Jack Straw

Article for the English Democrats, October 2007.

As an academic, life has its delicious coincidences, especially for someone studying the politics of Englishness. I was recently re-reading AV Dicey’s classic book, England’s Case against Home Rule, first published in 1886 and I couldn’t believe my luck when I picked up the October edition of Prospect Magazine to find Jack Straw, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, arguing that pursuing ‘Little England’ policies which create resentment between the peoples of Britain is ‘a sure means of destroying the union’. Defending ‘asymmetrical’ devolution, he couched his argument in terms of the Gladstonian Home Rule debate. Here was implicit criticism of Dicey, for Straw’s message was that critics of devolution from a ‘Little England’ perspective should learn from the experience of Irish Home Rule ‘and understand that it is by embracing devolution that the union has been able to survive and to thrive’. But what lesson is to be learnt? And what are the warnings from history that Dicey was making?

Dicey’s objective was to criticize the policy of Home Rule for Ireland from a purely English point of view because he believed it to be ‘at least as much opposed to the vital interests of England’ as it was a threat to the stability of the Union. It was ‘a plan for revolutionizing the constitution of the whole of the United Kingdom’ and as such, it must be ‘a scheme which promises to England at least not greater evils than the maintenance of the Union or than Irish independence’. Furthermore, Home Rule was not Local Self-Government. According to Dicey ‘Local Self-Government however extended means the delegation, Home Rule however curtailed means the surrender, of Parliamentary authority’. What was on offer for Ireland (and granted today to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) was qualitatively different from what was thought expedient for England. Dicey also disputed the proposition that Home Rule was an equitable compromise between English interests and the legitimate claims of Irish nationality. Home Rule was unfair because whatever its ‘hypothetical benefits it threatens more than countervailing loss to England’. It would bring ‘large pecuniary sacrifice’ without a reasonable hope of ‘creating real harmony of feeling between Great Britain and Ireland’. Finally, Dicey was convinced that the logic of Home Rule was the break-up of the United Kingdom. Interestingly, he believed the pressure would come from not from Ireland but from England: ‘Grant it, and in a short time Irish independence will become the wish of England’. At that point, ‘it will be clear that the Union must for the sake of England, no less than of Ireland, come to an end’.

Contemporary English nationalism has inverted Dicey’s argument but not his logic. His case against Home Rule has transmuted into England’s case for Home Rule (for itself). Let’s consider this case. The English (nationalist) case is surely that devolution has indeed delivered for England the disadvantages of separatism without the advantages of Union; that the English are sacrificing their legitimate claims to nationhood in the interests of maintaining the Union. The alternative to English Home Rule or an English parliament has been regionalism – another way of describing Local Self Government – but this is not only an administrative enormity but also the outward manifestation of the Labour Government’s suspicion of the English nation. By partitioning England into regions it is accused of concealing the injustice done to national identity. That regionalism has been rejected by the people has not meant that English Home Rule is any more acceptable to Government and this shows how deeply rooted is its anti-English sentiment. As for ‘real harmony of feeling’ and ‘pecuniary sacrifice’, the case is that devolution means subsidised self-determination, one in which the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish get the self-determination and the English do the subsidising. This is now a widespread sentiment. A Sunday Telegraph ICM poll last year found that 59% of English respondents approved of Scottish independence; that 68% favoured an English Parliament; and that 60% thought it was unjust for Scotland to have a higher level of public expenditure per head of population than England. Moreover, in a recent study of the Union, McLean and McMillan concluded more or less as Dicey had predicted: that England would lose patience with asymmetric devolution. The future of the Union, they argued, is likely to replicate the ‘Slovak scenario’, a scenario that ‘would be driven from England’ and by an ‘English backlash’.

So maybe Mr Straw is right to be anxious about the direction of opinion. Though I sympathise with his defence of the Union, the terms in which he poses it require serious reconsideration. Perhaps it is time to return to Dicey and, for those interested in the United Kingdom - but who have a genuine regard for England’s ‘case’ - to be sensitive to what it might tell us.

Arthur Aughey is Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster. He is author of The Politics of Englishness Manchester University Press 2007.

The Guardian has published in full the Government's proposed Lords Reforms.

Jack Straw's new Lords would be elected on a regional basis.

