The new Spectator blog has a guest posting by Tim Montgomery of Conservative Home. Tim makes an interesting observation on the blogsphere

Surely, the abolition of the regions would be the first choice/natural transition to an English Parliament? And EVOEL is definitely superior to the current setup? (Of course, I agree, as long as the other countries in the UK have their own parliaments, England should have one, but at the moment, there aren’t many votes in it for the Tories, yet.)

Ah well, I voted for Davis anyway…Not much anyone could do to change my mind…The more I heard from either of them the more I was convinced Davis was the one to vote for. Perhaps with the exception of the English Parliament, he has been rather constant about what he stands for. I feel that Cameron is rather Blair-like, all things to everyone…There’s something about him that just doesn’t feel right…

Regards,
James

The English Parliament question is fundamentally important just because it represents English constituent’s representation. At the moment we are not ruled by a democracy because MPs whose constituents will not be affected by their legislation are making and voting on laws that affect the English electorate. I understand there are bigger problems but maybe having a genuine democracy would correct some of those?

I didn’t base my choice of Cameron on the English parliament because, as you say, Cameron is certainly not offering more but this change of heart by Davis does show that he doesn’t stick to his convictions… He’ll do what he thinks he must to get elected. Promising a cut to Scottish tax payers seems completely at odds with his previous assertions.

Localism is absolutely a great idea. I think an English parliament would be well advised to give more power to County Councils but the localism that LibLab want us to stomach involves artificial regions whose sole purposes are to take powers from the democratically elected County Councils to ensure that the central government’s agenda is followed; and to weaken England as a political block which, if polls are to be believed, would be overwhelmingly Eurosceptic.

Which brings us nicely back to a complete failure by this (and the previous) government to provide genuine democracy – the European Commission.

Members of the CEP have to accept, for now, that the two leadership contenders are not yet on our side (though Davis’ non-commital does show that he could do another u-turn in the future). Aside from the dreamers, the EDP (which have some very non-Tory policies), no party is yet on message… so this leadership election is not changing anything.

My decision about who to vote for was made on other issues to this.

I used to be a firm supporter of the traditional union which meant no devolution. In recent times, however, I’ve started to look at the whole subject in a different way and now believe to keep the union we may need to go further with devolution (ie: localism – to the lowest level possible).

The reason I changed my mind over this is because I came to realise what we had is no longer acceptable to most of the public. They want decisions which affect their lives to be taken at a local level. They want to somehow be involved in that decision making process.

I am therefore, to an extent, disappointed by David Davis’ rejection of an English Parliament. Then again, is Cameron proposing anything better? At least Davis believes in localism and giving people more choice and more of a say.

I also do not believe this to be such an important issue as to base who you vote for on it. Yes, sorting out Labour’s constitutional mess is important, although it really is the least of our worries.

David Davis has ruled out an English Parliament if he gets into power.

Despite co-sponsoring a bill for an English Parliament a few years ago, he now supports the English Votes on English Matters farce that the Tories have come up with.