English votes for English laws. Yes, but is that it?

‘English home rule at heart of Tory campaign’, The Daily Telegraph‘s headline screams the morning of Ed Miliband’s last pre-election conference speech. The rise of UKIP, the demise of trust in English politics and Conservative efforts to mobilise the rage of citizens south of the border after the Scottish referendum shows how urgently we need to tackle the question of who wields authority in England. David Cameron wants the answer to be simple. He wants power to be concentrated with the English Tory MPs a nation of grateful subjects will vote into power next year, he thinks. Labour needs to challenge that Tory story. We need to build a coalition of people wanting a far more radical dispersal of power not just with Westminster politicians but throughout our towns and cities, with the citizens of England.

But Labour should begin by backing English votes for English laws. The old argument to silence those asking the West Lothian question won’t wash any more. As English identity (and English resentment) rises, people south of the border aren’t content to be ruled only as part of Britain. It is, simply, unfair for Scottish MPs to vote on English issues but not the other way round. And anyway, Labour should aspire to have a majority throughout the UK, in England as well as Scotland.

No one will think we’re serious about change unless we back this move, but we need to do far more. Labour needs to be push for a radical dispersal of authority throughout Britain, constantly criticising the Conservatives for their last ditch effort to keep power in Whitehall and Westminster as they do. For a Labour party committed to building the power of people to control our destiny in the towns and cities where we live, this Tory ‘trap’ is an opportunity.

Today, the day after a speech that talked about the way Labour will transform Britain, Ed Miliband needs to start answering questions about English votes. When he does he needs say to the Conservatives – ‘Is that it?’. ‘Yes, we’ll back your call for English votes. From now, until a permanent political settlement comes into place. Labour’s Scottish MPs agree not to vote on English issues.’

‘Is your answer to the rage and frustration people in England feel about who wields power really to give Tory MPs more power? Lets be clear, English votes for English laws is not ‘home rule’. It will still leave power concentrated with a tiny elite of politicians and bureaucrats. We challenge this government to start a real processes which really decides how to disperse authority throughout our towns, counties, cities and regions. If you won’t, we will’.

David Cameron’s move reflects a particularly Tory vision of England. It sees this country as a nation of loyal, passiveand basically apolitical people who are happy with their lives being directed by the twin wisdom of right-wing politicians and corporate chiefs. It imagines the English people as a decent but submissive people, ploughing the fields of a pastoral landscape with occasional interludes to bicycle to church or play cricket. It is an England of dream and fantasy. But it is an idea used to block democratic self-government, based on an essentially imperial idea of power centralised in one place, only now the empire has gone.

Our engagement with the English question needs to challenge this authoritarian and patrician vision of the English as a nation best governed by a small Tory elite. As I’ve argued in this column before, our politics needs to reflect a different, more popular and more real English idiom. Radical, democratic England is feisty and argumentative. It is rooted in the life of towns, cities and counties which have their own characteristics. It is more urban than rural (for more than a hundred years the countryside has been marginal to our economic existence), and has active citizenship at its core. It is committed to preserving the beauty of the environment which surrounds the places we live.

I think it has two essential characteristics: first, a hostility to being bossed around by distant superiors, by statist Labour welfarecrats as well as patrician Tory MPs. Second, a sense of the need to settle things by conversation, of the importance of debate but the possibility of agreement. We are uncomfortable with so much power and money concentrated in London, or any other one place. We are also uncomfortable with conflict and division.

This English idiom has many different accents, interests, traditions, customs and projects. It’s about being proud of where you live as well as your national football team. There is nothing more English than a scouser saying she cares more for their city than their nation. English politics is about self-government in cities and regions or it is about nothing. As John Denham puts it ‘change in Westminster is inevitable, but it is not enough’. There’s nothing more patriotic than devo max for our cities and regions.

As devolution in Scotland deepens we, south of the border, need to restore English institutions and idioms. We need an English Labour party, as Denham proposes. We need to work at telling a story of England which challenges the idea of submissive ethnic homogeneity which the Tories have told since Enoch Powell. ‘No political party owns our English national identity’, as Ed Miliband put it today. We can’t tackle the English question with vague platitudes (‘fairness’ and ‘toleration’) or meaningless flag-waving. We need to back English votes for English laws in the short term. We then need a serious national argument about the distribution of authority in this country. The idea that all power is then concentrated at Westminster shorn of its Scottish MPs is anathema to my understanding – at least – of what it means to be English. English votes yes, but then create a serious conversation about how we are governed, about how to disperse power throughout England.