Guest Warwick Green Posted June 25, 2006 Report Posted June 25, 2006 If English resentment is bad under Blair it will be worse with Brown as Prime Minister Five years before Labour came to power in 1997, the late Robin Cook, then shadow health secretary, let what one wag called “the tartan pigeon out of the bag”. Cook wasn’t engaging in a Tommy Cooper-like conjuring trick or showing off a new bird genus. Instead he was saying what Westminster MPs had periodically felt since devolution was first mentioned. Cook quietly said: “Once we have devolution, it is not possible for me to continue as minister of health administering health in England.” Slapped down by Neil Kinnock, Cook retreated and adopted the strategy advocated by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine that the answer to the so-called West Lothian Question is to “stop asking it”. Irvine’s strategy worked, for a bit. Now, like Cook’s plaid pigeon, it’s escaped again. And amid the nationalistic fever of the football World Cup, it will be as difficult to put back as toothpaste returning to a tube. In timing that would have been appreciated by the clock engineer of Big Ben, the Labour-dominated Scottish Affairs Committee admitted to a return, with a vengeance, of the West Lothian Question that was making their position in the UK’s sovereign parliament feel as uncomfortable as a kilt in a hurricane. Their report said: “It is a matter of concern to us that English discontent is becoming apparent.” The group said they hoped the matter would be “comprehensively debated and resolved before … it could undermine the whole devolution settlement”.... http://www.sundayherald.com/56428 Quote
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