Democrat

This makes many Conservative MPs, most newspapers and probably most voters very angry indeed. When the Home Secretary, Theresa May, stood up in the chamber to blame European judges for tying her hands, she was greeted with a chorus of “disgrace” and a cry of “sack the lot of them”, There were several calls from MPs on her own side to defy the Strasbourg judges and deport Mr Qatada anyway. The Sun agreed, offering to pay for Mr Qatada’s one-way ticket, and so did a columnist in the Times (though Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph strongly backed the Strasbourg court). Lots of other countries flout rulings of the Strasbourg court, such as Italy, they thundered.

Why is this depressing? Well, I find it a bit gloomy to discover that lots of British Conservatives have developed a contempt for the rule of law. Britain is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which underlies the powers of the Strasbourg court. Indeed, British lawyers wrote the convention, shortly after the second world war. That is an international treaty obligation.

I have just about grown used to the idea that lots of Tories want to leave the European Union and turn Britain into Switzerland with nuclear weapons. Now, it turns out, they also fancy being Sicily with nukes, casually breaking international treaty obligations when it suits.

If they are really this angry, then at least let them call for a full-scale departure from the convention. I would argue against them, but it would be a more respectable position.

To be fair, some are making the case for a full-scale renegotiation of Britain’s ties with Strasbourg. In this week’s Spectator, James Forsyth predicts that David Cameron cannot avoid a major bust-up with his own party, if he does not sort out Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights (the judicial arm of the 47-member Council of Europe, and wholly separate from the 27-member European Union, which has its own highest court in Luxembourg).

The Qatada problem may be fixed by a deal with Jordan, involving guarantees about torture-evidence, he writes, but that does not fix a separate looming disaster, involving orders from the Strasbourg court to ease Britain’s blanket ban on giving prisoners the vote. An unnamed Conservative close to Mr Cameron is cited in the Spectator suggesting that the only solution is to deport Dominic Grieve, the liberal-minded Conservative attorney-general, a key defender of the European Convention on Human Rights, along with the justice secretary Ken Clarke and Liberal Democrat members of the coalition. A growing number of Tories will only be happy when Britain is free from the Strasbourg court’s jurisdiction. “By contrast,” Mr Forsyth writes, “the court’s supporters view Britain’s membership of it as an international badge of honour. If we ever did leave, the letters page of the Times and the Guardian would be full of the liberals declaring that Britain was now worse than Belarus.”

Silly old liberals, eh? Always over-reacting and taking the most extreme line on things. Well Bagehot, a liberal when it comes to human rights (with just the faintest dash of neo-con, blame it on four years spent working in China), reckons it is the conservatives who need to stop hyper-ventilating. I don’t regard it as an international “badge of honour” for Britain to be a signatory of a human rights treaty that 46 other European countries feel able to live with. I just think it would send a terrible international signal if we stopped being a signatory.

I don’t even think that the Strasbourg court is a very impressive body. Its judges are of variable quality and have a dangerously activist taste for using the convention to declare that Europeans enjoy all manner of nebulous social rights that the original framers never intended. Indeed, I wrote a while ago about a very sensible plan led by the British government for reforming the court, starting with plans to tackle its appallingly long backlog of cases. I wish those reform plans luck, though without great optimism.

Nor do I think that if we withdrew from the convention it would make us worse than Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe.

I think something different. I think, on balance, that it would be a mistake to leave. I also think it would be the wrong thing to do, even if I am not going to start using words like honour. But if we withdrew, I do think that Britain would find it much to defend the cause of human rights in Belarus, say. I think British ambassadors and diplomats in Myanmar, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, China or Russia would it harder to lobby for the release of dissidents or stand up for the free press. I think newspapers in grown-up countries around the world would write articles about Britain’s withdrawal from a rights charter whose ultimate progenitor was Sir Winston Churchill, and conclude with varying degrees of sadness or glee that Britain was in the grip of a damp, grey, sullenly nativist mood, and seemed determined to become a smaller sort of country. In terms of soft power, it would be a self-inflicted blow.

