Quote:
Originally Posted by Northumbrian
The only problem with your policy is that so few people share the idea.
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Very few people are aware of the UKIP policy on this.
Blair hopes that the status quo (i.e. devolution which he sees as his project) will remain. He thinks that everything he has done on devolution is now cast in stone and cannot be altered.
It is not cast in stone, of course, and changes will be made. For a start, we have never had a constitutional referendum in England on any matter ever (the EEC referendum in 1975 was, of course, a pan-UK vote). Other parts of the UK have had at least one exclusive constitutional referendum and some have had two and demands for an English constitutional referendum are going to increase.
As I wrote earlier, England must have equal status with Scotland within the Union of the UK - and the UKIP and English Democrat policies (although different) both offer that.
There are many who take the view that there is a strong case that various constitutional alternatives (within the UK) to the current devolved Parliament in Scotland be looked at - many people in Scotland are very unhappy about the cost of the current Scottish Parliament and only a minority of those entitled to vote backed it being set up in the first place.