there be of, for arguments sake, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Welsh Labour and the English Tories agreeing on anything?
Best just to get rid and be done with it.
Past my bedtime, but the Council of the Isles would not be generating anything - that would be for the UK Government. It would merely 'seal the deal' and give an added legitimacy to the big foreign policy and defence decisions taken by the UK Government.
I have not proposed that individual nations have a 'VETO' power - I shouldn't have mentioned vetos, all I meant was that it's not uncommon for nations of vastly different sizes to exercise similar voting weights. Voting would be a simple majority vote.
UK Government proposes entering into a new Treaty
Voted on by: England London Scotland Wales NI
Or
UK England Scotland Wales NI
Majority vote carries the day.
If we go with solution 2, the UK Government needs to win the support of two other home nations to get its treaty through. If a treaty is so unpopular that it is opposed by three home nations out of four, what business has the UK Government entering into it in the first place?
I guess that works in the sense that Brexit would have passed by virtue of England + Wales + UK Government.
Images of drunk foreign tourists shouting in the streets and police raiding illegal parties in Madrid at a time when locals are not allowed to travel between Spain’s regions have left many Spaniards up in arms, AFP reports.
Spanish TV on Monday aired a video of officers smashing the windows of an apartment over the weekend to dislodge occupants holding a party that violated virus restrictions.
The fact that several of the partygoers were reportedly foreigners fuelled resentment over the seemingly haphazard nature of travel restrictions in Europe during the pandemic, with many Spaniards taking to social media to vent their anger.
While Spaniards are not allowed to leave their own regions until 9 April to avoid a resurgence of coronavirus infections over Holy Week, similar restrictions do not apply to international tourists, who can still fly into Spain on presentation of a negative Covid test.
And with its 11pm curfew and bars and restaurants open, Madrid has drawn scores of visitors from countries under tighter lockdowns.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
Images of drunk foreign tourists shouting in the streets and police raiding illegal parties in Madrid at a time when locals are not allowed to travel between Spain’s regions have left many Spaniards up in arms, AFP reports.
Spanish TV on Monday aired a video of officers smashing the windows of an apartment over the weekend to dislodge occupants holding a party that violated virus restrictions.
The fact that several of the partygoers were reportedly foreigners fuelled resentment over the seemingly haphazard nature of travel restrictions in Europe during the pandemic, with many Spaniards taking to social media to vent their anger.
While Spaniards are not allowed to leave their own regions until 9 April to avoid a resurgence of coronavirus infections over Holy Week, similar restrictions do not apply to international tourists, who can still fly into Spain on presentation of a negative Covid test.
And with its 11pm curfew and bars and restaurants open, Madrid has drawn scores of visitors from countries under tighter lockdowns.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
FWIW I don't think some of your combos would work. More specifically Southampton and Portsmouth and Nottingham and Derby. Sometimes different cities are different cities. It's different to absorbing towns into their bordering dominating city.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
Warrington is a real place? I thought it was just a Rugby League team.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
What other alternative is there apart from federalism if we want to keep the union?
The current settlement is unlikely to be stable and I believe Scotland will keep agitating for independence until a stable settlement is found.
The unitary UK state is all but gone. We have to accept this fact and find a stable settlement.
The logical solution, that should have been done in 1997, is an English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish one.
Logical if you wish to break up the Union.
Why? If it is good enough for Scotland why is it not good enough for England?
An English Parliament under our current setup would be pointless. We would need to change the entire system because otherwise there would be little difference in mandate between the English First Minister and the UK Prime Minister.
It would be a mess of New Labour proportions.
Yes there would, the UK PM would be responsible for defence, foreign policy and major tax and financial policy, while most other domestic policy would be the responsibility of the head of the devolved governments.
Just as is the case in Federal countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, India and Germany.
Your example federal countries don't have one constituent state that makes up 90% of the population.
The English FM would be arguably more powerful than the British PM.
, It could be done at regional level in England instead, with Assemblies for each region similar to those in London, though in Canada Ontario makes up well over a third of the Canadian population, as does New South Wales in Australia
And then we just get back to the problem of breaking up England into (mostly artificial) cantons so that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't feel threatened. Though FWIW they'd probably still moan about being abused and ignored anyway.
There are only three equitable arrangements for the governance of the UK: the unitary state, broadly symmetrical devolution to the four home nations, or give up and get rid of it. Take your pick.
This isn't logical - the breaking up of England into cantons WOULD threaten the other nations - by breaking England up, you build in an English majority that will carry all decisions, again. So there's really no point.
Under my proposal, England stays as one (or two) and for the purposes of these votes, it votes as a nation amongst its peers, like Denmark having an EU veto the same as Germany. They are only voting on the initiatives of the UK Government (not originating their own initiatives), so England doesn't get pushed into anything against its will.
Yeah I think that's a good idea. England gets a veto, but the English will have to be comfortable with Scotland also having a veto.
Unfortunately what you're creating there is something not unlike the European Union - effectively, the Council of Ministers at the top, the UK Government effectively functioning as the executive Commission under it, and a fairly toothless Parliament at the bottom providing some oversight functions.
The power would, fundamentally, be exercised by the Council of Ministers - so the whole construct would function de facto as an association of separate allied states rather than a nation state in the traditional sense - and with everything decided by unanimity rather than QMV at that. Two things: (1) The UK would effectively no longer exist as a functioning country, so what would be the point in bothering; and (2) The veto power would induce complete paralysis. What likelihood would there be of, for arguments sake, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Welsh Labour and the English Tories agreeing on anything?
Best just to get rid and be done with it.
Past my bedtime, but the Council of the Isles would not be generating anything - that would be for the UK Government. It would merely 'seal the deal' and give an added legitimacy to the big foreign policy and defence decisions taken by the UK Government.
