Cllr. Gavin Ayling

I believe England should have its own parliament. I believe this without prejudice to the way England’s legislature would be set up and without expectations about the party or political wing that would run the country.

I am a Conservative and also a social libertarian and economic free market supporter. I don’t agree with George W Bush’s social policies and I especially do not agree with his attitude to science. Equally, I don’t agree with the social governance of Margaret Thatcher and John Major - I believe that anyone should be allowed to do anything so long as it does not hurt anyone else either physically or financially. That’s a rather brief statement but I am sure as I post in the future, this will be embelished so that you understand that cruelty to animals is not acceptable to me and etc.

With this in mind, I have an additional optimistic reason for eagerly anticipating an England ruled by the English. My feeling from visits to Wales and Scotland is that the people of those countries have a different political ideology. For all the damage it is doing to Scotland, they are still happy with their Lib/Lab coalition in the Scottish Parliament.

I know that ideologies do not encompass sufficient numbers of people in any country that they can be supported by a political party and that be enough for them to be elected - this is why the Conservatives embrace Ken Clarke and John Redwood under the same heading. Equally Labour has the Tony Blair’s of the world and the George Galloway’s (though obviously he is no longer in the party). As if to illustrate this for us, the Liberal Democrats don’t have a particularly “broad house” and so garner little support from the public.

I believe there are two types of right-wing and two types of left wing:

• The social left-wingers believe in freedom of the individual and, stupidly, positive discrimination.
• Economic left-wingers are protectionist at best and communist at worst. In other words, merit is of no consequence.
• The social right-wing believes in telling people how to live, censoring video tapes for adult consumption and telling people that homosexuality is wrong. These people tend to take their Christianity into their politics.
• The economic right-wingers believe in capitalist markets and low taxes at the less extreme, and a flat tax and sparce regulation with no social care at the most right-wing.

UPDATE: The political wings I have shown are explained in detail at the following site: click here.

None of the British major parties restrict themselves to any of the social or economic wings of ideological thought.

If the major parties have such wide ideological stomping grounds some of which don’t just overlap but positively conflict, we must assume that ideology is not the basis for the voting choice of the electorate. This is the unfortunate product of an electorate which votes on personality, whim and gut feeling. This is the best system there is, however, so we should be content with it.

The smaller the electorate, the more closely the general ideological will of the people will be reflected by those they elect. This might sound like an argument for the government’s ridiculous regions, but it is not. The smallest ideal electorate size is that which most closely reflects its electorate’s general ideology and which also contains a recognised unit of cultural unity. Drawing lines of separation would be almost impossible (and yet the Electoral Commission tries hard to keep elections fair while bearing this sort of thing in mind), but history and cultural inevitablility has given us nations within the United Kingdom which suit this requirement. I would not expect a single person in the south east of England to say, when asked, that they consider themselves to be ‘Southeastish’. The majority would describe themselves as English or British (you may get the rare person who describes themselves as European - but they’re in such a minority we can safely ignore them).

To clarify, the Campaign for an English Parliament does not support or endorse or hint at any of this - it is non-partisan and has purely English interests at heart. However, I believe England would govern itself far more effectively and with far more sympathy to the population’s beliefs than it does now. The late 20th century and early 21st century governance has given us half-measures and no brave, but sensible radicalism. Hopefully any party elected by the English would have a clearer mandate to make England a vibrant and competitive place to do business and so a wealthy, prosperous and safe place to live.