And all for what? That is my biggest source of gloom. Look carefully at what makes the Right so angry about the European Court in Strasbourg. They are the ones over-reacting, with a mixture of chin-jutting solipsism and defeatism. Here is Bruce Anderson on the ConservativeHome website this morning:

it is clear that the purpose of the British government is to protect the British people, a task which depends upon British laws. That is not only a task, it is a duty, a sacred duty, in which politics is subsumed into patriotism. As matters currently stand, that is a duty which our politicians cannot discharge. Foreign judges will not permit it. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have both concluded, on the basis of expert advice, that Abu Qatada should not be allowed to remain in this country. A Strasbourg Court thinks otherwise. If we acquiesce in that ruling, this is no longer a sovereign country. We would no longer be able to use our laws to protect our freedoms…

…It is true that the initial European Convention was drafted by a British lawyer, with Churchill’s encouragement, in order “to export the British system”. The key word there is “export”. War and dictatorship had shattered legal systems across the continent. As John Hayes puts it, those countries had to rediscover decency. That was not true of us. They had everything to learn from Britain and nothing to teach. Our endeavours to assist in the creation of the ECHR were noble and magnanimous. But this was for export only. The British founding fathers would not have dreamed – or nightmared – that a time would come when their exported creation would set itself up as a European Supreme Court and seek to prevent a British government from protecting British interests

Oh come off it. If Mr Qatada is a dangerous terrorist, the British government is at liberty to press criminal charges against him. If (as must be assumed) there is insufficient evidence to charge him in a British court, but the government is sure he is dangerous, then they are free to pass British laws neutralising the dangers that he poses. Aha, says the Right. That’s just it. This monster is out on bail because he has won an appeal, and yet we cannot deport him to Jordan where he belongs because of those European judges, and though the first three months of his bail will see him detained in his home for 22 hours a day and watched closely, after three months he will have to move onto a much weaker terrorism prevention regime that will make it much harder to control him.

Well yes, he won a British appeal in a British court because under our rule of law, there comes a point where you cannot lock people up without charge forever. And his extremely tough bail conditions will only last three months because that is how it works under British law. And then he will be under a looser regime because that is the current state of British law. Under the previous Labour government the rules for suspected terrorists were tougher, but this coalition government changed them.

But if the government agrees with Mr Anderson that their sacred task is to control Mr Qatada, they can have him followed 24 hours a day by 100 police if they want to. But that is expensive, one of the tabloids complained this week: a flight to Jordan costs less than APS200. Tough. It would be easier and cheaper to deport him tonight. It would be cheaper still to shoot Mr Qatada, but Britain is not that sort of country.

Britain has committed itself to international rules that take a dim view of torture. Sticking to those rules, and being seen sticking to those rules, is part of what Britain stands for in the world, and not in an academic abstract way. For a mid-sized country that has played an outsize role in the American-led war on terror, having a clean reputation when it comes to torture and the rule of law matters a lot.

As it happens, while I am not winning friends, I don’t share the rage provoked by questioning Britain’s blanket ban on prisoners voting. Or rather, I wish that people who think prisoners should not be allowed to vote would admit that they are voicing a subjective view, rather than a position rooted in granite-like principle. “But you cannot have people who break the law making laws,” many Tory MPs say. Except that Britain does allow just that already. Horrible criminals are allowed to vote after they leave prison. People who break the law but receive non-custodial sentences are allowed to vote.

In many other European countries, the vote is denied to prisoners serving long sentences for serious crimes. In some, a judge can beef up a custodial sentence by adding on the extra punishment of deprivation of civic rights, including the vote, for a certain length of time. In some American states, anyone convicted of a felony loses their vote for life. These positions are all way-points on a sliding scale. In Britain, the place where the cursor currently restsaa blanket ban on voting for anyone serving a custodial sentenceahas been deemed disproportionate by the European court in Strasbourg. Britain could almost certainly fix Strasbourg’s objections by tweaking the rules to give votes to those on shorter sentences, or by introducing additional sentences involving the suspension of civic rights.