I have not proposed that individual nations have a 'VETO' power - I shouldn't have mentioned vetos, all I meant was that it's not uncommon for nations of vastly different sizes to exercise similar voting weights. Voting would be a simple majority vote.
UK Government proposes entering into a new Treaty
Voted on by: England London Scotland Wales NI
Or
UK England Scotland Wales NI
Majority vote carries the day.
If we go with solution 2, the UK Government needs to win the support of two other home nations to get its treaty through. If a treaty is so unpopular that it is opposed by three home nations out of four, what business has the UK Government entering into it in the first place?
I guess that works in the sense that Brexit would have passed by virtue of England + Wales + UK Government.
Thankfully, we propose this in a post Brexit world.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
FWIW I don't think some of your combos would work. More specifically Southampton and Portsmouth and Nottingham and Derby. Sometimes different cities are different cities. It's different to absorbing towns into their bordering dominating city.
I don’t really think of these as “cities” but as shared metropolitan spaces.
It really is a combined Southampton and Portsmouth metropolitan area, rather than “a single city”.
Hence I use both names, not “Solent City” or some such.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
What about the current half South of the Mersey?
Cede it to Warrington-in-Lancashire.
OR turn Warrington into a metro, with two boroughs - one Lancs flavoured, one Cheshire flavoured.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
@dixiedean think we could get away with absorbing Ponteland into the City of Newcastle? Ho ho ho...
Gosforth got over it.
It's not the only bit. North of Tyne is a geographical and logical outrage. Newcastle is far too small. Ponteland should be a penal colony where all Asbos are re-housed.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Not since my teenage years but since a formative stint in English local government...
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
England is too big to have a single parliament, and not just on the grounds of Prussian-style dominance. It also misses the point of regional government: a layer of government that is a little closer to the people, with regional responsibilities and focus, something that has been lacking from the UK for too long.
It's not difficult to divide England into 10 or 15 regions, each with a population akin to Wales or Scotland, and to base them around major cities as a focus. You also get extra benefits: some added resilience (regions can step in for central government in an emergency), and the experimentation that comes from genuinely accountable local power (new political ideas can get rolled out at region level, where you hope the better ideas out-compete the weaker ideas; right now the only way to get experimental ideas adopted is to work for the government's favourite think-tank or to sit next to Jenrick at a fundraiser). The danger is duplication of competences, but that can be guarded against.
STV elections for a reduced Westminster, regional parliaments, replace the Lords with some kind of revisory upper chamber. You probably want it to be free of old hack politicians, leaders' patronage, and vested interests, but to also rectify whatever imbalances come out of the federal system, so I'd be happy to wait 20 or 30 years before writing its statute, and just have a body constituted by sortition in the meantime.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
I’m not opposed to non-contiguity.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
I don’t quite follow what you are saying, but I misread your first response anyway.
I thought you were suggesting abolishing metros.
Nah, just don't see the point of having two sets of councils here, if any party proposes North Notts unitary in the LEs I'd vote for them tommorow
Is there much demand for rule from Mansfield in Bassetlaw ?
I suppose it might be the one thing that unites Retford and Worksop.
You'd be better off asking for the Doncaster border to be pushed a mile southward.
There's certainly a demand for the council tax bills to be as relatively cheap as Doncaster
Never seems that cheap when I pay it but it looks like you pay about 20% extra. Ouch!
Still, at least your planning system wasn't corrupt. I assume.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
Put Wigan (And St Helens if we must) and it becomes contiguous. The Mersey though is the ancient boundary of Mercia. Indeed. It gives it its name.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
England is too big to have a single parliament, and not just on the grounds of Prussian-style dominance. It also misses the point of regional government: a layer of government that is a little closer to the people, with regional responsibilities and focus, something that has been lacking from the UK for too long.
It's not difficult to divide England into 10 or 15 regions, each with a population akin to Wales or Scotland, and to base them around major cities as a focus. You also get extra benefits: some added resilience (regions can step in for central government in an emergency), and the experimentation that comes from genuinely accountable local power (new political ideas can get rolled out at region level, where you hope the better ideas out-compete the weaker ideas; right now the only way to get experimental ideas adopted is to work for the government's favourite think-tank or to sit next to Jenrick at a fundraiser). The danger is duplication of competences, but that can be guarded against.
STV elections for a reduced Westminster, regional parliaments, replace the Lords with some kind of revisory upper chamber. You probably want it to be free of old hack politicians, leaders' patronage, and vested interests, but to also rectify whatever imbalances come out of the federal system, so I'd be happy to wait 20 or 30 years before writing its statute, and just have a body constituted by sortition in the meantime.
Won't happen though.
Agree, but nobody in this country wants regions.
I do have another plan to deal with this, but PBers desperate to hear this New Zealander’s masterly carve up of English local authority boundaries will have to wait - I need to get some shut-eye.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
I do have another plan to deal with this, but PBers desperate to hear this New Zealander’s masterly carve up of English local authority boundaries will have to wait - I need to get some shut-eye.
Brilliant plans to improve governance and shut-eye tend to go hand-in-hand, alas.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
I’m not opposed to non-contiguity.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
I'm not aware of anyone who objects and I think switching back half a century later would lead to just as much if not more resentment now.
Warrington is a big fish in a nice pond in Cheshire. Chester may be the capital of Cheshire, but Warrington is by far the biggest town in the county. Lancashire OTOH . . . I see nothing to be gained with us switching away from Cheshire, Runcorn, Sandbach etc which are all much closer to us and being foisted back into Lancashire now.
Warrington as a town has more population than any of the cities or towns in Lancashire but is quite distant from most of the cities and towns there now, it just seems illogical to me. Warrington's too small to be a metro area by miles, but too big and too distant to be a borough of Lancashire.
