Alice Thomson wrong on Scotland

Alice Thomson makes a strange proposal for "defusing" the Scottish question in The Telegraph today. As she points out, "the Scottish Parliament has exclusive power to legislate on domestic issues, including health, the environment, home affairs, the police, sports, local government, the arts, education and transport". Already in the cabinet with Gordon Brown we have John Reid (Home Office), Alistair Darling (DTI), Des Browne (Defence) and Douglas Alexander (Defra). A Prime Minister Brown would be making policies for the English which don't affect his own constituents.

Alice Thomson's solution is to "scrap the Barnett formula that subsidises public spending north of the border by £1,400 per Scot every year". This, she says, could be sold to Scots on the basis that they were no longer being treated as second-class citizens.

Not surprisingly, she doesn't discuss whether it could be sold to the uppity English - which is rather the point. It might "defuse" the issue for a while, but Scots ministers would still be making policies affecting only the English, so the issue would still be simmering, with the Opposition doubtless exploiting it. And of course abolishing the Scottish subsidy might only draw attention to Scottish privilege.

Thomson doesn't discuss one thing Brown could do. He could ensure Scottish ministers only serve in departments which affect their own constituencies. This rules out Defra and the Home Office, and it would have ruled out Transport, where Alistair Darling was in charge until recently.

That would help. But it wouldn't solve Brown's Prime Ministerial problem, and it wouldn't address the West Lothian question in the Commons. Thomson does not mention that Scottish Nationalist MPs and the Scottish Tory MP have decided they won't vote on issues which are purely English. What about Scottish Labour MPs then?

The answer is not to ban Scottish MPs from voting on English issues. If Britain had a PM who had a majority in the Commons on defence, foreign affairs and the economy, but - without the votes of the Scottish MPs - would lose every vote on domestic policy, government would break down. Our whole system relies on the PM having a working majority in the Commons.

In fact it's wholly unclear that government would "break down" at all. Devolved functions could be run from separate civil service departments, and for part of the week Westminster could function as the English parliament.

Meanwhile, Scottish MPs could decamp to Edinburgh to run Scotland's devolved government. The UK and English parliaments would happen to operate from the same building on different days of the week. And if the English First Minister wasn't the same person as the UK's Prime Minister ... so what?

Actually this sensible scenario is UKIP policy already (though it's hard to find on the UKIP web site unless you know roughly where it is).

Good to see UKIP with a radical policy for smaller government.