Either way, I think the anger generated by the question of prisoners voting is excessive, as is the rage about not being allowed to deport Mr Qatada, at least until the Jordanians provide Britain with written guarantees that torture-derived evidence will not be used against him.

In short, the provocations being posed by European judges strike me as smaller than the Right would have you believe. And leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would be a bigger blow to Britain’s image and reputation than the Right realises.

But this domestic hiccup matters to anyone with an interest in the fate of ambitious climate change targets agreed by European Union countries back in the boom-times of 2007. From the perspective of 2012, amid the chill winds of recession politics, those free-spending Euro-summits at which Angela Merkel (or the Green Goddess, as she was dubbed) vied with Tony Blair to seem as climate-concerned as possible seem like a cruel joke

But for the moment, in fact, Britain still remains committed to some pretty expensive and ambitious targets when it comes to increasing the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources, imposing a carbon price on heavy users of energy, and generally lowering national emissions of greenhouse gases. Some of that is down to Mr Huhne. A Liberal Democrat from the left of his party and the loser of a fairly bitter party leadership contest with the current Lib Dem boss Nick Clegg, Mr Huhne positioned himself as the coalition government’s Green conscience, pushing hard for ambitious targets and never failing to argue that creating a low-carbon economy was a vital response to tough economic times, and not an unwelcome burden. Going green was win-win, think of all those new jobs building windmills and lagging lofts, he would argue. This is Britain’s exciting future, not a cost to be endured.

Leaks from the cabinet table revealed how Mr Huhne would go into battle against Conservative colleagues for what he considered authentic Lib Dem positions.

His clashes included bruising rows with the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne. Though Mr Osborne has not recanted from the central claim that today’s Conservative Party is the greenest ever, he has also made clear that he does not intend saving the world at the cost of British competitiveness. To widespread dismay from the green movement, but cheers from the right, Mr Osborne told last year’s annual Tory Party conference that environmental rules were “piling costs on the energy bills of households and companies” and argued:

We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business… So let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe

Now, fans of logic may feel they have grounds to quibble at Mr Osborne’s position, which amounts to the statement: the world is on fire and we must try to save it for our children and grandchildren…except if it makes us less competitive than our neighbours. But Mr Osborne’s position is in tune with the mood of voters. Not for nothing has Mr Osborne matched his rhetorical caution with specific policies, for instance offering a small but symbolic tax break to motorists in the new year by cancelling a planned rise in fuel duties.

So what does it mean for the country’s climate-change commitments, now that Mr Huhne has resigned to spend more time with his lawyers (he denies allegations of seeking to pervert the course of justice by asking his then wife to say she was driving a car caught roaring past a speed camera). Mr Huhne has been replaced as energy and climate change secretary by Ed Davey, a very different sort of Lib Dem. Mr Davey is a pro-business free-market liberal, or, as one Conservative ministerial colleague approvingly jokes: “he’s basically a Tory in disguise”.

It may be counter-intuitive, but I would argue that Mr Huhne’s resignation is good news for the climate change cause. Mr Huhne’s confrontational pro-green stance, and his pitch that going low-carbon was going to be painless, was completely out of kilter with the mood of sour austerity now gripping the country, and the fragile confidence of British business.

It was sometimes said that Gordon Brown’s boom-year pitch to British voters was the promise of Swedish public services with American levels of taxation. Well, now that the public is feeling the pinch in a country still, in theory, determined to lead the world on greenery, I would argue that the coalition has almost ended up with a dangerous variant: Swedish environmental policies in a country with American-style voters. I say “almost” because polls still show British voters more likely to support some forms of government action to fight climate change than their American cousins, but in general the British green faith is wavering.