I actually think the existing settlement works quite well for Warrington as a unitary authority. The town is able to adjust to whatever the larger neighbours of Liverpool or Manchester do (and they inevitably matter far more than either Lancs or Cheshire), while still controlling its own actions and being big enough to make its own decisions.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Wigan. We've got an identity. Not Manc. Not Scouse. A little buffer State. The only Cavalier borough in Parliamentarian Lancashire. Orwell wrote a book with us in the title. Pit Brow Lasses porn. 23 RL Championships. An FA Cup win. First hippy free festival. Wigan Casino. Wigan bounce techno. Leigh even voted Tory to get away from us.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Of course it would
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
I’m not opposed to non-contiguity.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
I'm not aware of anyone who objects and I think switching back half a century later would lead to just as much if not more resentment now.
Warrington is a big fish in a nice pond in Cheshire. Chester may be the capital of Cheshire, but Warrington is by far the biggest town in the county. Lancashire OTOH . . . I see nothing to be gained with us switching away from Cheshire, Runcorn, Sandbach etc which are all much closer to us and being foisted back into Lancashire now.
Warrington as a town has more population than any of the cities or towns in Lancashire but is quite distant from most of the cities and towns there now, it just seems illogical to me. Warrington's too small to be a metro area by miles, but too big and too distant to be a borough of Lancashire.
I actually think the existing settlement works quite well for Warrington as a unitary authority. The town is able to adjust to whatever the larger neighbours of Liverpool or Manchester do (and they inevitably matter far more than either Lancs or Cheshire), while still controlling its own actions and being big enough to make its own decisions.
You can put "No Championship since 1955. It's always our Year" proudly on your boundary signs.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
Or to put it another way I can't see anyone arguing for a south Yorkshire county council to sit above Don, Roth, Barnsley, Sheffield...
So you're not yearning for the proposed 'Sheffield City Region' which was to include Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Derbyshire Dales, High Peak, North-East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Bolsover and Bassetlaw ?
Most people in High Peak and Derbyshire Dales would be less than keen on that arrangement... We're nothing to do with Sheffield!
Wigan. We've got an identity. Not Manc. Not Scouse. A little buffer State. The only Cavalier borough in Parliamentarian Lancashire. Orwell wrote a book with us in the title. Pit Brow Lasses porn. 23 RL Championships. An FA Cup win. First hippy free festival. Wigan Casino. Wigan bounce techno. Leigh even voted Tory to get away from us.
You’ve convinced me.
And according to commuter patterns, neither Wigan or St Helens have much to do with their neighbouring metros.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Of course it would
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
Metro areas exist whether you formalise them or not.
Wigan. We've got an identity. Not Manc. Not Scouse. A little buffer State. The only Cavalier borough in Parliamentarian Lancashire. Orwell wrote a book with us in the title. Pit Brow Lasses porn. 23 RL Championships. An FA Cup win. First hippy free festival. Wigan Casino. Wigan bounce techno. Leigh even voted Tory to get away from us.
You’ve convinced me.
And according to commuter patterns, neither Wigan or St Helens have much to do with their neighbouring metros.
You’ve been wrongly appropriated.
Long story cut short, there is no way to cut up england into neat sections where a sizable proportion of people are going to shout "Oi gardenwalker, while we respect your attempts at reforming our democracy just no not like that"
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Of course it would
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
If you can find me a real life example of your mathematical theory then let’s debate. Metros tend to be...populous...and if anything underrepresented.
But yes, I am trying to promote some of the prosperity that London has had over the past quarter-century.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
I’m not opposed to non-contiguity.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
I'm not aware of anyone who objects and I think switching back half a century later would lead to just as much if not more resentment now.
Warrington is a big fish in a nice pond in Cheshire. Chester may be the capital of Cheshire, but Warrington is by far the biggest town in the county. Lancashire OTOH . . . I see nothing to be gained with us switching away from Cheshire, Runcorn, Sandbach etc which are all much closer to us and being foisted back into Lancashire now.
Warrington as a town has more population than any of the cities or towns in Lancashire but is quite distant from most of the cities and towns there now, it just seems illogical to me. Warrington's too small to be a metro area by miles, but too big and too distant to be a borough of Lancashire.
I actually think the existing settlement works quite well for Warrington as a unitary authority. The town is able to adjust to whatever the larger neighbours of Liverpool or Manchester do (and they inevitably matter far more than either Lancs or Cheshire), while still controlling its own actions and being big enough to make its own decisions.
You can put "No Championship since 1955. It's always our Year" proudly on your boundary signs.
Championship, is that a thing? Only the Challenge Cup exists, don't you know? 😉
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Of course it would
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
If you can find me a real life example of your mathematical theory then let’s debate. Metros tend to be...populous...and if anything underrepresented.
But yes, I am trying to promote some of the prosperity that London has had over the past quarter-century.
Metro's are currently over populated lets see how it looks in a couple of years now people are in a position not to live in soul searing rabbit hutch poverty. People like me fleeing the metropoli because we were only ever living there because we had to in order to get work and cant wait to get away.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Of course it would
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
If you can find me a real life example of your mathematical theory then let’s debate. Metros tend to be...populous...and if anything underrepresented.
But yes, I am trying to promote some of the prosperity that London has had over the past quarter-century.
Metro's are currently over populated lets see how it looks in a couple of years now people are in a position not to live in soul searing rabbit hutch poverty. People like me fleeing the metropoli because we were only ever living there because we had to in order to get work and cant wait to get away.
Not everyone can work remotely and cities are still where most of the jobs are.
England is too big to have a single parliament, and not just on the grounds of Prussian-style dominance. It also misses the point of regional government: a layer of government that is a little closer to the people, with regional responsibilities and focus, something that has been lacking from the UK for too long.
