Flag Day
Tomorrow marks the start of the first World Cup during which I will have day-to-day business with “English People”. Needless to say, this development puts me in something of a pickle.
No true Scotsman would ever support England at football. In the absence of a Scottish cause, and the presence of a fairly-compelling Irn-Bru ad campaign, it’s tempting to jump on the Trinidad & Tobago bandwagon. Perhaps there are equally tenuous alliances that could be struck with Sweden or Paraguay? For diplomatic reasons, I should really get behind the US, but it’s just a shame they’re not in England’s group.
All of which is just jingoistic, small-minded, chipped-shoulder, xenophobic sour grapes. If you need proof that this position is untenable, consider that it involves following Jack McConnell’s example. So, in the spirit of rapprochement, I took the stage at Stan’s karaoke on Tuesday with my southern friend, Richard, to sing Three Lions. A fairly uncontroversial thing to do in Edinburgh of all places, and we faced little opprobrium. In future, I’ll save any anti-English sentiment for when they’re playing Scotland, the US (of course!), and maybe Ireland (to support the ancestors).
So now that we’re feeling level-headed, why does this rankle so much? I mean, come on, it’s just a flag. I saw a St. George’s cross flying from a plumber’s van on campus yesterday, but I wasn’t moved to boycott the university toilets (at least, not for that reason. I mean, euch). But when it’s flying above the offices of the head of the United Kingdom government, it makes me uneasy. “Of course, unfortunately Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland didn’t qualify, so hopefully somebody will face the dilemma of whether to put up their flags in 2010.” Imagine the outrage in the right-wing press if Gordon Brown hoisted the saltire over Downing Street in 2010. It would be yet another addendum to the West Lothian question, handing ammunition to those who think that a Scottish MP should never rule Britain.
This is absolute nonsense: a Scottish MP has as much right to rule the country as one from England, Northern Ireland or Wales. What I agree is wrong is that someone elected in a Scottish constituency should be able to wield power over England, without being accountable to the voters there. Foundation hospitals, top-up tuition fees, the list of dubious legislation foisted on England thanks only to Labour’s Scottish MPs is long, and embarrassing. It is quite understandable that people in England should resent this, but the suggestion to relegate Scottish members to a second-class status, by curtailing their voting rights, is utterly unfair. Unfair in exactly the same way as when Margaret Thatcher introduced the Poll Tax a year early in Scotland.
I’ve never been a fan of devolution: its asymmetry has always seemed certain to undermine the Union, which I am not in favour of abolishing. I much prefer the idea of a federal Britain, with parliaments of equal stature for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Keep the original parliament at Westminster for dealing with overarching British and international issues, and you take away the tension in government: there is no logical reason why a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MP could not lead this body. (Well, maybe not a Northern Irish MP, since none of the parties there would ever be large enough to secure a majority or even plurality of the seats in such a body.) The rejected system of regional assemblies would not have solved this problem, as they would leave pan-English issues to be decided at Westminster. By Scottish MPs. Is England too large to be governed by a devolved assembly? Perhaps, but an umbrella body is needed for decisions that affect the whole country. By all means, there could then be regional assemblies (glorified county councils) beneath that, though is it really worth the expense?
To bring us back to my original point, then, the flying of the English flag over Number 10 is symbolic of the worst-case answer to the West Lothian question. I will rue the day when we have a Prime Minister, parliament and government that represent England first, the other home nations second. Hopefully it does turn out to be just a piece of cloth.
I seem to have wandered from my original point. That was absolutely intentional!