Ed Miliband responds

Excellent letter - really, first class! Let's see if that gets any kind of response at all. They really don't get it, do they - either deliberately or not.

Very well written.

I'm not sure he'll read it and if he did, what could he refute?

Having said that, it's like the sea bashing against rocks. It seems fairly futile until one day the whole cliff collapses

He might read it, and then when he's in opposition he might think "you know what, maybe that English nationalist bloke that wrote to me while that Scottish twat was leading the Party had a point".

At the very least it's now here, for anyone that cares to find it, and soon it will be on the Labour Space website. And at least this way Scottish historians can look back at the web and understand that there were a few English who resisted being abolished, even if they did remain awfully polite about it while being erased culturally and politically.

Fantastic reply Gareth. Was about to add my reply when I seen yours, so I thought I wouldn't submit it seeing as your reply was spot on.
I am sure he will read it, how he replies will be interesting.

I tried to get a Make St. George's Day a Bank Holiday campaign started on the site but for some reason its not getting on! Hmm I wonder why...

I believe that devolution has made us stronger as a United Kingdom and given democratic accountability for decisions in Scotland and Wales that used to be made centrally. Across the country, we need to see whether there are further ways of devolving power. However, I do not see a new parliament for England as the answer.

This quote is a perfect summary of the devolution process and how it is nothing to do with the nations within the UK.

The Labour project was to devolve power from the centre to three provinces of the UK at the start and then to another twelve or so by the end. If it helped defuse any secessionist tendencies along the way all to the good.

Devolution has always been about the British State devolving power to the provinces not about reinvigorating the old nations of Scotland, England and Wales in a new federal alliance. NI being a special case in this.

It's a good letter but Labour don't see any difference between Britain and England and trying to get them to see the difference is just knocking your head off a wall. Devolution for Labour is about reorganising local government within the UK while keeping true power in Westminster. If they don't explicitly recognise England as a nation then neither do they have to recognise Scotland as a nation and they can continue to treat it as a region of the UK. The Labour Party has always regarded Britain as a unitary state and a unitary nation and they're not going to change now especially with "British" Brown at the helm whose "Britishness" is pathological and rooted in his origins outside England.

What’s striking about the quotes re Englishness in point 4 is how establishmentarian they are. Is it the English working class who has ‘an unfortunate history around the world’? Come on boys, what’s happened to class rhetoric?

New Labour’s thinking on Britishness seems to involve little more than moving onto old ‘King and Country’ Tory territory. It’s having a knock-on effect in Wales and Scotland as exemplified by Welsh Labour’s dismal efforts to find a new narrative. Welsh and Scottish Labour are having to try to fit in with Brown’s ‘British nation’ narrative while at the same time appealing to Welsh and Scottish sentiment.

Attached to that phrase, ‘Devolution is a process not an event’ (which many still seem to think was uttered by Donald Dewar rather than Ron Davies despite the best efforts of Brian “Blether” Taylor amongst others) was a lecture setting out the way ahead. One of Ron Davies’s suggestions was for the creation of a more federal structure for the British Labour Party, which would have meant facing up to the realities of devolution – something New Labour are incapable of doing.

That's a consummate reply, Gareth.

Unfortunately, it's wasted on Miliband.

Devolution for Labour is about reorganising local government within the UK while keeping true power in Westminster.

So why did they actively campaign for scotland to have it's own parliament? Having one seat of power in scotland has nothing to do with local gov't.

If they don’t explicitly recognise England as a nation then neither do they have to recognise Scotland as a nation and they can continue to treat it as a region of the UK.

New labour do not treat scotland like it's a region. More and more political power has gone to scotland. Plus, various new labour control freaks have stated that scotland is a nation. Post one quote of the new labour leadership that has said scotland is a region.

The Labour Party has always regarded Britain as a unitary state and a unitary nation and they’re not going to change now especially with “British” Brown at the helm whose “Britishness” is pathological and rooted in his origins outside England.

I think you mean the nationalists in scotland arent going to settle for not having absolute control and that new labour have realised that this isn't good and are trying to change things back to the way they were. Well that is never going to happen. Britishness ha! ha!

M Anderson:

So why did they actively campaign for scotland to have it’s own parliament?

Because the SNP threatened not only their power base in Scotland but the integrity of their beloved Britain. The Scottish Parliament that Labour set up has elected members and can pass some laws but not any on areas such as the economy, energy policy and defence and it neither receives any tax receipts nor can alter them beyond a 3p variation in income tax which the Treasury would claw back out of the block grant anyway.

Do the duck test on it. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. The Scottish Parliament has limited law making powers, very limited taxation powers and no economic powers, it is a second tier level of government in the UK and it survives on a block grant. It's a local council.

Labour MP George Robertson predicted that "Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead" while he was Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland in 1995 and the Scottish Parliament was set up by Labour with at least one eye on stopping the SNP.

Post one quote of the new labour leadership that has said scotland is a region.

They're never going to call Scotland a region because they want to keep it one by getting Scots to vote for them. Labour, the Tories and the Lib-Dems all try to out-Scottish the SNP in Scotland to try and win votes. As an example have a look at the Saltires integrated into the page banners on the Scottish versions of the Labour and Lib-Dem sites and at the stylised Saltire used in the animated banner on the Scottish Conservative site.

Britishness ha! ha!

I'm in complete agreement with you there.

We’ve covered this ground before to a certain extent. I recognise the centrist mindset Dougthedug describes but I think he tends to downplay the devolutionist or nationalist wing, as it’s sometimes called, within the Labour Party.

[...] may remember that I wrote to Ed Miliband a while back. Just for the record, I’m still waiting for a reply to this. Dear Mr [...]