It's not difficult to divide England into 10 or 15 regions, each with a population akin to Wales or Scotland, and to base them around major cities as a focus. You also get extra benefits: some added resilience (regions can step in for central government in an emergency), and the experimentation that comes from genuinely accountable local power (new political ideas can get rolled out at region level, where you hope the better ideas out-compete the weaker ideas; right now the only way to get experimental ideas adopted is to work for the government's favourite think-tank or to sit next to Jenrick at a fundraiser). The danger is duplication of competences, but that can be guarded against.
STV elections for a reduced Westminster, regional parliaments, replace the Lords with some kind of revisory upper chamber. You probably want it to be free of old hack politicians, leaders' patronage, and vested interests, but to also rectify whatever imbalances come out of the federal system, so I'd be happy to wait 20 or 30 years before writing its statute, and just have a body constituted by sortition in the meantime.
Won't happen though.
Agree, but nobody in this country wants regions.
I do have another plan to deal with this, but PBers desperate to hear this New Zealander’s masterly carve up of English local authority boundaries will have to wait - I need to get some shut-eye.
The existing regions seem to me to be quite good.
The two English Parliaments idea is interesting. Do we put one of the in Norwich or Carlisle? Or go for Winchester and York? And London can sod off.
Have powerful metropolitan authorities around the eight major English core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham, and use the traditional counties for everywhere else. And name the big metros after the city: Greater Newcastle, Greater Birmingham. Not Tyne & Wear, West Midlands and the like.
Impose it, and get it done.
According to my incredibly geeky analysis, you’d probably want to do this for 17 metros.
And since people seem to be passionate about these things, I’d try to go for portmanteau names to avoid controversy.
For example, “Birmingham & the Black Country”.
Right, we're getting somewhere here. Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
No. Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
They tried a name revolution in 1973.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Well here we see where a conversation between a lot of nerds on the internet runs up against reality. It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
Yet as @Gallowgate says, the Manchester brand is powerful and as far as I know Burnham is quite popular.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
It's Wiganer. And that's me and Foxy. But another one is most welcome. Ancient and Loyal.
Did you ever go to the Casino?
So devon cornwall and somerset dont get represented then unless you are joining us into greater bristol and we dont want anything to do with those scumbuckets. Bad enough dealing with devonians and those from somerset
No.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Well cant say I am convinced. Metros should not be separate why not just have counties where states would be in the us. It places too much importance on urban dwellers and makes them seem important
They make all the money. And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
Of course it would
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
If you can find me a real life example of your mathematical theory then let’s debate. Metros tend to be...populous...and if anything underrepresented.
But yes, I am trying to promote some of the prosperity that London has had over the past quarter-century.
Metro's are currently over populated lets see how it looks in a couple of years now people are in a position not to live in soul searing rabbit hutch poverty. People like me fleeing the metropoli because we were only ever living there because we had to in order to get work and cant wait to get away.
Not everyone can work remotely and cities are still where most of the jobs are.
I didn't say they could, it is however wrong to assert its where people want to be. I moved to the south east in 87 to find work. Of the original group of friends I met still ten of us still talking. None came from the south east, all came for work. All would move away if we could. One did two years ago after being allowed to work from home full time, I am in june. The others are jealous. By friends I am only including those I spend 8 hours a week with or more.
We are all trapped because employment not because we want to live here. I would have moved a lot earlier but jobs I could get outside the southeast always wanted to pay me half what I am earning here without a 50% reduction in living costs
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
I’m not opposed to non-contiguity.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
I'm not aware of anyone who objects and I think switching back half a century later would lead to just as much if not more resentment now.
Warrington is a big fish in a nice pond in Cheshire. Chester may be the capital of Cheshire, but Warrington is by far the biggest town in the county. Lancashire OTOH . . . I see nothing to be gained with us switching away from Cheshire, Runcorn, Sandbach etc which are all much closer to us and being foisted back into Lancashire now.
Warrington as a town has more population than any of the cities or towns in Lancashire but is quite distant from most of the cities and towns there now, it just seems illogical to me. Warrington's too small to be a metro area by miles, but too big and too distant to be a borough of Lancashire.
I actually think the existing settlement works quite well for Warrington as a unitary authority. The town is able to adjust to whatever the larger neighbours of Liverpool or Manchester do (and they inevitably matter far more than either Lancs or Cheshire), while still controlling its own actions and being big enough to make its own decisions.
You can put "No Championship since 1955. It's always our Year" proudly on your boundary signs.
Championship, is that a thing? Only the Challenge Cup exists, don't you know? 😉
Warrington and Wigan. And possibly St Helens and Bolton too are not Manc or Scouse really. They are summat else. People have an instinctive sense of place. Which they take pride in. Even if an outsider thinks it is illogical or bizarre. Does the accent change East to West in Warrington? It does in Wigan.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
Or to put it another way I can't see anyone arguing for a south Yorkshire county council to sit above Don, Roth, Barnsley, Sheffield...
So you're not yearning for the proposed 'Sheffield City Region' which was to include Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Derbyshire Dales, High Peak, North-East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Bolsover and Bassetlaw ?
Most people in High Peak and Derbyshire Dales would be less than keen on that arrangement... We're nothing to do with Sheffield!
POSTCODES !!!
And you get to wee in their water supply. Whilst humming the Dambusters March.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
Or to put it another way I can't see anyone arguing for a south Yorkshire county council to sit above Don, Roth, Barnsley, Sheffield...
So you're not yearning for the proposed 'Sheffield City Region' which was to include Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Derbyshire Dales, High Peak, North-East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Bolsover and Bassetlaw ?
Most people in High Peak and Derbyshire Dales would be less than keen on that arrangement... We're nothing to do with Sheffield!
POSTCODES !!!
And you get to wee in their water supply.
