It’s incontestable – we need change in England

After a dreadful summer, the Scottish Independence referendum –and the developments that followed it – have again illustrated David Cameron’s inept political judgment.

From the single question on the Scottish ballot, to the woefully inadequate Edinburgh agreement, Alex Salmond was lucky to have found a British Prime Minister who, in the words of Peter Oborne, has proven to be so infamously ‘indolent, inattentive…and out of touch.’

Campaigning in the central belt during the final weeks of the referendum campaign the need for politicians to avoid gimmicks as solutions to difficult political problems was reaffirmed to me on every doorstep. It’s impossible not to feel sympathy – even empathy – for the defeated ‘Yes’ campaigners. At the heart of each campaign was the impassioned and sincere desire to make Scotland a better country; the campaigns differed primarily over what the political structure of Scotland should be: independence vs. interdependence.

Critically, the economic strength of an independent Scotland was the most fiercely contested campaign issue. It was here that the myths of easy, consequence-free  divorce really began to take hold. The myths proved attractive but they represented a political ponzi scheme; there was nothing real about the claims that an independent Scotland would flourish economically outside of the United Kingdom. There were far too many unanswered questions. These questions were left deliberately unanswered as to answer them honestly would have resulted in far less than 45% of the Scottish electorate voting to destroy the Union.

Claims of a more prosperous Scotland outside of the UK represented pure gimmickry. An easy and attractive offer to understand, but a flight from reality not rooted in fact. That part of the electorate seeking easy answers swallowed the separatist prospectus all too easily. Those voters who knew that separation would be hard, that difficult sacrifices would have to be made in order to achieve it and who were painfully aware that the ‘Yes’ campaign simply refused to answer simple questions of detail saw this gimmick for what it was. This was hammered home to me by the retired, life-long SNP voter in the Chase Inn, Kirkintilloch. “I’ve got three pensions riding on this,” he told me “…we’re a good country and we’re better together.”

Undoubtedly, there were ‘Yes’ campaigners who truly believed that separation was the key to a better, more progressive future for Scotland. Socialists, Greens, Social Democrats, Liberals and more. But they were accompanied by many who believed in an ugly, narrow nationalism: those who purposefully sought to present easy answers to difficult problems in the shape of an appeal to blood and soil. The politics of artificial identity was combined with a claustrophobic politics of grievance and this shaped a debate in which facts were characterized as threats. At points, the debate captured the politics of the asylum.

As so often over the course of the 307 year Union, where Scotland has led, so England has followed. Seemingly unaware of any of the dynamics of the Scottish campaign, David Cameron has foolishly sought to replicate them. As a result, the Little Englanders are now off the leash.

Once more captivated by the permanently aggrieved, swivel-eyed right wing of his party Cameron has begun to talk of constitutional change he cannot deliver, he is writing cheques he cannot cash, he is offering easy gimmicks in the face of hard questions: “English votes for English laws” and he will again be found out.

The desire for change in England is unstoppable. The need for change is incontestable. On the verge of conference season, eight months out from a general election cheap solutions, combined with easy, unworkable answers have proven irresistible to a Prime Minister running out of road.

It is only fair to pay tribute to the political achievements of Alex Salmond, – even as he falsely alleges (post-resignation) that Westminster won’t deliver on the devolution promises made. In the end, though, gimmickry cost Salmond his life’s work.

As David Cameron seeks to gerrymander the constitution for partisan advantage, the English see his gimmickry for what it is, and he will pay a heavy price.

As the new settlement for England progresses, a debate will rage about the nature of England and the country’s place in the Union, Europe and the World. Simultaneously, England’s cities, regions and peripheral communities will debate their place in England and the kind of England they want to be a part of. This is not, and never can be, the mythical England of David Cameron’s imagination.

Debating the Great Reform Act in Parliament in 1831, Robert Peel told the Commons that he was “…uniformly opposed to reform upon principle, because I was unwilling to open a door which I saw no prospect of being able to close.”

Jamie Reed is MP for Copeland and Shadow Health Minister