The Government proposes 12 electoral regions which will act as multimember electoral constituencies. England will be divided into nine electoral regions, which are listed in Schedule 2. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will each be a single electoral region. This mirrors the electoral regions for European Parliamentary elections.

Introducing a territorial dimension to the Lords introduces the Upper West Lothian Question, but naturally they don't bother addressing that.

Interestingly the Government's apparently principled commitment to an all elected second chamber has its back broken by England's (not Britain's) ancient constitution.

Lords Spiritual
The Lords Spiritual – the 26 Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England – have always held a special and different position in the House of Lords. They differ from peers (the Lords Temporal) in two key respects. First, they do not sit for life, but only for their period as a Bishop or Archbishop of their diocese; secondly, although historically they sit as independent members of the Lords they are widely regarded as representatives of the Church of England.

The Government is and remains committed to the establishment of the Church of England, with the Sovereign as its Supreme Governor, and the relationship between Church and State. None of these reforms should or are meant to diminish establishment. The Established Church has for centuries played a seminal role in our national life and has played a major part in helping to shape the constitutional, legal and social fabric of the nation.

The nature of Establishment has changed down the years to reflect changing circumstances, but a presence in the Lords has been a constant manifestation. Bringing this to an end would therefore herald a significant change to a constitutional arrangement that binds Monarchy, Church and State together in a variety of ways. These include the fact that the Church of England’s own legislation is subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, and it is the Bishops who speak to that legislation in the House of Lords.

The Government proposes that a fully reformed second chamber, in recognition of the enduring importance of the established Church in national life, and irrespective of the outcome of the staging post review, should continue to allow a role for the established Church. So the continued role of
the Church would be guaranteed. The draft legislation provides for a limited role for a reduced number of Lords Spiritual in the reformed second chamber, but the exact arrangements would be subject to the views of the Church.

The Government also acknowledges the contribution which all faith communities have made to commenting on legislative proposals in the past. This is particularly true of the Church of England, but it is not confined to them. The Government will also consider how the contribution of the faith
communities more generally can still be made available.

Via The Talking Clock, my attention has been drawn to Jack Straw's uppity speech on constitutional reform, reported by the BBC here.

Jack Straw told the Hansard Society on Tuesday that the Conservative's plans to cut the number of MPs was a "dangerous, destructive and anti-democratic" piece of gerrymandering. The full speech is up on the Hansard Society website, here's the relevant section:

The apparently virtuous call to cut the cost of politics is actually camouflage for a dangerous, destructive and anti-democratic piece of gerrymandering. Their proposal is not about cutting the cost of politics; it is about advantaging the Conservative party. Boundaries drawn on the basis of registered electors, rather than the population as a whole, already distort the electoral map because registration rates are lowest among specific groups congregated in specific locations.

According to the Electoral Commission's recent estimate, most of the three million-plus people who are eligible to vote but who are not registered are to be found in our inner urban areas. Cutting 65-80 seats by crudely equalising registered voters would disproportionately reduce representation in urban areas and would also disadvantage Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And it would hit every island community. Orkney and Shetland would be amalgamated with a large part of the highlands. The Isle of Wight would be amalgamated with a large part of Hampshire.

In stark contrast to Labour’s agenda for moving towards a new politics on the basis of popular consent, the Conservatives aim to butcher scores of constituencies for sordid political ends. I don’t think that’s the right way to go about significant constitutional change, and I don’t think it’s any
way to build public confidence in Parliament and the political process.

In summary.

• The Conservative's policy is "dangerous, destructive and anti-democratic" because it reverses the Labour Party's inbuilt advantage and makes a Labour government less likely.
• Equalising constituency sizes would disproportionately reduce representation in urban Labour-voting areas.
• Equalising constituency sizes would disproportionately reduce representation in Labour-voting Scotland and Wales (where MSPs and AMs handle much of the constituency work previously handled by MPs).

My obvious disdain for Jack Straw should not be taken as an indication of support for the Conservative policy. Straw does have a point about island constituencies. It would be daft in my opinion to break up the Isle of Wight, the UK's largest constituency, or to amalgamate Orkney and Shetland into mainland constituencies (if that is indeed what the Tories advocate). And I see no particular reason why there should be a strict equalisation of constituency size according to population. But it is deeply hypocritical of Jack Straw to accuse the Tories of planning to gerrymander electoral boundaries that are at present so biased in favour of his own party.