Precisely most of us have a deep abiding root in home, we want to go back, we prefer to live there. Sometimes circumstances force us to move elsewhere for employment.
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London 2. Greater Manchester 3. Birmingham & the Black Country 4. Leeds & Bradford 5. Greater Liverpool 6. Greater Newcastle 7. Nottingham & Derby 8. Southampton & Portsmouth 9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire 10. Greater Bristol 11. Greater Brighton 12. Bournemouth & Poole 13. Tees Valley 14. Southend & Thames Estuary 15. Medway Towns 16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
What would you do with towns like Warrington, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester but not a part of either. Would you foist them into one of the Greater Metro areas, or not?
No.
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Lancashire? Been Cheshire all my life, I know it used to be Lancashire a long time ago but it seems weird to revert away from Cheshire, why would you do that?
Cos it’s my plan, not yours. Come up with your own.
Not objecting, just curious why you'd switch counties. Warrington isn't contiguous with any of modern day Lancashire, since Greater Manchester and "Greater Liverpool" to the North are contiguous with each other. So would you be breaking up either of Liverpool or Manchester to feed into Lancashire too, or just having Warrington as a non-contiguous adjunct of Lancashire?
I’m not opposed to non-contiguity.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
I'm not aware of anyone who objects and I think switching back half a century later would lead to just as much if not more resentment now.
Warrington is a big fish in a nice pond in Cheshire. Chester may be the capital of Cheshire, but Warrington is by far the biggest town in the county. Lancashire OTOH . . . I see nothing to be gained with us switching away from Cheshire, Runcorn, Sandbach etc which are all much closer to us and being foisted back into Lancashire now.
Warrington as a town has more population than any of the cities or towns in Lancashire but is quite distant from most of the cities and towns there now, it just seems illogical to me. Warrington's too small to be a metro area by miles, but too big and too distant to be a borough of Lancashire.
I actually think the existing settlement works quite well for Warrington as a unitary authority. The town is able to adjust to whatever the larger neighbours of Liverpool or Manchester do (and they inevitably matter far more than either Lancs or Cheshire), while still controlling its own actions and being big enough to make its own decisions.
You can put "No Championship since 1955. It's always our Year" proudly on your boundary signs.
Championship, is that a thing? Only the Challenge Cup exists, don't you know? 😉
Warrington and Wigan. And possibly St Helens and Bolton too are not Manc or Scouse really. They are summat else. People have an instinctive sense of place. Which they take pride in. Even if an outsider thinks it is illogical or bizarre. Does the accent change East to West in Warrington? It does in Wigan.
A little but not as much as it does between eg west Warrington and Widnes. A mile down the road and you get definitely Scouse accent in Widnes, but not in Warrington. It is amusing how suddenly it changes.
I think Warrington is more of a melting pot accent as our population has grown a lot in recent decades as people can live here and work in either Manchester or Liverpool, while adopting the local identity.
Helps that the local identity is entirely about the Rugby and not footy. So someone moving here not especially previously into Rugby can keep their old football club and support the local Rugby team.
The reason to stay in the union is that we have a shared history, common ties, and we are stronger (in the world) and wealthier (as a single market) together.
England and Scotland are brothers.
The problem for Unionists to solve is how to reinforce and institutionalise a fraternal, rather than paternalistic, relationship.
TSE's proposals are sensible (with my amendment). A powerful, Federal Upper House, like the US Senate. Two Lords sent from each UK county.
It means W, S and NI will be seriously over-represented, compared to E, but that is necessary to secure them in a union where England, by dint of size, will always appear overbearing (and can never be out-voted in the Commons)
With devolved assemblies, as well, that is as far as England can go to make the UK work, without disenfranchising the English themselves
If it's not enough, then let Scotland Wales and NI vote on indy and let them Stay or Go, and if they Stay, then let there be no more constitutional wankery or plebiscites for 30 years, minimum
Something like this, yes.
Another radical idea. With Westminster out of action for refurbishment, why not sent the Parliament to Edinburgh?
It is essentially, the second capital, after all.
Yes, we now see that MPs and Lords can speak and vote remotely. So, make the parliament mobile. Esp the new House of Lords (and of course we ditch the dukes and bishops).
Some "Lords" may prefer to travel and attend personally. Some may do it via Zoom. But let the Lords move from London, to Edinburgh, to Belfast to Cardiff. Each season. Or each year. Or every election. Why not?
Creative thinking is required. We have just endured a plague, and Brexit. This is the moment to reset things.
By the way, under your suggestion a population of just 7,000 people (and even fewer electors) in Cromartyshire would be entitled to two members of the HoL.
The same as Yorkshire, with over 5m people.
But I like the general sentiment.
As an Englishman I am Ok with that, because I accept the Scottish have a valid grievance: that the huge relative size of England, compared to the other home nations, means England can never be over-ruled in the Commons, and England generally gets the government it wants, electorally
This would address that.
It's just following the logic of the Founding Fathers who realised that to create a stable American union, they needed to give each state equal dignity and sway, whatever the populations (which might change)
It worked in America, which, despite huge problems, has endured for nearly 250 years, becoming the most powerful nation in human history, even as it is now surpassed by China
Let's reimport the native British wisdom of those Founding Fathers, and apply it to the UK
If there had only been four colonies and one of them was six times the size of all the others combined, then the constitutional convention might not necessarily have arrived at exactly the same solution.
Perhaps you might like to offer your creative solutions, then?
If it consists of throwing your hands in the air, rending your garments, gnashing your teeth, and saying "the union is doomed, DOOMED!" then, with all due respect, you've said that about 97 times so you REALLY don't need to say it again
I have. You create a federal system, which necessitates an English Parliament.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work. I don't think that it would, but then again my central argument is that it would probably be for the best that it didn't work, because the Union now exists primarily because of the flow of transfer payments. Nevertheless, it would be a vast improvement on the current mess that Labour created with lop-sided devolution, and which the Conservatives have completely failed to put right.
