Brown and Out

Simon Lee on Gordon Brown in the Yorkshire Post:

The champion of the British Way and New Unionism, who feared an English nationalist backlash against Labour's failure to redress both the fiscal iniquities of the Barnett Formula and the democratic deficit of the West Lothian Question, has been undone instead by the fruits of devolution to Scotland, for which he campaigned so ardently. The principal reasons for the defeat go to the very heart of the New Labour project developed by Blair, Brown, Peter Mandelson, Philip Gould and Alastair Campbell in the mid-1990s.

It is, of course, impossible to say what part English nationalism played in Brown's downfall because no credible English nationalist party stood in Crewe and Nantwich, Henley or the London mayoral election. So we'll chalk this one up as a victory for the Scottish Nationalism and a success for English nationalists, given that both groups are opposed to Brown's "New Unionism".

It will be interesting to see whether Brown's New Unionism dies with him, or whether the anglophobic baton is passed seemlessly to Miliband, Straw or Harman. My guess is that the removal of the Scottish Raj will focus Labour's attentions on England and perhaps pave the way for a cross-party unionist damage-limitation exercise.

Old school Establishment thinkers like Geoffery Wheatcroft, who today claimed that "No one wants an English parliament", are woefully out of touch with public opinion. They need to get with it, and fast, if they are to save the crumbling edifice of Britain.

Last week the London Standard carried a story claiming that there would be a British football team, composed entirely of English players, at the 2012 London Olympics. The band plays on as the Titanic goes down. Sport imitates politics. If the most watched event of the London Olympics is a load of overpaid arrogant Englishmen running around as a British team because the rest of the Isles refuses to join them, well...It sounds to me very much like the next Conservative Government.