In particular, that specific, 2007-era pitch about a low-carbon economy being win-win for Britain (all those green jobs, all that green tech to export) is a harder and harder sell, and not just in Britain. Voters see windmill plants closing over here, and opening in China, or they see the government slashing the subsidies paid to homes with solar panels and they conclude uh-oh, this is not going to be painless after all.

And it’s not going to be painless. But in fact that does not dent this newspaper’s case for ambitious climate change mitigation. Here at The Economist, we have long urged a more pragmatic approach, based on the insurance model. It is not absolutely proven that man-made emissions are causing dangerous global warming, but the overwhelming scientific consensus points in that direction. Andacruciallyait is clear that the global costs of doing nothing and being caught by drastic climate changeare very high indeed. The costs of attempting to mitigate such changes early are high, but not as high. It’s like buying insurance, we argue: no fun, but safer than the alternatives.

If Mr Davey, a pragmatic sort of chap, cares to shift the British environmental debate onto that sort of argument, I would urge anyone actually keen on saving the earth to cheer.

Here’s the column:

DANIEL RILEY, a young trainee teacher from west London, attended a school so bad that it was shut down while he was there. It was, he recalls with commendable understatement, an aunstructureda place. Fewer than 20% of pupils achieved five good GCSE passes, including mathematics and English (the main benchmark for secondary students, involving exams commonly taken at 16). There were fights. Some, involving knives, ended with arrests. There were drugsathe school drew its pupils from tough housing estates, and gangs prowled at the gates. The teaching was anot inspired,a Mr Riley says, sticking with the understatement. He recalls lessons spent copying texts from books.

As happened to a few dozen failing institutions under the previous Labour government, Mr Rileyas school was turned into an academyaa state school removed from local council control and given new freedoms over staffing and teaching methods. Six years on, Paddington Academy draws its pupils from the same estates. But the school is unrecognisable.

Last summer 69% of pupils met the benchmark for good GCSEs, easily beating the national average. More than half come from homes poor enough to earn free school meals and more than three-quarters do not speak English as a first language, making its intake exceptionally achallenginga, in Whitehall jargon.

Now when Mr Riley meets teenage students they seek advice about university. His dream is to return to Paddington Academy to teach full-time. It is easy to see why. The school is a success, recently earning an aOutstandinga grade from Ofsted school inspectors. It is, more subjectively, an impressive place. It feels calm and academically ambitious. It hums with optimism.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has put great faith in school autonomy: there are now 1,500 academies in England. A single column cannot pretend to prove that faith right or wrong. Bagehot spent time at Paddington last month with a more modest goal, to look at one successful school and try to discern what makes it different. Two big lessons jumped out.

First, Paddington is built around remarkable people. An unusually high proportion of staff come from Teach First, a programme that sends highly-qualified graduates into challenging schools for at least two years. Staff stay late for homework clubs that run until ten at night (many pupils come from crowded homes) and volunteer for weekend workshops. A teacher guiding 15-year-olds through a thoughtful debate on British manufacturing was a Treasury economist before switching career. His economics GCSE class is an experiment, part of a policy of promoting more academic subjects. Maths is the most popular subject for the oldest, sixth-form pupils, followed by sciences. Create an expectation that students can take hard subjects, and they will demand them, the teacher says. Thanks to pupil lobbying, the school now offers the astronomy GCSE.

The studentsa familiesafrom Africa, Bangladesh, Iraq, Kosovo and the Caribbean in the mainaare remarkable, too. Many went through atrials and tribulationsa to reach Britain, explains a 15-year-old girl who plans to be a doctor, so awe like a challengea.

Second, Paddington uses distinctive methods. A motto is: athe street stops at the gatesa. There is a strict uniform code, and pupils must remove hooded tops and caps as they arrive. Pupils are educated for the professional world, says a teacher: if they call a boss aBruva, value judgments will be made about them. Pupils agree. Using street slang would be an easy option in school, says a teenage boy. Alas, the world aout therea will not be easy.