There is not really a need to create a new senate. Big foreign policy and defence decisions could be voted upon by a 'Council of the Isles' upon which sit the leaders from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and (I think) London. In the absence of an England First Minister, I suppose you'd get English MP's to elect somebody. England would in effect have two representatives, but they would not always agree - London often takes a different view. Again, per person England would be greatly underrepresented, but like Leon I think it would be worth it.
For me, this change wouldn't be a 'sacrifice we have to make to hang on' to the Union - I think it would actually be a big improvement in the way we make these decisions. Royal prerogative gives the PM a huge responsibility, and in a world with many outside pressures and influences, focused on a single person, I actually think it helps strengthen the UK and its Governance to have a broader-based decision making process. I think the nations would help us make better decisions.
With respect, you’re all trying to solve the wrong problem. The Union only works if everyone accepts each person gets one vote. Scotland doesn’t get “outvoted”; the vote of each Scot counts the same as each Englishman. As soon as you think in terms of constituent nations and think of them having a view, the whole point of the Union is gone.
This is, of course, why I understand where Scots Nats come from and why I might be one if I was Scottish. I did vote for Brexit after all.
That's how the UK used to work but the cat is out of the bag with devolution now and it's not going back in.
If England can always outvote Scotland due to population then devolution itself is worthless.
Ergo the answer is proper federalism where England cannot outvote Scotland, or the end of the union, in my opinion.
We've never had a proper balanced constitution in the history of the UK. But the post-1997 arrangements are definitely more unbalanced than what was there before.
But 'proper federalism' would be more unbalanced still.
The concept of splitting England into bits to balance out the population imbalance was not - constitutionally - stupid, but was wildly unpopular. But maybe that was because the bits were too large. Maybe if devolution was not to national bodies but to counties - of all nations - it might work.
That does, of course, mean you have to repoen the can of worms of what everyone's favourite idea of a county boundary is. But I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that, as long as we agreed that was the last time for a few hundred years.
I was looking into this the other day.
I presume you are happy to maintain the metros like London and Manchester rather than see the return of, say, Middlesex.
By my reckoning there’s not really any obstacle to devolving (in England) to 38* historic counties and 17 metros.
55 sub-units in total.
*ie the historic 39 minus Middlesex.
There are 36 metropolitan boroughs in England.
In my model, London, Manchester etc are metros, ie Tier 2 authorities.
I think you are talking about Tier 3 authorities.
Personally I'd scrap two tier - 100% unitaries/metros
You could. But you’d be fucking the economy.
One of the reasons for British poor productivity is an inability for metros outside London (and even to some extent London) to organise themselves properly for growth.
Wait what having two Nottinghamshire/Bassetlaw councils improves our economy compared to Doncaster & Rotherham single councils a few hundred yards north and west of me ?!
Or to put it another way I can't see anyone arguing for a south Yorkshire county council to sit above Don, Roth, Barnsley, Sheffield...
So you're not yearning for the proposed 'Sheffield City Region' which was to include Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Derbyshire Dales, High Peak, North-East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Bolsover and Bassetlaw ?
Most people in High Peak and Derbyshire Dales would be less than keen on that arrangement... We're nothing to do with Sheffield!
POSTCODES !!!
And you get to wee in their water supply. Whilst humming the Dambusters March.
Pedantry: Ladybower is Severn Trent and mostly supplies Derby and other points south. Sheffield's supply is mostly from reservoirs in South Yorkshire.
Of course there will be mutations. And of course we'll need boosters.
But this falls squarely into the 'step function fallacy' category. Yes, these variants will make vaccines less effective. But this is like with influenza. It's hard for the virus to overwhelm healthcare systems in a world where everyone has at least some protection. And therefore keeping on top of mutations is that little bit easier.
And every year we take the boosters, we close down another avenue for mutation.
Hardly unexpected. The public is being conditioned/manipulated as always. The message is put out there through multiple channels that vaccine passports will allow a far more extensive and rapid unlocking of social activity than would otherwise be possible. Once this underlying premise is firmly established in the public mind and unchallengeable fact, the specific proposals follow. “Civil liberties” concerns are easily brushed aside by pointing out that the limit on social activity (to which vaccine passports are the “solution”) is the true restriction on individual freedom.
The basic premise (that the passports are actually a necessary step to allow social mixing) goes largely unchallenged. Because if the govt determines that the two should be linked then it is so. The counter argument that herd immunity should provide sufficient protection in a mass vaccinated population goes unmentioned. Little is said about all the social venues where such passports would be impractical. The financial burdens on all hospitality venues ensuring that all entrances are staffed to ensure compliance on entry glossed over.
That the Govt are pushing this increasingly vocally should be a warning to those who think that the intention isn’t that this should become a de facto compulsory scheme, not a voluntary “opt-in” for private businesses taking purely business decisions depending on the perceived wishes of their customer base. But because the difficulties of enforcement are so obvious and costly we know the Govt playbook. We’ve seen it over the last year. Fines. Massive, disproportionate fines.
Every business that takes a chance of leaving an entrance unguarded. Every individual who, finding they’ve left their phone/passport at home but decides to sneak into a pub for a quick pint. All are simply asked the question by the Government. Do you feel lucky, punk?
Comments
I thought that idea was dead.
It’s conceivable that inadvertent intravenous injection might be more likely to cause problems, but for obvious reasons this hasn’t been tested.
If we devolved more - a LOT more - than then be enough “stuff” to go around.
I mean, I am not aware that Schleswig-Holstein or even Bavaria has an input into German Defence policy.