Letter to Norman Baker MP

Dear Mr Baker,

I am writing to you to ask whether there is anything you can do to put pressure on the Government to disclose the information denied to us by Jack Straw's veto over a FOI request.

Today Jack Straw vetoed a Freedom of Information Request that would have disclosed the minutes of the Cabinet Ministerial Committee on Devolution to Scotland and Wales and the English Regions (DSWR) of 1997.

http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/announcement101209a.htm

The remit of the DSWR Committee was as follows: "To consider policy and other issues arising from the Government’s policies for devolution to Scotland and Wales and the regions of England and to promote and oversee progress of the relevant legislation through Parliament and it subsequent implementation."

Jack Straw has stated that that release of the minutes was not in the public interest, would be damaging to the doctrine of collective responsibility and detrimental to the effective operation of Cabinet government.

I beg to differ. The recent Holtham report into an alternative to the Barnett Formula, which revealed that Scotland received £4.5bn a year too much; the demand for a legislative Welsh Assembly; the recent Calman Commission proposals; the Scottish Government's Your Scotland, Your Voice white paper, and; England's complete rejection of regional government, makes these minutes a matter of great public interest. That the Government believes otherwise indicates to me that they believe that disclosure of these minutes would somehow compromise the devolution settlement or cast it - or the UK Government itself - into disrepute. As a denizen of England, and one who feels that democracy in England has been damaged by the devolution acts, I would like to know the exact nature of the horse-trading that occured between Derry Irvine and Donald Dewar, in order that I can determine whether anyone in Government considered English interests during these negotiations (this is particularly important because England's place in the Union has only been debated by Cabinet members and not by the people of England - we have been denied our say).

Given that a great many people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are very dissatisfied with the asymmetric mess that is New Labour's bodged attempt at devolution, it is conceivable, probable even, that they are witholding this information in order to prevent public knowledge of valid reservations raised by ministers at the time.

And as for the 'doctrine of collective responsibility', a look at the 1997 Cabinet should reveal exactly who this veto is designed to protect from public scrutiny and embarrassment: Jack Straw and Gordon Brown.

I have to ask, what are they hiding?

In ending I quote Peter Facey of Unlock Democracy:

"This is 12 years after the event. Devolution has already happened and is well established. There have been two General Elections, a change of Prime Minister and numerous Government reshuffles since this Cabinet meeting."

"A cynic could easily think that the Government is vetoing this to save themselves of political embarrassment months away from an election. The Freedom of Information Act is meant to empower the public, not protect politicians. It is ironic that the day after the Pre Budget Report, this veto will leave many feeling they have been short-changed. "

Yours,

Out of interest the 1997 Cabinet was as follows:

TONY BLAIR
GORDON BROWN
JOHN PRESCOTT
MARGARET BECKETT
JACK STRAW
ROBIN COOK
DAVID BLUNKETT
CLARE SHORT
MO MOWLAM
CHRIS SMITH
FRANK DOBSON
ANN TAYLOR
HARRIET HARMAN
RON DAVIES
GAVIN STRANG
DONALD DEWAR
LORD IRVINE
JACK CUNNINGHAM
GEORGE ROBERTSON
NICK BROWN
SIR ROBIN BUTLER
LORD IVOR RICHARD
ALISTAIR DARLING
DAVID CLARK

Two considerations that Jack Straw believes are of particular relevance are:

• A number of participants, including current Government Ministers, have their respective views recorded in the minutes.
• Of the large number of Ministers who took part in at least one of the DSWR meetings, the majority remain active in Parliament. 16 are members of the House of Commons and a further 15 members of the House of Lords. Additionally, seven Ministers are still in Government.

Really, what are these corrupt bastards hiding from us?

Unlock Democracy's press release is reproduced here.

The 'Tell Us Your Ideas' phase of Power 2010 ended yesterday, and no doubt electoral reform was amongst the most popular ideas (It certainly will have been if the people behind Power 2010 have anything to do with it).

According to Vote for a Change the campaign for electoral reform is going to take one almighty leap forward tomorrow.

The Government's Democratic Reform Council met yesterday: they have decided to call a vote in the Commons on a legally binding clause that will provide for a referendum on the voting system.

This is the first time the Commons will be able to vote on holding such a referendum in decades.