Competition is embraced. Pupils are ranked on progress against individual targets every six weeks, with results posted publicly on a board. A difficult home life triggers support but not excuses. Some pupils arrive speaking no English: they are offered up to four yearsa specialist help, but expectations are not lowered.

Staff enforce the small details of behaviour ceaselessly, with meaningful looks, a warning finger briefly held up, or a word of praise every few seconds. The goal is not Gradgrindian discipline, but the avoidance of bigger confrontations. Good deeds are consistently rewarded, lapses always have consequences. Pupilsa blazer lapels sag with enamel badges for choir, language-learning, mentoring younger pupils and so on. When the school gained its aOutstandinga grade, pupils were crestfallen to hear that this did not bring a badge. The schoolas excellent and tireless principal, Oli Tomlinson, finally had aOutstandinga badges made in blue and gold enamel, bearing the Ofsted logo.

No excuses, no barriers

A common charge from academy criticsanotably teachersa unionsais that they practise selection on the sly by excluding difficult pupils. Early on, Paddington did expel some pupils from the old school, but now takes hard cases itself. At a morning meeting, staff discussed the progress of a new pupil rejected by all neighbouring schools: it went well, they agreed, considering it was his first day out of prison. Yet students feel safe. Itas better than primary school here, says a 12 year old: aPeople respect you.a

Paddington Academy is a brilliant school. That is great for its 1,200 pupils. But for others to benefit, Paddingtonas strengthsaits remarkable people and methodsamust be echoed elsewhere. Methods can be copied. It helps that Paddington is part of a chain of academies sponsored by a charity, the United Learning Trust, driving the spread of good ideas. It also helps that school league tables are being beefed up with much more data, making Paddingtonas success more visible. Remarkable people are harder to reproduce. Yet Paddingtonas dynamic young teachers talk of their luck at working at a school which transforms lives. Mr Riley, fresh from university, longs to join them. The country needs more Mr Rileys. Schools as inspiring as Paddington are a good first step.

WITH your back to the open sea, an island can feel encircled, even claustrophobic. Turn to face the waves and an island feels like a starting point, a place surrounded by a variety of bracing possibilities, both good and bad.

Britain has the politics of an island. At worst, its political debate can be parochial, even tin-eared about the world outside. Yet Britain is an outrider for openness, standing out among large European nations for its faith in free trade, liberalised markets and undistorted competition. In many neighbouring countries, calls to reject free trade and embrace protectionism attract a quarter or more of the vote. Not in Britain. Yet in island politics, the temptation to gaze inward is never far away.

Debates about capitalism dominate British politics. The Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, his Liberal Democrat deputy Nick Clegg, and the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, have repeatedly spoken about building a fairer economy. Responding to voter anger, they talk of reining in bankersa bonuses and pay packages for company bosses. All three agree that there is a need to curb welfare for the work-shy. Most of all, they agree there is a desperate need to help the asqueezed middlea whose incomes stagnated even when times were good.

Listen to the leaders, and it would be easy to conclude that the root of the problem is the moral failings of Britainas political parties. The parties accuse each other of letting unfairness thrive, because they are variously nasty, incompetent or unable to stand up to vested interests. Immigration has become part of this argument. The Conservatives accuse Labour of lazily allowing foreigners to take millions of jobs during the boom years rather than improving the employability of native workers.

On January 19th Mr Cameron accused the previous Labour government of making a aFaustian pacta with debt-fuelled, finance-driven aturbo-capitalisma. That pact, he charged, let bankers and corporate bosses collect ahuge rewardsa while channelling welfare to those at the bottom. Hard-working Britons in between lost out. Labour does not believe in markets, Mr Cameron went on. Conservatives do, and know how to fix them when they fail. Delving into history, he cited Tory reformers from Margaret Thatcher to Benjamin Disraeli.