Can we come up with some more creative names though - ones which neither claim to be the historical county (so no 'Lancashire' which excludes Wigan, St. Helens, etc.) nor named after an overweeing and resented large city (so no 'Greater Manchester'), nor geographically inaccurate, nor named after rivers (so no 'Avon'). When the French had a fundamental reorganisation, what - 100 years ago? - they did it quite well apart from giving out for too many dull named-after-rivers - the equivalent of dozens of Tyne and Wears.
My solution to names is the service station solution - name places after places so tiny that no-one could possibly take any offence. You have to pick places with good names though, as the civil servants responsible for naming service stations undoubtedly did.
I suppose it might be the one thing that unites Retford and Worksop.
You'd be better off asking for the Doncaster border to be pushed a mile southward.
For example, how much does the Danish government do for Greenland?
Fortunately there are no West Mids councillors...
Too artificial.
If you don’t like a Lancashire County Council that doesn’t include Wigan...how about a Lancashire *Districts* Council?
So Cliveden, Hever, etc could all be suitable candidates
However wasn't Sutton Coldfield always in Warwickshire?
Support rises to 70% once the vaccination programme has been completed.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/articles-reports/2021/03/05/britons-support-covid-19-vaccine-passport-system
Next for the brexiters he is the two faced jan us who wanted constructive ambiguity, also known as riding two horses.
For those in the middle whilst he has been mainly supportive during th pandemic , he has had to pander to those who think he should be putting the boot in. The can come across as being right with hindsight and also dishonest in a way, as people know difficult decisions were made to the best information available.
I think it's wrong to call him creepy, although scheming smarmy lawyer is pretty close. By contrast I don't think Boris is that focused on lying. I think he wants to tell people what they want to hear and be liked. He reminds me of a drunk acquaintance on a night out who chats up the most attractive woman in the bar, tells some great stories, and borrows money off you which you will never see again.
The power would, fundamentally, be exercised by the Council of Ministers - so the whole construct would function de facto as an association of separate allied states rather than a nation state in the traditional sense - and with everything decided by unanimity rather than QMV at that. Two things: (1) The UK would effectively no longer exist as a functioning country, so what would be the point in bothering; and (2) The veto power would induce complete paralysis. What likelihood would there be of, for arguments sake, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Welsh Labour and the English Tories agreeing on anything?
Best just to get rid and be done with it.
Branding is very important.
That said, to put it crudely, the Lib Dems are a sub-10% party at the moment. 34% is a vast improvement
Each metro is a Tier 2 authority, and each would contain Tier 3 boroughs underneath.
1. Greater London
2. Greater Manchester
3. Birmingham & the Black Country
4. Leeds & Bradford
5. Greater Liverpool
6. Greater Newcastle
7. Nottingham & Derby
8. Southampton & Portsmouth
9. Sheffield & South Yorkshire
10. Greater Bristol
11. Greater Brighton
12. Bournemouth & Poole
13. Tees Valley
14. Southend & Thames Estuary
15. Medway Towns
16. Blackpool & the Fylde
I am in two minds about a 17th - “Stoke & Newcastle”.
Leicester, Sunderland, Preston, Coventry, Reading, Plymouth, Luton and Hull would stay with their parent counties.
At the very least the City of Newcastle should absorb North Tyneside in my opinion.
And if you have Nottingham, why leave out Leicester, which is as large.
With a fetching orange and white livery.
I have not proposed that individual nations have a 'veto' power - I shouldn't have mentioned vetos, all I meant was that it's not uncommon for nations of vastly different sizes to exercise similar voting weights. Voting would be a simple majority vote.
UK Government proposes entering into a new Treaty
Voted on by:
England
London
Scotland
Wales
NI
Or
UK
England
Scotland
Wales
NI
Majority vote carries the day.
If we go with solution 2, the UK Government needs to win the support of two of the home nations to get its treaty through. If a treaty is so unpopular that it is opposed by three home nations out of four, what business has the UK Government entering into it in the first place?
Images of drunk foreign tourists shouting in the streets and police raiding illegal parties in Madrid at a time when locals are not allowed to travel between Spain’s regions have left many Spaniards up in arms, AFP reports.
Spanish TV on Monday aired a video of officers smashing the windows of an apartment over the weekend to dislodge occupants holding a party that violated virus restrictions.
The fact that several of the partygoers were reportedly foreigners fuelled resentment over the seemingly haphazard nature of travel restrictions in Europe during the pandemic, with many Spaniards taking to social media to vent their anger.
While Spaniards are not allowed to leave their own regions until 9 April to avoid a resurgence of coronavirus infections over Holy Week, similar restrictions do not apply to international tourists, who can still fly into Spain on presentation of a negative Covid test.
And with its 11pm curfew and bars and restaurants open, Madrid has drawn scores of visitors from countries under tighter lockdowns.
I wonder which countries.
But effectively, they are suburbs of Blackpool and the people there commute into Blackpool. They should contribute to a Blackpool tax base.
And it fell flat on its Rs.
Gosforth got over it.
Can’t be helped.
...
I would have Warrington as a Borough of Lancashire.
Salwick and Clifton are full on suburbs of Preston.
It really is a combined Southampton and Portsmouth metropolitan area, rather than “a single city”.
Hence I use both names, not “Solent City” or some such.
OR turn Warrington into a metro, with two boroughs - one Lancs flavoured, one Cheshire flavoured.
It's fund to discuss (anyone else here been wrestling with this problem since their teenage years? Thought so) and fun to play carve-up-the-country but whatever you propose is going to run up against far more opposition than support. It's bascially an insoluble problem.
Still fairly sure Andy Burnham isn't the answer though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-poCVhV5-yY
This, basically:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_Urban_Area
Newcastle is far too small.
Ponteland should be a penal colony where all Asbos are re-housed.