What are the odds that the 'Democratic Reform Council' - whoever they are - will favour the Alternative Vote system that Jack Straw spoke about in his lecture to the Magna Carta Institute last week?

We need an electoral system that secures legitimacy for the public. I have in principle long supported the Alternative Vote, by which voters rank candidates in order of preference, and now believe we need to actively move to it.

Crucially the Alternative Vote would enable us to retain the single Member constituency link, which is one of the central merits of the current system – both because it delivers effective representation and allows MPs to be held directly to account. But AV would also ensure that every MP is elected with the support of over half of the voters in their constituency. In an age of multi-party politics, it could both enhance the legitimacy of MPs and enable the public to express a greater range of preferences.

Yes Jack. I'm sure the electoral reform campaigners have been glad of your support during your twelve years as a Government minister, you've campaigned tirelessly for electoral reform haven't you? You bow to no one in your unyielding integrity and your determination to deliver Labour's 1997 manifesto pledge on electoral reform.

If you want to enhance the legitimacy of MPs you could begin by giving us that referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (which came into force today) that was promised us and by doing something about the constitutional issue that most concerns us, the voters (and here I quote Hansard's Audit on Democratic Engagement):

The constitutional issue that the greatest number of people are dissatisfied with by far is Scottish MPs being able to vote on English issues in the Commons (46%).

But wait, those Scottish MPs could be useful in securing a referendum on England's voting system so that this fag-end of a government can, in its dying days, secure a referendum on electoral reform to prevent England turning blue.

The English Question is a subject that tends to generate more heat than light whenever it is raised. It was first coined by Selina Chen and Tony Wright who defined it thus:

Where does England fit into the reconfiguration of Britain? What should be the English response to what is happening elsewhere in Britain? Does England need political reform of its own - and, if so, what kind? What does it mean to be English?

Selina Chen and Tony Wright, The English Question: Fabian Society, 2000

Over the years political commentators - usually Tories - have often used the phrase 'English Question' to describe the West Lothian Question. The Telegraph's Philip Johnston did just that in his article 'At last, an answer to the English Question', in which he hailed Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force recommendations as the answer to the question of England. But Ken Clarke's recommendations were designed to mitigate the West Lothian Question, they were not an attempt to address the wider question of the national identity and national governance of England. If anything the West Lothian Question would be better described as a British Question because it concerns the voting privileges of British MPs in the British Parliament.

The West Lothian question is not an "English question," a "Welsh question," a "Scottish question" or a "Northern Ireland question"--it is a union question.

Jack Straw (2007), Prospect Magazine

Anthony Barnett argued that "The English question is bound to arise when all around others are finding and renewing their identities" (This Time: Our Constitutional Revolution (1997)). But as the 'others' increasingly gave expression to their national identities there was, claimed Andrew Marr, a nervousness, which in itself was dangerous, about allowing England to do the same:

‘Englishness exists. England’s senses of itself go back more than a thousand years, albeit in different forms, and unless England is recognised and given a new sense of its own security, then all the hopes for a liberal, open, democratic and tolerant future are in danger. England cannot be ignored, tied down, balkanised or dissolved. Yet England has been pushed into a corner where it is expected to passively await its future. That, in itself, is dangerous’

Andrew Marr (2000), The Day Britain Died.

David Blunkett, in a similar vein to the Campaign for an English Parliament, argues that it is the lack of political and constitutional recognition for England that constitutes the English Question.

In the island of Britain today there are three governments representing three constitutional and political bodies. There is the Scottish Parliament, there is the Welsh Assembly, there is the United Kingdom Parliament. They represent Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom Constitutionally and politically just those three exist. Constitutionally and politically England does not exist. That situation, and its implications, constitutes the English Question.

David Blunkett (2005), A New England: An English Identity within Britain: IPPR

In his book The English Question Prof Robert Hazell identifies the dual nature of the English Question: whether England needs a stronger political voice, to balance the louder political voice now accorded to Scotland and Wales; and whether England too would benefit from devolution, by devolving power within England.

However, Hazell doubts whether the English have any interest in answering the English Question, and suggests that the English may decide to leave the question of England hanging:

...the English Question does not have to be answered. It is not an exam question that the English are required to answer. It can remain unresolved for as long as the English want. Ultimately only the English can decide whether they want to seek an answer to the English Question.