A few days later, in the House of Lords, a coalition of Labour peers and Church of England bishops cited Charles Dickens and Victorian notions of the deserving and undeserving poor as they attacked government plans to restrict the welfare payments received by any one household to the median income of a working family. The rebels won, with the Lords voting to ease the benefits cap for families with many children. Their rebellion will be overturned: some three-quarters of voters support the cap.

So far, so very British. Yet these seemingly distinct, domestic disputesaabout income inequality, executive pay, welfare, the squeezed middle, even immigrationaare all also arguments about something bigger. Without acknowledging it, Britain is having a row about globalisation.

The Faustian pact Mr Cameron describes is, at heart, an attack on the previous governmentas compact with globalisation, with soaring rewards for a few, millions parked on out-of-work benefits at the bottom, andaTories would sayacompetitiveness either neglected or artificially boosted by importing migrants. Mr Milibandas asqueezed middlea analysis leans heavily on work by the Obama administrationas aMiddle Class Taskforcea, and its studies of how, in an era of automation and globalised supply chains, American workers have seen real incomes stagnate while the richest saw their share of national wealth surge.

Inside Downing Street, there is much discussion of Tyler Cowen, an American economist who argues that, for many Western workers, economic stagnation may be the anew normala. Jesse Norman, a Conservative MP whose ideas for reforming capitalism found strong echoes in Mr Cameronas recent speech, calls globalisation athe whale under the surfacea of todayas arguments.

In lots of other countries, anxiety over globalisation is openly discussed. In Britain, political leaders have instead chosen to channel voter anger into arguments about each otheras character. Does that matter? A cynic might argue not: no serious British politician is calling for protectionism, so let sleeping dogs lie.

That is too complacent. British support for free trade runs deep, but thoughtful types in all three parties are worried.

No opt-out from global competition

The pressure from globalisation is as intense as ever, says one Tory. But now Britain must manage without the easy credit and generous welfare that once cushioned the impact of competition.

On January 26th the Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg demanded a big income-tax break for the ahard-working manya, funded by hitting top earners or closing a loophole used by buyers of pricey houses. He calls stagnating middle incomes an aemergencya.

To some alarmed Labour colleagues, Mr Miliband gives the impression of seeing capitalism as a bad system that needs fixing with regulation, and globalisation as the internationalisation of capitalism. Lord Mandelson, a founder of New Labour, this week published a report with the IPPR think-tank, offering ways to shore up support for globalisation. In America, free trade Democrats atook to the hillsa after Bill Clinton left office, says Lord Mandelson. aWe mustnat see the same happen in Britain.a

Openness comes naturally to the British, a maritime bunch. The British elite has backed free trade for more than a century, partly because for a long time Britain was a world-beater. But now British voters are angry, and globalisation is part of the reason. Consent for open markets has withered before. Denying that a battle needs to be fought is the first step to losing it.

First, assertions that if the Scottish minority are to be offered a referendum, it is glaringly obvious that the English majority (with 85% of the population) must have one as well. The Daily Mail seems especially keen on this argument, giving it both barrels with a blast from Simon Heffer “Hang on, Mr Salmond. The English MUST have a say on Scotland’s future too…”, and one from Melanie Phillips:

England is fed up to the back teeth with the Scots pocketing a whacking subsidy from Westminster while constantly a and offensively a whingeing about England. And if Scotland has a referendum on its independence, then, in any just universe, the rest of the UK must vote on the proposal, too. For while those five million Scots may argue that they have the right to decide how they are governed, they do not have the right to break up the United Kingdom regardless of the wishes of the remaining 55amillion of its citizens

Second, assertions that it is time to bite the bullet, stop pussy-footing around and end the anomaly that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish members of the British parliament at Westminster can vote on laws affecting English schools, hospitals or roads, thoughapost-devolutionaEnglish MPs have no say over these matters in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Biting the bullet, it is suggested, involves either the creation of a new English parliament, or legislating so that only English MPs have a say over English laws.

Lots of English voters are receptive to such arguments.

