Conservative commitments - 43, 34 failures

Introduce English votes for English laws

This is the problem with regionalism. Are we a union, governed by ‘The Conservative and Unionist Party’? Or are we a collection of regions, EU-style? I would expect the Conservative and Unionist Party to favour the former. If we want English votes for English laws, why not have Warwickshire votes for Warwickshire issues, such as whether they want HS2 barging through their countryside? How about Labour votes for laws in Labour regions? We can already predict that the Conservatives won’t help solidly Labour regions much; it’s not political sense to help people who will never vote for you.

I understand the frustration that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have additional representation in their own regions, and their MPs get to vote on English issues. I sympathise with cries for greater localism and small-scale representation, and I would be happy to consider a coherent plan for delegating more power to local government.

But we have central government for a reason, and it’s hypocritical of the Conservatives to pander to reactionary nationalism whilst also pretending to support the union. They would be better off explaining their side of a complex and difficult argument rather than just taking a different side when it’s popular. The Conservatives want English votes for English laws because it consolidates their central power, as they are hugely less popular in the devolved regions. If they wanted more local representation they’d be supporting local government, but they’re cutting local government even more than central government. This is about Conservative power.

Furthermore, the Conservatives expect us to trust the government with our privacy and data; they want vast new powers for the security services to snoop on citizens’ lives (see 49), and they like to create broad new crimes that need interpretation to be applied (see 50), and we must just trust the police to be nice to us. Why not trust elected representatives from the regions to vote honestly in the best interests of the entire country?