Are you an aggrieved Wiganite?
Come up with your own.
Them Fisher folk have had their fill of grief I guess.
Ancient and Loyal.
It's not difficult to divide England into 10 or 15 regions, each with a population akin to Wales or Scotland, and to base them around major cities as a focus. You also get extra benefits: some added resilience (regions can step in for central government in an emergency), and the experimentation that comes from genuinely accountable local power (new political ideas can get rolled out at region level, where you hope the better ideas out-compete the weaker ideas; right now the only way to get experimental ideas adopted is to work for the government's favourite think-tank or to sit next to Jenrick at a fundraiser). The danger is duplication of competences, but that can be guarded against.
STV elections for a reduced Westminster, regional parliaments, replace the Lords with some kind of revisory upper chamber. You probably want it to be free of old hack politicians, leaders' patronage, and vested interests, but to also rectify whatever imbalances come out of the federal system, so I'd be happy to wait 20 or 30 years before writing its statute, and just have a body constituted by sortition in the meantime.
Won't happen though.
Also, if Wigan reverted to Lancashire, as some on here might suggest?, then it would become contiguous I think.
I don’t know Warrington terribly well - have only been a few times - but generally I’ve found that some people STILL resent having their counties swapped in the great 70s carve-up.
Still, at least your planning system wasn't corrupt. I assume.
The Mersey though is the ancient boundary of Mercia.
Indeed. It gives it its name.
I do have another plan to deal with this, but PBers desperate to hear this New Zealander’s masterly carve up of English local authority boundaries will have to wait - I need to get some shut-eye.
My plan is for 38 counties and 16 (or 17) metros.
Cornwall, Devon and Somerset are all counties.
Warrington is a big fish in a nice pond in Cheshire. Chester may be the capital of Cheshire, but Warrington is by far the biggest town in the county. Lancashire OTOH . . . I see nothing to be gained with us switching away from Cheshire, Runcorn, Sandbach etc which are all much closer to us and being foisted back into Lancashire now.
Warrington as a town has more population than any of the cities or towns in Lancashire but is quite distant from most of the cities and towns there now, it just seems illogical to me. Warrington's too small to be a metro area by miles, but too big and too distant to be a borough of Lancashire.
I actually think the existing settlement works quite well for Warrington as a unitary authority. The town is able to adjust to whatever the larger neighbours of Liverpool or Manchester do (and they inevitably matter far more than either Lancs or Cheshire), while still controlling its own actions and being big enough to make its own decisions.
And if you live in Cornwall it wouldn’t affect you at all.
The only Cavalier borough in Parliamentarian Lancashire. Orwell wrote a book with us in the title. Pit Brow Lasses porn. 23 RL Championships. An FA Cup win. First hippy free festival. Wigan Casino. Wigan bounce techno. Leigh even voted Tory to get away from us.
County x has z inhabitants it also happens to contain metro area y
County a also has z inhabitants it contains no metro areas
County x therefore has twice the representataion of county a even though number of people is the same.
All metro areas do is cement power in the hands of cities when we are possibly about to rebalance from city life. Instead of merely london being an issue you are trying to create 17 londons
And according to commuter patterns, neither Wigan or St Helens have much to do with their neighbouring metros.
You’ve been wrongly appropriated.
But yes, I am trying to promote some of the prosperity that London has had over the past quarter-century.
The two English Parliaments idea is interesting. Do we put one of the in Norwich or Carlisle? Or go for Winchester and York? And London can sod off.
We are all trapped because employment not because we want to live here. I would have moved a lot earlier but jobs I could get outside the southeast always wanted to pay me half what I am earning here without a 50% reduction in living costs
But then we found out how much Nats know about life outside when Mhairi Black blew in from cloud cuckoo land to Westminster.
https://twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1375843051457888260
They are summat else.
People have an instinctive sense of place. Which they take pride in. Even if an outsider thinks it is illogical or bizarre.
Does the accent change East to West in Warrington? It does in Wigan.
And you get to wee in their water supply. Whilst humming the Dambusters March.
I think Warrington is more of a melting pot accent as our population has grown a lot in recent decades as people can live here and work in either Manchester or Liverpool, while adopting the local identity.
Helps that the local identity is entirely about the Rugby and not footy. So someone moving here not especially previously into Rugby can keep their old football club and support the local Rugby team.
Survey of experts in relevant fields concludes that new variants could arise in countries with low vaccine coverage"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/new-covid-vaccines-needed-within-year-say-scientists
But this falls squarely into the 'step function fallacy' category. Yes, these variants will make vaccines less effective. But this is like with influenza. It's hard for the virus to overwhelm healthcare systems in a world where everyone has at least some protection. And therefore keeping on top of mutations is that little bit easier.
And every year we take the boosters, we close down another avenue for mutation.
This is a battle humanity is winning.
The basic premise (that the passports are actually a necessary step to allow social mixing) goes largely unchallenged. Because if the govt determines that the two should be linked then it is so. The counter argument that herd immunity should provide sufficient protection in a mass vaccinated population goes unmentioned. Little is said about all the social venues where such passports would be impractical. The financial burdens on all hospitality venues ensuring that all entrances are staffed to ensure compliance on entry glossed over.
That the Govt are pushing this increasingly vocally should be a warning to those who think that the intention isn’t that this should become a de facto compulsory scheme, not a voluntary “opt-in” for private businesses taking purely business decisions depending on the perceived wishes of their customer base. But because the difficulties of enforcement are so obvious and costly we know the Govt playbook. We’ve seen it over the last year. Fines. Massive, disproportionate fines.
Every business that takes a chance of leaving an entrance unguarded. Every individual who, finding they’ve left their phone/passport at home but decides to sneak into a pub for a quick pint. All are simply asked the question by the Government. Do you feel lucky, punk?