New research for the IPPR think tank shows that 79% of English voters want Scottish MPs excluded from votes on English-only laws. In a poll published at the weekend by the Sunday Telegraph, ICM found 49% of its English respondents wanted an English parliament, with similar powers to those enjoyed by the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh (with the proportion rising to 58% among those aged over 65). English voters were also slightly keener on Scottish independence than Scottish voters, the same poll showed (though once the margin of error is taken into account, the result was more of a dead heat).

But at the risk of being difficult, giving the English their say is not quite as simple as all that.

First, those demands for English voters to be consulted on Scottish independence, as well as Scots. What would happen if the Scots voted yes to independence, in a formal referendum but the English then voted no? Would the English prevent the Scots from leaving? If so, how? Would English police be sent north to quell street protests? Would gunboats be sent up the Forth?

Next, those calls for English laws to be decided by English MPs. This is a seductively fair-sounding solution, and indeed was included in the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2010 general election. It is, in effect, a solution to a constitutional conundrum known to Westminster wonks as the West Lothian question, after the constituency of the Scottish Labour MP who first raised it, decades ago.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is about to unveil a committee packed with worthy sorts to ponder the West Lothian question, and impatient English patriots are already grumbling about an important issue being kicked into the long grass.

But if the West Lothian question has been unresolved for decades, there is a reason. In his recent book “The Coalition and the Constitution”, Vernon Bogdanor, a constitutional sage (and former tutor at Oxford to one David Cameron), outlined a heffalump trap lurking in those calls for “English votes for English laws.”

The first is that, in recent general elections, the Conservatives have won a majority of seats in England or something close to one, but failed to win a majority in the United Kingdom as a whole. In 2010, the Tories won just a single seat in Scotland (giving rise to the current Edinburgh gibe that, thanks to two recent arrivals at Edinburgh Zoo, there are now more pandas that Conservative MPs in Scotland).

Now, says Professor Bogdanor, imagine a system of “English votes for English laws” operating in such a parliament, where there is a majority of the right in England, but a majority of the left for the whole United Kingdom. In such circumstances, government would risk being bifurcated. As the professor puts it:

There would, therefore, be one government for English domestic affairs such as education and health, and another government for UK-wide matters, such as economic policy, social security, foreign affairs and defence

None of this is to say that the West Lothian question (or the broader problem of growing English resentment about devolution) can or should be dismissed as silly.

Indeed, as Professor Bogdanor notes, but for an accident of electoral arithmetic in 2010, that simmering resentment could have already exploded into very serious tensions already. After the May 2010 elections ended without any party commanding an overall majority, there were efforts by some in the Labour leadership to cobble together a rainbow coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems and a bunch of small, mostly nationalist parties. These efforts foundered because a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, though seemingly an outlandish idea at first, enjoyed a much more stable majority.

But, says the professor, supposing talks between the Tories and Lib Dems had failed, and a rainbow coalition of the left had come into being. Between them, he notes, Labour and the Lib Dems have just 234 seats in the House of Commons, as compared with 298 seats for the Conservatives. That means that a government coalition of the left would only have been able to secure its legislation by whipping non-English MPs through their division lobbies, night after night. Coalition MPs from outside England would have been imposing their will on England.

Given the fact that coalition governments are already a novelty in Britain, it is entirely possible, the professor suggests, that such a coalition of the left would have been seen as “illegitimate” by English voters.

As for creating an English parliament, it is arguably a neater solution, but hardly a small (or cheap) step. The country would then have an English parliament, a Scottish parliament, a Welsh assembly, a Northern Irish assembly and a British parliament for everything still decided at national level, such as foreign policy and defence.

I have lived in a country like that for five years: it’s called Belgium, a kingdom blessed with six parliaments and six governments. And all those debating chambers, mini-ministers, federal ministers and hangers-on do not come cheap. Given the current British mood of lynch-mob fury towards politicians, I wonder if creating more of the rascals is really what voters have in mind.