Cllr. Gavin Ayling

There is a fascinating debate on the TheyWorkForYou.com website here.

In it Alistair Darling argues himself into supporting an English Parliament. And here’s my proof:

In a response to Adam Afriyie, Darling says

Our constitutional settlement is currently asymmetrical, but the principle that there should be one class of MP that participates in all proceedings is sound.

Translation: English Votes on English Matters (EVoEM) is wrong but Scottish Devolution has caused an imbalance.

John Thurso asked

Does he further agree that the only logical answer to the West Lothian question is devolution for England, not the parliamentary gerrymandering of the party formerly known as Unionist?

The abridged full response from Darling

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. … The key principle is that we are all elected to the House of Commons in the same way and are all entitled to take part in all the proceedings and Divisions. Once that changes and there are two classes of MPs, there are profound constitutional consequences.

Translation: Devolution for England cannot take the form of EVoEM and devolution for England is the right solution.

What we have here is a Scottish Labour MP, making executive decisions in an area of policy which affects none of his constituents, eloquently making the case why, rightly, British MPs should represent Britain but also saying that this is unfair and that the English should be afforded democratic equality.

Blimey!

At sixteen I was immature. I’m not afraid of saying so… You could not have trusted me with responsibility and I wasn’t grown up enough, really, to work hard at my GCSEs.

Politically, the majority of people at age 16, or even 18, have not yet taken time to think about the running of the country. Sixteen year olds are thinking about girls the opposite sex, friends, school clubs and, even, A-levels. They are not thinking about whether a low tax economy is beneficial to economic growth; they don’t know what the EU does, but probably have some vague idea that it’s cool that you can drive from France to Belgium without having to change currency and stop at passport control.

And to be honest, no non-tax payer has any idea what the impact of having over a third of your money taken from you before you are paid it and having more taken through VAT, council tax, car tax, street parking fees, petrol duty, cigarette and alcohol duties, import duties (on goods purchased), oil prospecting duty (in the North Sea) and many, many more economy-stifling taxes is. The question, should sixteen year-olds be given the vote is a crazy one. Rather it should be, should we raise the voting age back to twenty-one?

It is a remarkable fact that people’s voting intentions change as they gain experience and as they mature. I would not mind betting that most BNP votes are made by people under twenty-one and that there are more Conservative votes made by people after they start earning reasonable wages. There are, obviously, potentially other contributory reasons for both these phenomena, but the question of maturity and experience is one that should not be ignored in this debate.

I added the poll on the right last night, but I haven’t voted yet — this post says my opinion!