Robert Hazell (2006), The English Question, Manchester University Press

The Institute for Public Policy Research take the view that the English Question is central to the British Question and the most salient of UK constitutional questions.

The English Question has moved from the margins of British political life to centre-stage. For too long the government’s approach has been to cross their fingers and hope the question will go away, but it will not: it is the one area of constitutional reform that is genuinely provoking widespread public debate.

But the English Question is not one overarching questions, rather it is a collection of problems. It refers to how England is governed in a post-devolution UK, the ability of Scottish MPs to vote on English matters but not vice versa and the way that devolution is financed, as well as broader social and cultural question about the identity of the English.

IPPR (2008), Answering the English Question: a new policy agenda for England

A renowned England-hater, Jack Straw, has launched a broadside at the Convention on Modern Liberty from a little known Blackburn blog.

Is big brother watching you? Are you – innocent and law-abiding – kept awake at night for fear that your door will be kicked in by agents of the state?

Are your children being “groomed for life in the database state”?

If some of those attending a conference last weekend – the Convention on Modern Liberty – are to be believed, the answer to those questions, and many similar, is “yes.”

I mention this because in the same week that national newspaper stories warned that the government is deliberately trampling on individual liberties and undermining public safety, a story in the Lancashire Telegraph told us that crime is going down.

So, let me get this right, crime is going down thanks to the database state and because we have become an endemic surveillance society? So it follows that in order that we can all live in safety it is permissible for the State to spy on the Individual to make society a better place? For whom?

"under Socialism crime is not a form of protest against the existing conditions of life [i.e. as it is in the West] but above all the result of moral deformation of the personality, intellectual retardedness and low culture" - Nikolay Shchelokov, Soviet Minister for Internal Affairs, Pravda, 17 March 1973.

Nothing to fear, nothing to hide. We're all retards to Jack Straw.

It's oft quoted, but here it is in full:

The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent. We have used this propensity to violence to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Then we used it in Europe and with our empire, so I think what you have within the UK is three small nations...who've been over the centuries under the cosh of the English. Those small nations inevitably sought expression by a very explicit idea of nationhood. You have this very dominant other nation, England, 10 times bigger than the others, which is self-confident and therefore has not needed to be so explicit about its expression. I think as we move into this new century, people's sense of Englishness will become more articulated and that's partly because of the mirror that devolution provides us with and because we're becoming more European at the same time.

Have we really kept the other nations "under the cosh"?

Was it really England's empire?

And how much of it was "English" violence and aggression, as opposed to the violence and aggression of the British or England's rulers?

The CEP News blog brings to my attention this from the Western Mail:

[Gordon Brown] added: “There is also an English lobby for a separate English parliament. The case for the UK and the integration of it has got to be put and that’s what I intend to do over the next few months.”

Justice Secretary Jack Straw also warned earlier this week of the rising threat of an “English parliament” campaign, suggesting its success would merely prompt Wales and Scotland to leave the UK.

How does this sit with the official position that there "is no demand" for an English parliament?

Given that Gordon Brown was part of the lobby for a separate Scottish parliament I have to conclude that he's a bigoted Scottish tosspot.

English traitor and lickspittal to the Scottish Raj, Jack Straw, gets the Littlejohn treatment:

Thanks to Labour's devolution policy - described at the time in Orwellian terms of 'strengthening the Union' - the heavily-taxed English majority are relegated to second-class citizens and the subsidy-junkie Scottish Parliament may soon hold a vote on leaving the United Kingdom altogether.

Only under New Labour could the ancient office of Lord Chancellor be occupied by a greasy, pole-climbing party hack like Jack Straw - who makes grand speeches about Magna Carta and then trashes Habeas Corpus by supporting an extension of detention without trial to 42 days and scrapping the right to trial by jury.

It's not so long ago that Straw was accusing the English of being a nation of bloodthirsty racists, to appease the vast Muslim vote in his own constituency.

Now he poses as one of Brown's handmaidens of 'Britishness'.

It's all true. At least the previous incumbent of Straw's office had the excuse of being Scottish, and unelected. Jack Straw will be remembered as a traitor to his own people, not that he will care because we are a people that he describes as "potentially violent" and "very aggressive". And this from a man who is a potential very aggressive rapist!